Modern Pterosaurs

Giant Pterosaurs of San Diego

2012-01-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

The apparent pterosaurs were said to have huge wingspans, one wing alone being 10-15 feet, making a wingspan estimated to be about 20-30 feet: obviously no seagull. The long tails suggest the animals were ropens. One of the two eyewitnesses of the November 4, 2011, flyover (San Diego, California) contacted me by email; we soon had a phone conversation in which he appeared to me to be quite credible, not at all like a hoaxer. He and his friend had seen two flying creatures, one following the other.

Why believe that the two men saw large ropens? A few years ago, in daylight, another eyewitness had seen a giant ropen flying into the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Orange County, which is also in Southern California.

Nocturnal Pterosaurs in San Diego

“I was at my friend’s house. Well it was a really clear night, because it had rained the day before. We were standing in the street and I couldn’t keep my eyes off the stars, they were really bright. Then from the west came this dark object in the sky. It was right over us about, I say, 40 yards [high]. As it got closer we both yelled, “What the hell is that?” It looked like a huge bird. It was gliding . . . I was stuck looking at it the entire time. I began yelling at it, then it turned around and it stood still in the air. It was flapping its wings while it was there. Then outta nowhere here came another one. It was waiting for it; as it got close to the other one, they both went east.

Third Edition of Live Pterosaurs in America

In the United States of America—that’s where Scott Norman, in 2007, became the first American cryptozoologist to see a clear form of a living pterosaur while searching for one: a large flying creature with a head three to four feet long. We mourn the passing (from natural causes) of our young friend who is deeply missed in the cryptozoology community.

Wingspan Hoax Eliminated

2011-12-30T05:10:00.000-08:00

Several factors eliminate a hoax or combination of hoaxes as an explanation for any significant portion of reported sightings of apparent pterosaurs. One is the analysis of eyewitness estimates for wingspan.

The following two graphs illustrate the difference between one type of hoax and the actual data from sighting reports. In the first, we see what would be expected if a random combination of wingspan estimates (at 80%) is combined with 20% of sightings being hoaxes of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs, with hoaxers giving wingspan "estimates" less than seven feet, consistent with the fossils of long-tailed pterosaurs. In the second, we see what actually was reported in the sightings. Rhamphorhynchoid wingspan sizes were chosen, in this example, because long tails were reported so often (well over 75% of those sightings in which tails, or lack thereof, were observed).

In these two graphs, the difference between one column and the next is only two feet in wingspan estimate, a small difference when we consider that these are only rough estimates, some of which may have been made in difficult conditions (such as a rather distant flying creature being observed for a limited amount of time). This means that a difference, between two columns, of one verticle degree (number of reported sightings) has very little significance. Nevertheless, general directions of slope may be greatly significant. For example, in the first (hypothetical) graph, the difference between 4.25-6.25 and 6.25-8.25 is great, but notice the general difference between the first three columns on the far left and the for columns that follow. The steep fall to a low plateau is obvious. But in the second graph (from actual sighting reports), the peek near the far left is followed by a gradual slope to the right (into the larger wingspans). This actual sighting data supports the idea that a number of species, of various sizes, have been observed by eyewitnesses who have varying abilities in estimating wingspans.

Wingspan Estimates Eliminate Hoax

To put it in a nutshell, the fifty-seven wingspan estimates show a fairly smooth curve downwards toward the giant wingspans, and it is far too shallow a curve to have come from hoaxers who would have tried to fool people into thinking that the hoaxers had seen long-tailed pterosaurs. The reason for that is that those Rhamphorhynchoids are commonly believed to have been smaller pterosaurs with wingspans generally less than seven feet. The statistics show something far different.

Evil Name Removed from "Demon Flyer"

2011-12-15T15:57:00.000-08:00

The literal meaning of "ropen" is not actually "demon flyer." On Umboi Island, in those villages where Kovai is the local language, "ropen" refers to the strange nocturnal flying creature that sometimes glows briefly as it flies from one mountain to another or to-or-from a mountain and a reef. Setting aside the legends and traditional beliefs about the ropen, some native eyewitnesses have seen it up close, too close for comfort. But the point is this: "Demon flyer" is not the literal interpretation. This phrase probably came about from one or more Westerners who were too-deeply impressed with the negative aspects of the legends and the spiritual connotation.

Demon Flyer of Papua New Guinea

So in those two small areas of Papua New Guinea (villages of Umboi Island including Opai and Gomlongon, and at least one village near Wau on the mainland) the meaning of the word “ropen” differs greatly. An examination of the expedition reports from American cryptozoologists who have searched for living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea in the 1990′s and early twenty-first century—that reveals that the Western-world usage of ”ropen” comes from the Kovai-speaking islanders of Opai and Gomlongon.

Strange Flying Creature in Pennsylvania

I received an email from a lady who was a passenger in a car one night; both driver and passenger saw a glowing creature as the strange thing flew by. Afterwards she did some research and told me, “I have found that a pterosaur is identical to what we saw.” She has not yet told me any details about her research nor what image she may have seen that looked like what was encountered; but it is sufficient to consider that it was a possible American ropen. The sighting was in Pennsylvania, and I believe it involved bioluminescence.

Third Edition of Live Pterosaurs in America

2011-11-17T09:44:00.000-08:00

The third edition of this nonfiction cryptozoology book has recently become available from the online book seller Amazon. From the title page of Live Pterosaurs in America:

How are sightings in the United States related to those in the southwest Pacific? How do some apparent nocturnal pterosaurs pertain to bats, and how are bats irrelevant? How could modern living pterosaurs have escaped scientific notice? These mysteries have slept in the dark, beyond the knowledge of almost all Americans, even beyond our wildest dreams (although the reality of some pterosaurs is a living nightmare to some bats). These mysteries have slept . . . until now.

From the Acknowledgements page of the book:

In the United States of America—that’s where Scott Norman, in 2007, became the first American cryptozoologist to see a clear form of a living pterosaur while searching for one: a large flying creature with a head three to four feet long. We mourn the passing (from natural causes) of our young friend who is deeply missed in the cryptozoology community.

