The number of reported sightings of modern pterosaurs in the Hawaiian Islands demands that we examine the reports and evaluate the possibility. Certainly nobody who thinks about it carefully will proclaim that if large pterosaurs lived in modern times none of them would be able to fly across an ocean. Butterflies have been reported to have been blown over some stretches of ocean, both Atlantic and Pacific. Some birds migrate over vaste distances across the earth.
I have been privileged to be given an eyewitness report of a sighting in 1970, northeast of Honolulu. I here give part of that report:
Grew up on the windward side of Oahu in Maunawili Valley. The valley I grew up in is a typical triple canopy rain forest with two mountain ranges, the Koolaus and Olomana mountain surrounding the valley. I believe I was around 12 years old at the time that I saw a Pterodactyl.
I step out of our house and walked just a short distance in our front yard when I looked up and saw the Pterodactyl flying (gliding) from the direction of the Koolaus towards Olomana.
I would estimate its height at about 100 feet using the tall Cook pine trees growing in my neighbor’s yard as my reference.
It was light brown in color with canvas like skin and absolutely no feathers. What really caught my attention was its “horn” protruding from the back of its head ( or as Duane Hodgkinson calls “an appendage”).
When it passed across to the right of me I then realized it was a living creature because it began to flap its wings and continued to flap its wings several times at about a two second interval between flaps.
At first I thought it was something manmade because I thought it might be some type of a remote controlled Pterodactyl glider. The wing span (again an estimate) seemed to be about 30 (if not more) feet across. It was light brown in color with canvas like skin and absolutely no feathers. . . . When it passed across to the right of me I then realized it was a living creature because it began to flap its wings
Flying Creatures Like Pterosaurs in Hawaii
This was late in 1999, in what the soldiers called the “Kahuku range,” on the northeast side of Oahu. A bright full moon illuminated the flying creature, which had a long tail about 25% of the ”size of its body,” which I assume refers to the length, which one soldier estimated was 8-10 feet.