Live Pterosaurs in America (Third Edition)

After months of email interviews, I became convinced that Susan was a credible eyewitness. I believe she saw something like a ropen—probably a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur—that flew in front of her car. The overall communications we have had are inconsistent with both a hoax and a mental health condition. Her descriptions of the creature, and the closeness of the encounter, repudiate a misidentification of a bird or bat.

Media Room - Live Pterosaur

“Suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. The head and upper part of its body, . . . showed . . . [It appeared] right in front of us about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound . . .”

Driving While Under the Influence of a Pterosaur

2011-10-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

In the United States, some pterosaur eyewitnesses may have been looking out a livingroom window; others, fishing or taking a walk; more were driving a car, a common American pastime. But could the driving have distracted eyewitnesses from observing pterosaurs?

Pterodactyl Sightings While Driving

Two weeks ago, Americans (at least a few Americans) observed Drive Safely Work Week; this week, it’s National Teen Driver Safety Week. I doubt we will ever have Drive Safely While Witnessing a Live Pterodactyl Week. But in the United States, driving may be the most common activity when someone sees an apparent living pterosaur (probably because most Americans are usually indoors when they’re not in an automobile). Within a period of about three years, I received reports of at least ten sightings involving driving, in seven states: South Carolina, California, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, Ohio (3), Georgia (2). With sighting dates from about 1980 to 2007, one involved driving a tractor, the rest involved driving a car.

For News Media: Live Pterosaurs

In a 2009 press release, the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb estimated that at least 1400 Americans have seen a living pterosaur between 1980 and 2008. After a number of cryptozoologists objected to the speculative nature of his estimate, Whitcomb maintained that sightings are far more common that the few news reports, in the late twentieth century, would suggest. He emphasized that many eyewitness are reluctant to tell anyone that they have seen a living “pterodactyl.” Some eyewitnesses, however, report their strange encounters to Whitcomb, whose web pages and blogs dominate the internet.

Bioluminescent Pterosaurs

2011-09-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Where does this idea come from, pterosaur bioluminescence? In the 1990's several Americans visited Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, to invesigate reports of giant flying creatures by the name of "ropen." Other expeditions in Papua New Guinea followed in 2002, 2004 (two), 2006, 2007 (two), and 2009. Countless eyewitness have seen the flying light that has various names in these tropical islands:

Ropen
Indava
Duwas
Kor
Seklo-bali
Wawanar

These many names come from many languages in isolated villages in Papua New Guinea. One common factor is in the glow of the large nocturnal flying creatures. But these are not just rumors from "primitive" natives. David Woetzel, a business executive from New Hampshire, explored Umboi Island late in 2004, with fellow cryptozoologist Garth Guessman. Woetzel witnessed the ropen light as it flew briefly towards Lake Pung one night:

“My sighting was so quick that it was impossible to get a video—maybe 2 seconds . . . almost golden and shimmering around the edges. It looked like an old-fashioned street light in the fog. “There was no tail and it was flying horizontal from Mt. Barik toward Mt. Tolo.” . . . “I turned around and saw it streaking across the horizon and disappearing behind Mt. Tolo. The size, color and speed made it immediately stand out as unlike any other thing I've ever seen in the sky.

But flying lights that might be modern pterosaurs---those are not restricted to remote tropical islands. Eyewitnesses in other parts of the world have also seen similar flying creatures. In fact, the Marfa Lights of Texas have been conjectured to be from bioluminescent pterosaurs that may be similar to the ropen of Papua New Guinea.

Trinity National Forest Pterodactyl Sighting

2011-08-18T15:13:00.000-07:00

There seems to be nothing wrong with the short report that has multiplied across the world wide web: A couple was driving through Trinity National Forest, in Northern California, in the early 1960's, when they saw "the silhouette of a giant 'bird' that they estimated to have a wingspan of 14 feet." On reflecting on their encounter, the couple were reported to have compared the flying creature with a "pterodactyl." The main problem with that brief account, aside from its brevity, is the lack of any name of any eyewitness or any name of any newspaper article to go with it; there is not even an obvious indication of what web page was originally responsible for that report.

Live Pterosaurs in the Western United States

"Eyewitness accounts include locations in the West, including California and Washington State."

A couple in Sun Valley noticed something in the sky. The woman said that it was a bat, but the man saw a “bright radiation like light coming from the belly of this Pterodactyl looking animal.” As the creature flew right over the couple, the man was convinced that it was no bat. He reported, “ it was bigger with large wing span and when it flapped its wings it was kind of a slow lazy flap kind of gliding through the air.”

"Searching for Dragons" Book

2011-07-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

I was hoping that the third edition of my first book, which will be retitled "Searching for Dragons," would be on sale before Christmas, but this now looks very unlikely. It has turned into a major revision, not just with a few new eyewitness sightings: major improvements and many additions. It should have an official publication date early in 2012, but sale copies will probably become available after Christmas.

This cryptozoology book will now include Evelyn Cheesman's sightings of strange flying lights:

As she leaned over the veranda, gazing at the distant hills, deep in that tropical rain forest of New Guinea, the light caught her attention. Why was it below the top of the ridge, below that village? After a few seconds it disappeared but another light appeared, then more. But why there and why in a horizontal line and why were the flashes about four seconds long? She became fascinated by those lights.

Evelyn Cheesman, the first woman to be hired as a curator at Regent’s Park Zoo, in London, explored several islands in the Pacific, early in the twentieth century, including New Guinea. She specialized in collecting insects, not interviewing natives, so when the local “boys” of Mondo, on the mainland of New Guinea, avoided her questions about those lights, she left interviewing, relying on her powers of reasoning to solve the mystery. Alas, it was too distant and too deep.

Washington Sightings

2011-07-06T20:45:00.000-07:00

Washington State Reports of Pterosaurs

Recent report near Tacoma:

We have seen and heard a strange nocturnal, bat-like creature . . . huge, light grey, skin with no fur, feathers or scales. It silently swoops down at you with giant bat wings. . . . We keep our chickens and goats, small dogs and cats safely housed at night, however two of our cats who sneaked out one night onto the roof disappeared without a trace of fur, blood or any evidence of what exactly happened.

Night sighting of apparent bioluminescent flying predators over the Yakima River, state of Washington:

At first I thought I was just seeing shooting stars, but they were all parallel to the river and close to the horizon. Next I noticed that when the cloud cover came in, I could still see the flashes. They were under the cloud cover.

Live Pterosaurs in the Western United States

Daylight sighting of two pterosaurs in Washington state

“I was 15 yrs old [when] I saw two ropens together sitting on a fence. I was riding my bike home from a friend’s house around 5 pm . . . I heard a strange noise [a kind of] screech. . . . on a wood plank fence were two of the biggest bird-like creatures I could ever imagine! . . . I noticed . . . their heads, then I thought this can’t be! Could they be dinosaurs? . . . One was hopping off the fence . . . They were huge! . . . [Their] heads I would have to say it was maybe four feet long with the beak. . . . Their tails were . . . maybe six feet long . . .

Daylight Pterosaurs in Singapore

2011-06-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

Last year, I received an email from an eyewitess who saw two pterosaurs in daylight when he was a boy in what is now part of Singapore. Somewhere between about 1958 and 1961, he was "wandering some distance from the village and was out on an adventure hunt one hot afternoon in a forested area."

He "came across a pair of them flying together and circling some tall palm trees (those with small orange coloured fruits) and then helping themselves to the fruits." He failed to recognize the significance of the flying creatures at that time; only recently has he concluded that he had seen living pterosaurs.

Low Cheng is well aware of the fruit bat called, in English, "Flying Fox." The two flying creatures he observed were far different: "they did not glide like these smaller creatures [fruit bats]. I have seen flying foxes many times at my location before (mostly seen in the night although sometimes we see them in the day too).

Pterodactyl in Singapore

My sighting occurred probably between the period 1958 – 1960 thereabouts when I was still a little kid. In those days we lived in a small village which was near a densely wooded area. Of course with the general development of Singapore to a metropolitan state it is today, the creatures, if they had propagated, would have [ventured] further south to the wilder regions to avoid civilisation . . .

Flying Fox Fruit Bat

For many years, reports of “pterodactyls” in Papua New Guinea were dismissed as misidentifications of Flying Fox fruit bats. Recent investigations on Umboi Island, however, bring to light an astonishing possibility: The creature called “ropen” does not hang upside down from a branch but holds itself upright on tree trunks. In addition, the ropen does not eat fruit but fish that it catches on reefs by using a bioluminescent glow as it flies at night, over the water. If that was not enough to contradict the fruit bat, the ropen has a long tail, almost half as long as its wingspan. Some reports indicate that there is something at the end of the tail that may correspond to the Rhamphorhynchoid tail flange.

Modern Pterosaur in Australia

2011-05-31T07:47:00.000-07:00

Sighting reports of modern pterosaurs in Australia often come from the coast: eastern coast (just north of Brisbane), south coast, and west coast. The following report involves a sighting in the outback.

Giant Pterodactyls in Australia

“In the early 1990s I was living in . . . South Australia. . . . [I] drove from Perth out to Western Australia . . . [to] see the outback. . . . stopped . . . set up the tent . . . and wanted to see the sun go down . . . [something] looked like an airplane, far away. . . . maybe a couple hundred feet [high]. . . . it got nearer to me, I noticed that the wings were actually flapping gently. . . . color was a dark tan. . . . no sound. It was getting closer . . . had a wingspan [of about] 15 or 20 feet. It got close . . . leathery . . . no feathers at all.”

The following sighting was in the south, in the state of Victoria:

High Altitude Pterosaur in Victoria, Australia

I live in Australia in the state of Victoria near the Dandenong Ranges about 25 klms east of Melbourne. I am not a whacko just a normal family man, married with a wife of 40 years.

I think it would have been around the late 1990′s. I was standing outside about nine o’clock one night. It was full moon and very bright with a cloud bank to the south east extending to and over the Ranges. Mt. Dandenong is about 2000 feet high and the clouds were much higher than this.

I glanced to the south and [saw] . . . something flying that appeared to be at the height of light planes that fly around here as Moorabbin Airport is not far away. This thing was at least as large as a light plane, say a Cesna. It was about 5 klms away and was lazily flapping it’s wings . . . It appeared to be lit up by the moonlight and shining as if it had no feathers. . . . I could see it quite clearly. . . . for about 5 mins whence it disappeared into the cloud bank. I estimate it was flying at a height higher than Mt Dandenong.

Kongamato

2011-05-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

The word "kongamato" may not have originated from sightings of modern pterosaurs; but maybe it did. The fact remains that regardless of the origin of this word in Africa, some sighting reports include details that eliminate both a bat misidentification and a bird misidentification. What we now call "kongamato" seems to be a living pterosaur.

Kongamato in Africa

An engineer is said to have seen a kongamato at Fort Rosebery in Northern Rhodesia, in what is now Zambia. At about sunset, he saw two of them flying slowly overhead. The wingspan he thought was about three feet, perhaps a bit more. The length of the kongamato, including beak and tail, was about four feet or a bit more, and it had a long thin tail.

Kongamato and Ropen Compared

While walking from one mud-brick hut to another, one night, the boy noticed something on the roof of a nearby hut. Lit up by the patio light, perched on the edge of the roof, the creature appeared to be four-to-five feet tall, olive brown, and leathery (no feathers). A “long bone looking thing” stuck out the back of its head; its long tail somehow reminded the boy of a tail of a lion (I suspect there was hair at the end of the tail).

The boy froze as the creature stretched its wings and hopped toward another roof, passing a few feet over the boy’s head. He dropped the metal tray of dishes that he had been carrying and the creature flew away. The eyewitness was sure about the head crest and the long tail.

Modern Pterosaurs in Africa

In 1942, a flying snake like animal swooped down from a cave in the vicinity of a farm near Kirris West sixty miles east of Keetmanshoop, in south-west Namibia.The flying snake, or whatever it was, frightened Michael Esterhuise, a farm hand . . .

Modern Pterosaur in Cuba

2011-05-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

Patty's father tried to convince her she could not have seen a flying dinosaur, but the six-year-old girl was adamant: In spite of what grownups wanted to believe, it was no pelican or frigate bird, for it was standing as tall as a man and had a mouth full of teeth. Except for her younger brother, who was with her during the encounter, no family member believed her, so she gave up trying to convince anybody.

I was thrilled at the long email Patty Carson sent me a few weeks ago. I gave her a surprise phone call on May 4, 2011, and verified the high credibility of this eyewitness of a modern pterosaur at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, around 1965. Her account deserves to be told in her own words.

My brother George was with me, but he was only around four. We were walking down near the boat yards, headed home. . . . We were walking from the boat yards toward home, but still closer to the boat yards, to where it was sandy underfoot, sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall, smelled like tar from the boatyard . . . We were walking through that scrub area, and suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. The head and upper part of its body, about a third of the wings at the joint (tips still held down) showed. . . . right in front of us about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound . . . and flew to its left and disappeared behind trees and terrain.

It did have a tail and it had a diamond shaped tip, (didn't get to see if it had hairs on it) The skin was a leathery, brownish reddish color. It had little teeth, a LOT of them. The eye was smallish and dark. . . .

On the phone, Patty told me that the structure at the end of the tail (what she called a "diamond") was about five inches long and about three inches wide. I have noticed that eyewitnesses around the world report this Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur tail flange, or tail vane, although they sometimes use different words for it, often "diamond."

To understand this 1965 sighting by this child, Patty, we need to know about the sighting by the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn, in 1971, for as a talented artist he sketched the two pterosaurs that he had observed at the Guantanamo Bay military installation, and let the world know about his encounter.

Long-Tailed Pterosaurs in Cuba

[Two] Pterosaurs…flying together at … perhaps 100 feet [above the ground], very close in range . . . so that I had a perfectly clear view of them . . . the texture of the wings appeared to be very similar to that of bats . . . had a long tail trailing behind with a tuft of hair at the end . . . with a long crest at the back, long bill, long neck . . . wingspan [was] roughly 10 feet . . .

Marfa Lights - Best MP Posts

2011-04-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

It's time to list the best posts (in my opinion), in recent months, on Marfa Lights, at least those on this Modern Pterosaurs blog.

Marfa Lights Hunting

The latest nonfiction book by James Bunnell, Hunting Marfa Lights, has an interesting title when we consider recent research and data from that book, for a new explanation seems to turn the title upside down: "Marfa Lights Hunting." . . .

Recorded sightings can be weeks or even months apart, and they can start at half an hour or over two hours after sunset. . . . Consider . . . [rare] sightings in which mystery lights appear two nights in a row. . . .

The nights of July 14th and 15th, 2006, are one of the exceptions, not only in being consecutive nights but in when the lights first appeared: 38 and 37 minutes after sunset. It suggests the bioluminescent-flying-predators hypothesis has merit, for on those occasional nights when a group of predators has a very successful hunt, they would be predicted to return the next night at the same time, hoping for another successful hunt.

Marfa Light Encounter

Fred Tenny, an amateur astronomer . . . says that the Marfa mystery lights "have exhibited . . bobbing up and down, splitting and changing colors with occasional retrograde motion . . . Most of them have been red, occasionally fading to orange and very rarely yellow. I have seen individual ones split into as many as three, dance around each other and recombine."

This behavior is easier to understand in terms of a group of bioluminescent flying predators, rather than non-living sources. Why would balls of energy fly in such complex ways, splitting and later rejoining? . . . Whales have shown remarkable intelligence in coordinated hunting behavior; why should not a species of intelligent flying creatures coordinate their hunting?

Ropen Chasing Ropen in Texas?

I'll call it the "Huntington Hypothesis" (HH), this conjecture that the May 8, 2003, sighting by James Bunnell involved one flying predator that was chasing another one for many miles. Consider this carefully; I see no problem with this hypothesis. It involves a male flying predator chasing off a rival male, in a chase that lasted eleven miles.

Those Marvelous Enlightening Marfa Lights

This post quotes from the late-2010 press release and explains why car headlights do not explain away all lights that seem to fly near Marfa, Texas.

Many tourists who visit the Marfa Lights Viewing Platform (just east of Marfa) will gaze at the strange lights that flicker in the distance, to the southwest. They very well may wonder at the strageness, for night mirages sometimes cause car headlights on that highway to the southwest to behave unheadlight-like. But where else can tourists gaze? The true mystery lights that defy common-place explanations appear near Marfa only on a few nights each year and often where there is no highway. They have been photographed and studied by a scientist who has shown them to greatly differ from car headlights: James Bunnell, the author of Hunting Marfa Lights.

Marfa Lights Hunting

2011-04-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

Again we compare the concept of a modern living pterosaur with mysterious lively lights in Texas.

The latest nonfiction book by James Bunnell, Hunting Marfa Lights, has an interesting title when we consider recent research and data from that book, for a new explanation seems to turn the title upside down: "Marfa Lights Hunting." To appreciate the recent research, we need to know how rarely the CE mystery lights are usually recorded by Bunnell's cameras, and how the exceptions relate to the possibility of nocturnal flying predators.

Take the years 2001-2002. Bunnell's camera recordings in those two years were 2/9/2001, 1/31/2002, 3/31/2002, 10/30/2002, and 11/21/2002. That is only five recordings in those two calendar years (although there were two late in 2000 and one early in 2003). Months can pass between recordings of mystery lights in this part of southwest Texas.

In addition we need to know how varied the beginnings of recordings can be, as CE Marfa Lights first start glowing after sunset. For the five recordings in 2001 and 2002, the lights first seem to have appeared at the following hours and minutes after sunset: 0:52, 1:14, 0:30, 2:44, and 1:03.

So recorded sightings can be weeks or even months apart, and they can start at half an hour or over two hours after sunset. But how can that help us determine what causes those mysterious lights that sometimes seem to fly in bizarre ways, suggesting to some people around Marfa that the flying lights are directed by intelligence? Consider the exceptions, those sightings in which mystery lights appear two nights in a row.

The nights of July 14th and 15th, 2006, are one of the exceptions, not only in being consecutive nights but in when the lights first appeared: 38 and 37 minutes after sunset. It suggests the bioluminescent-flying-predators hypothesis has merit, for on those occasional nights when a group of predators has a very successful hunt, they would be predicted to return the next night at the same time, hoping for another successful hunt.

Of course, there may be some non-pterosaur unclassified bioluminescent predator that flies around Marfa, Texas, but what about those kinds of cryptids in other areas of North America and in other parts of the world, including Papua New Guinea? Many eyewitnesses describe large pterosaur-like flying creatures and some of those eyewitnesses also describe a glow emitted by those creatures. Strange as it may seem on the surface, the most logical explanation for all of this is that bioluminescent pterosaurs are the cause of the mysterious CE lights of Marfa, Texas.

I applaud the wonderful work of James Bunnell and his exceptional book, Hunting Marfa Lights. How little I would know about Marfa Lights without his years of work. But I still think that the best explanation for those more mysterious CE lights is "Marfa Lights hunting their prey."

Marfa Lights Keep Flying Along

2011-03-19T15:09:00.000-07:00

The Apollo Mission scientist James Bunnell has spent years of work hunting down the more mysterious Marfa Lights of southwest Texas. In fact, he has written a book about his experiences: Hunting Marfa Lights. He admits that some lights observed near Marfa, Texas, may appear mysterious to visitors, tourists to the Marfa Lights Viewing Park. Many lights that are taken for "Marfa Lights" are actually car headlights, even sometimes with a night-mirage phenomenon. But some lights are truly mysterious even to scientists.

Let's consider those flying lights that are known, by serious investigators like Bunnell, to differ greatly from common lights like car headlights. Consider those lights.

Marfa Lights Explained

Other strange lights, observed only a few times each year, cannot be from car headlights. Those "mystery lights" have been labeled "CE-III" by James Bunnell, author of the book "Hunting Marfa Lights." It doesn't take rocket scientist to realize those lights are extremely weird, baffling even the most determined scientists (Mr. Bunnell is literally a rocket scientist).

Marfa Light Encounter

[Fred Tenny] says that the Marfa mystery lights "have exhibited . . bobbing up and down, splitting and changing colors with occasional retrograde motion . . . Most of them have been red, occasionally fading to orange and very rarely yellow. I have seen individual ones split into as many as three, dance around each other and recombine."

Marfa Lights are Predators?

What are Marfa Lights? James Bunnell, in his book Hunting Marfa Lights, has examined, scientifically, the various lights around Marfa, lights that could be called “mysterious.” He has listed quite a few categories. The point is that car headlights, made mysterious by night-mirage atmospheric conditions, are only one type of mystery light near Marfa. Other classifications of what Bunnell calls “ML” (mystery lights) are seen where there are no highways and even no roads. Some ML have combustion-like properties (Bunnell is literally a rocket scientist), very unlike car headlights, even in the most bizarre atmospheric conditions that could create night mirages. Remote automatic cameras have captured the flights of some lights as they soar just above the bushes south of the Marfa Lights Viewing Platform.

Marfa Lights in Texas

The cryptozoological possibility seems weird, but there are similarities with the ropen lights of Papua New Guinea, and there the lights are said to be nocturnal flying creatures described like giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs: ropens.

This extraordinary possibility of living pterosaurs in southwest Texas makes serious scientific investigations worth the effort, even if the bioluminescent predator is eventually found to be a bird or a bat.

With all of that, I believe that Marfa Lights are probably from flying creatures similar to the ropen.

Modern Pterosaurs and the Marfa Light

2011-02-21T04:57:00.000-08:00

Most sites on the Texas Marfa Lights fall into one of three categories:

No reasonable explanation, truly mysterious
Car headlights
Unknown species of large bioluminescent flying creatures

Those rare type of flying lights in southwest Texas, the kind labeled "CE-III" by the scientist James Bunnell, behave strangely, seeming to some local residents like "dancing devils." What would cause such a strange designation? It's the seeming intelligent direction, the splitting and rejoining, reminiscent of line dancing. That behavior has been labeled "complex" by Bunnell. But what is more complex than the behavior of a group of intelligent predators that hunt as a group?

Marfa Lights Resources

[Marfa Lights] appear in pairs or groups . . . to divide into pairs or merge together, to disappear and reappear, and sometimes to move in seemingly regular patterns . . . just above bushes south of Marfa. What causes these strange flying lights? . . . Now a new hypothesis has emerged: a group of bioluminescent flying predators . . . guaranteed to shock most Americans.

Marfa Lights – From Magnetosphere or Pterosaurs?

There is no coorelation with Solar Halos, and those major solar eruptions slam into the magnetosphere most violently. If the solar wind caused those mysterious Marfa Lights during those seven and a half years, there would surely be a relationship with Solar Halos; there was no relationship.

Getting a Handle on Marfa Lights in Texas

. . . James Bunnell recognizes the night-mirage phenomenon that sometimes makes car headlights appear strange-looking southwest of Marfa, Texas. But a few times each year very different lights make their appearance, with much different characteristics of behavior, color, and flight patterns. Those more-rare appearances of dancing lights or flying lights Bunnell has labeled "CE-III" ML (Mystery Lights).

Marfa Lights of Texas

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that a controversay has been flying around concerning the meaning of Marfa Lights. Are all strange lights in the vicinity of Marfa, Texas, car headlights from that one highway southwest of the viewing platform? . . . [Bunnell's] book “Hunting Marfa Lights” makes it clear that many flying lights south of the viewing platform are very different, bearing no resemblence to even the most distorted night-mirage of car headlights.

Conclusion

Do we yet have any firm scientific conclusion on what causes Marfa Lights of type CE-III? Of course scientific evidence against night-mirages of car headlights is not proof that the lights come from bioluminescent pterosaurs. But when the evidences suggesting intelligent flying predators is so obvious, why not investigate further? Why not consider some kind of unknown species of flying predator?

Marfa Light Encounter

2011-02-14T04:15:00.000-08:00

In James Bunnell's book Hunting Marfa Lights, page 199 (story 3) we read of the experiences of Fred Tenny, an amateur astronomer. His background in night observations makes his statements more credible.

He says that the Marfa mystery lights "have exhibited . . bobbing up and down, splitting and changing colors with occasional retrograde motion . . . Most of them have been red, occasionally fading to orange and very rarely yellow. I have seen individual ones split into as many as three, dance around each other and recombine."

This behavior is easier to understand in terms of a group of bioluminescent flying predators, rather than non-living sources. Why would balls of energy fly in such complex ways, splitting and later rejoining? Without any reference to living organisms, all previous explanations for these truly mysterious flying lights have failed miserably to account for this complex behavior. But a group of intelligent (smarter perhaps than barn owls, at least in group behavior) nocturnal flying predators could have a number of reasons for hunting with complex coordinated flights. Whales have shown remarkable intelligence in coordinated hunting behavior; why should not a species of intelligent flying creatures coordinate their hunting?

Marfa Ghost Lights

The flying Marfa Lights of southwest Texas have been compared with the ropen of Papua New Guinea. There the lights have been correlated with appearances of large and giant long-tailed flying creatures, featherless and resembling Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs (long-tailed "pterodactyls").

Ropen Chasing Ropen in Texas?

. . . call it the "Huntington Hypothesis" (HH), this conjecture that the May 8, 2003, sighting by James Bunnell involved one flying predator that was chasing another one for many miles. Consider this carefully; I see no problem with this hypothesis. It involves a male flying predator chasing off a rival male, in a chase that lasted eleven miles.

Modern Pterosaurs in Georgia

2011-02-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

The second edition of my nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America has several pages on the two sightings in Georgia. The ladys saw two different flying creatures, about two weeks apart, but they were of the same species, featherless and long-tailed.

Commuting to work . . . on August 27. She had driven less than ten miles, just leaving an area of pasture, entering an area of thick woods, around a mild downhill curve, with high banks and brush on each side of the road, when an animal suddenly flew from the right, just over the front of her car.

She looked up at a “very long” tail that had a strange shape at the end. She later sent me some sketches . . . one of them showing a thick almost-heart-shape at the end of the tail; it differs from the usual “diamond” shape suggested by some eyewitnesses, but I believe this creature is related to the others.

Two weeks later, on September 10 . . . the sky was again overcast . . . Just two miles out of town, however, as she came to a curve at the top of a gently flowing hill, at a little over a hundred yards away, she saw it: the same kind of creature but not the same individual; this one was bigger.

I have found one piece of indirect evidence supporting this eyewitness account, but I would be very grateful if any other eyewitness comes forward to report to me anything similar in Georgia.

New Blog About Living Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs

2011-02-04T16:09:00.000-08:00

My friend Peter Theiss has started his Dinoplaza blog and one post mentions the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America. I really do appreciate his contribution to the book, for his interview of an eyewitness is the only reference, in that book, to a sighting in Missouri.

I was also interested in his post "Loch Linnhe Monster."

Loch Linnhe is a sea loch on the west coast of Scotland. Loch Linnhe is 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) long, and an average of 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) wide.

Theiss mentions four sightings of this cryptid, from the 1940's to 1967.

His January posts include a cryptid sighting in the North Sea during World War I, an Ogopogo sighting in 2009 (lake in Canada), and several others; lake monsters are well covered here, in one instance (Loch Ness), maybe even uncovered.

Thank you, Peter, for becoming a blog writer with an emphasis on cryptozoology.

Getting a Handle on Marfa Lights in Texas

2011-01-31T05:31:00.000-08:00

Of course there may be many tourists who gaze at distant car headlights and take them for Marfa Lights. That is not the point. The scientist James Bunnell recognizes the night-mirage phenomenon that sometimes makes car headlights appear strange-looking southwest of Marfa, Texas. But a few times each year very different lights make their appearance, with much different characteristics of behavior, color, and flight patterns. Those more-rare appearances of dancing lights or flying lights Bunnell has labeled "CE-III" ML (Mystery Lights).

With so much written about those strange CE-III, online references may be useful.

Scientific Skepticism and Marfa Lights

Norman Huntington replies to a blog post, criticizing the idea that all mysterious lights around Marfa, Texas, must be from car headlights. Huntington makes his point well. He objects to the other blogger, who uses the word "whiskey" to try to discredit those who have seen lights flying strangely in this part of Texas. Huntington strongly objects to that bulverism:

. . . we need to remember that some of these sighting reports are quite strange: flying lights that seem to fly in ways related to each other. These flights are too complex–I believe “complex” is the word used by James Bunnell–to be easily explained as an ordinary phenomenon. But the strange reactions some person might have to consuming alcohol does not mean that all strange experiences should be dismissed with “whiskey.” We can admit that not-yet-explained things may exist.

Marfa Lights of Texas

This includes a brief overview of the 2010 Marfa Lights sighting by a Mr. Greene (the sighting itself was hours long).

Why consider that American “ghost lights” relate to live pterosaurs? Consider the ropen light of Papua New Guinea. From them we can learn that at least some living pterosaurs are bioluminescent, in particular the apparent Rhamphorhynchoids of the Southwest Pacific.

Flying Predator in Texas

In southwest Texas, local residents have speculated about dancing devils or ghosts. Scientists have preferred something along the lines of ball lightning or earthlights, but all their scientific explanations have tripped over the resemblances to line dancing. . . . Now a cryptozoologist from California has explained the dancing lights of Marfa. Tales of spooks may hold a spark of truth, for recent research implies intelligence directs the lights: Bioluminescent flying predators may be hunting at night and catching a few unlucky Big Brown Bats: Eptesicus fuscus.

Those Mysterious Marfa Lights

Why should earth lights or atmospheric energies behave with intelligence? They should not, Yet the Marfa Lights, the ones labeled “CE-III” by the scientist James Bunnell, act like intelligent flying predators that hunt bats or other prey in this part of southwest Texas. [Note that Mr. Bunnell himself has not supported the living-predator interpretation, at least not as of mid-2010; but bear in mind Bunnell is not a biologist.]

Marfa Mystery Lights or Car Headlights?

2011-01-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

In the blog Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs Alive, the December 15, 2010, post handles well the declaration of some critics, that car headlights are the cause of all alleged sightings of mysterious lights around Marfa, Texas. The true Marfa Mystery Lights differ greatly from night mirages of car headlights, and that post made some good points on this.

James is Bunnell is literally a rocket scientist, having been a key member of the team that put men on the moon. He has analyzed photographs of Marfa ML's (mystery lights) and has concluded that some of the lights differ greatly from night mirages of car headlights. The lights he classifies as ML-CE-III fly through the air, sometimes with a glow that resembles many explosions, nothing like any mirage of any car headlight.

In addition, some CE-III ML's are seen in directions that prove they are nowhere near any highway or road.

Ropen Chasing Ropen in Texas?

2011-01-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

The connection between ropens in Papua New Guinea and the *Marfa Lights may be limited, and only with the general concept of "ropen," for the indava of the mainland of PNG might resemble Marfa Lights more than the ropen of Umboi Island (PNG) might. Regardless, I recommend a particular *post of the blog Modern Pterosaur: "Marfa Light, How Bright!"

I'll call it the "Huntington Hypothesis" (HH), this conjecture that the May 8, 2003, sighting by James Bunnell involved one flying predator that was chasing another one for many miles. Consider this carefully; I see no problem with this hypothesis. It involves a male flying predator chasing off a rival male, in a chase that lasted eleven miles.

I remember reading something about this sighting in Bunnell's book. Near the end of the long flight of this light (or two lights that take turns glowing), a local rancher observed it and later remarked that it was the brightest Marfa Light he had ever seen. I also remember that Bunnell considered this sighting unique or at least unusual in that the first light, the one flying higher, was behaving almost like it was a series of explosions.

Ghost Lights vs Science?

2010-12-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

It may seem like science is pitted against the mystery of those Marfa Lights of southwest Texas, but in truth scientific investigations are making progress in unraveling the mystery, notwithstanding one hypothesis that makes the result appear to be science fiction.

James Bunnell is a scientist, with years of experience investigating the mysterious flying lights. He has written books on the subject, the most recent one being Hunting Marfa Lights. A quote from that book seems in order here, regarding the question, "Do mirages explain all MLs?" (ML means Mystery Light.)

"It is fair to conclude that night mirages are a likely source of many ML reports given the frequency of nighttime temperature inversions in Mitchell Flat. We must consider the question of whether or not night mirages are a possible explanation for all mysterious and otherwise unexplained light encounters. I submit that the correct answer to that question is no . . ."

Bunnell then lists six reasons why mirages cannot account for all ML. One of those reasons relates to a sighting on February 19, 2003, and that light display deserves attention. From page 166 of the book:

"It is difficult to imagine any light source that would account for the combustion-like images captured in Figures 30 through 32 . . . like strings of small explosions or eruptions . . . [The ML] was moving at a pretty good clip and traveled for many miles while I was photographing it. . . . vehicle lights do not look like a string of small explosions."

So if scientific investigations, by scientists like James Bunnell, have made progress in unraveling the mystery of these mystery lights, where is the apparent science fiction? The scientific explanations like "earth lights" and "atmospheric conditions" fail to address the apparent intelligence of the flights of some of those lights, and the one explanation that fits is strange: nocturnal bioluminescent flying creatures like the ropen of Papua New Guinea, and that creature is said to be a giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur (a long-tailed "pterodactyl," AKA "flying dinosaur").

Those Marvelous Enlightening Marfa Lights

2010-12-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

A recent press release revealed how the mystery lights of Marfa (called "Marfa Lights") might be caused by bioluminescent flying predators. I know that the subject of flying monsters in Texas is hardly news, but glowing flying monsters? I beleive it deserves a closer look, first at the press release itself:

". . . the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas, have entertained residents with their strange dancing. On some warmer nights, a ball of light seems to split into two, which will separate and fly away from each other before turning around and flying back together. They have recently been linked to flying lights in the southwest Pacific, lights that natives of Papua New Guinea testify are from large flying creatures."

Before digging into the possibility of earth lights or flying away with a fancy for fire-breathing dragons, let's consider what the truly mysterious Marfa Lights are not. Many tourists who visit the Marfa Lights Viewing Platform (just east of Marfa) will gaze at the strange lights that flicker in the distance, to the southwest. They very well may wonder at the strageness, for night mirages sometimes cause car headlights on that highway to the southwest to behave unheadlight-like. But where else can tourists gaze? The true mystery lights that defy common-place explanations appear near Marfa only on a few nights each year and often where there is no highway. They have been photographed and studied by a scientist who has shown them to greatly differ from car headlights: James Bunnell, the author of Hunting Marfa Lights.

But at least one objection to earth lights has not been answered by Mr. Bunnell. Why do those mysterious Marfa Lights sometimes behave with such obvious resemblence to intelligent direction? The press release is enlightening:

". . . when one of the bioluminescent predators has been glowing for awhile, not far above the ground, it will be joined by another of its kind, which will then turn on its own glow. After insects have been attracted to that area, the two creatures will separate, which appears to distant human observers to be one light splitting into two. The predators will fly away from each other for some distance, then turn back and fly together. During the separation, bats may begin feeding on the concentration of insects before being caught from two sides by the larger predators."

So now there is an explanation for the mysterious Marfa Lights: bioluminescent nocturnal predators. But how are sightings of intelligent-acting lights in southwest Texas connected with modern pterosaurs? Besides the reports of glowing pterosaur-lke creatures in the southwest Pacific, far away, there are also reports of glowing flying creatures closer to home. A recent report of two glowing pterosaurs made this point clear: large nocturnal flying creatures that glow are not confined to the other side of the earth. Passengers of a cruise ship in the Caribbean recently observed the two pterosaurs late at night, flying back and forth while they glowed. And the Caribbean is not too far from Texas, for large flying creatures.

See also the post Cheesman Lights and Pterosaurs (relates to two bioluminescent pterosaurs seen in the Caribbean recently)

Two Glowing Pterosaurs in the Caribbean

2010-12-04T18:46:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year, I received a pterosaur sighting report from a lady who, with family members, had taken a cruise on the Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas. On about the second day of their cruise, between about 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., her daughter called her to come out to the balcony to "see something weird."

The lady told me, "The minute I stepped onto the balcony, I knew exactly what she wanted me to see. Off in the distance were two very, very large, pink/orange flourescent birds flying behind each other. They looked like the flying dinosaurs, I forget what they are called. They would fly towards the ship, then back out to sea, then fly together in tandum then make a sharp right, away from the ship and disappear into the night. Then they would return. We witnessed this activity for about fifteen minutes."

I thought about this lady's report and remembered the sighting by the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn, in 1971, at the Guantanamo Bay military station in Cuba. He had observed two large "pterodactyls," but in clear daylight, with no glow. At the moment, there is but a distant connection; it deserves a closer look and an open mind to other sightings in the Caribbean.

__________________________________________________________

Second Edition:
Live Pterosaurs
in America
by J. D. Whitcomb

146 Pages; extensive appendix and index
Cryptozoology genre

Published by Createspace, November 20, 2010
ISBN-13: 9781456341350

$13.65 suggested retail from Amazon and other retailers

Thrill to the many astonishing true eyewitness accounts from many ordinary Americans who have had extraordinary encounters with living pterosaurs, notwithstanding cultural traditions and dogma about universal ancient extinctions of all species of pterosaurs.

What is a Credible Eyewitness?

2010-11-22T03:08:00.000-08:00

I don't recall anyone asking me, "What is a credible eyewitness of a living pterosaur?" When critics of our investigations never mention "Duane Hodgkinson," I suppose that could be a clue that Hodgkinson is a credible eyewitness. But seriously, how can we objectively evalute the credibility of an eyewitness? From my experiences as a forensic videographer and as a juror on a number of court cases, I would like to suggest some things that might help.

First consider two potential problems with witness portrayal of an experience: distortion from dishonesty and distortion from poor interpretation. Evidence for either one will cause us to give less importance to a testimony. I don't think of this evaluation process as an on-off switch; judge with some scale of gradation.

When words or behavior or manner of speech show a sign of dishonesty, we lose confidence in what was said. But some witnesses make a positive impression on those who carefully listen and observe. Many who have seen Duane Hodgkinson's Youtube interview are favorably impressed.

When conditions make a misinterpretation possible, we may lose confidence in the beliefs of the witness; we may believe that the witness misunderstood the experience. With Hodgkinson's experience, however, there is little room for misinterpretation. He and his army buddy, in 1944, in New Guinea, in the middle of the day, were in a small clearing when the creature, in that same clearing, took off and flew into the air. There was limited room for misinterpreting a tail "at least" ten or fifteen feet long. The wingspan was close to that of a Piper Tri-Pacer, or about twenty-nine feet. Hodgkinson was not drinking at the time, and has never been a drinker; nothing would have caused those two soldiers to experience the sight of a giant pterosaur at a close distance except one thing: a giant pterosaur at a close distance.

In the new second edition of my nonfiction cryptozoology book, "Live Pterosaurs in America," I delve into detail about cumulative evidence. Even when one eyewitness is not 100% credible, the addition of another eyewitness of a similar creature actually adds to higher credibility for the general idea that modern pterosaurs live on this planet, when both witnesses describe a similar living pterosaur. Thus we need not look for any procedure that will give us a very precise evaluation of the credibility of any one eyewitness; we need only look at the cumulative evidence: many eyewitnesses of modern living pterosaurs.

Flying Monsters in Texas

2010-11-13T06:47:00.000-08:00

Although some eyewitnesses use the word "pterodactyl" or the phrase "flying dinosaur," another expression has come up: "flying monsters." In Texas, these featherless flying creatures themselves come up more often than news headlines would suggest, for eyewitnesses are reluctant to report sightings and news professionals may be reluctant to take seriously what is reported.

Teachers as Eyewitnesses

In San Antonio, Texas, in early 1976, three elementary school teachers were reported to have seen what they called a "pterodactyl" that swooped down just above the cars they were driving. The wingspan was estimated at 15-20 feet, and one teacher said that the creature had huge bony wings like a bat's.

Northeast Texas Sighting of 1995

According to the eyewitness, Aaron Tullock, “This thing flew over my head, about eight feet off the ground, and stopped and hovered in mid air . . . by flapping its featherless, bat-like wings, which were about four feet in span, maybe five. It had a tail about three feet long, with the . . . flange on the end . . . no head crest and no feathers at all, although there was kind of a longish bump on the back of the head. . . .”

Marfa Lights

Much has been written about Marfa Lights lately, about their resemblance to the mysterious flying lights of Papua New Guinea. Still, it deserves a brief note here. The mystery lights (called "ML" by the author James Bunnell), meaning the lights that cannot be explained away as common phenomena, have been observed in this area of southwest Texas for generations.

Do not let the 2004 investigation, the four-night study by students, confuse the issue. The Wikipedia reference to this brief investigation is itself brief, and it does not actually disprove the mysterious nature of what are called "mystery lights." It only showed that for four consecutive nights the lights seen near Marfa were made by car headlights. But true Marfa Lights only are seen a few times per year, and they differ from the appearance of car headlights.

I believe, but am not certain, that Marfa Lights are made by bioluminescent nocturnal flying predators that are related to the long-tailed pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea.

___________________________________________________________

The second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America has just been published, with more sightings and more analysis: astonishing accounts of encounters with modern living pterosaurs --- Nonfiction.

The first edition of this nonfiction cryptozoology book was the best-seller, on Amazon.com, for books about living pterosaurs. This is pure non-fiction cryptozoology. The first edition was highly rated; as of Dec 1, 2010, the lowest Amazon rating was four stars (except for that one, all were five). Purchase your own copy of the second edition (expanded, revised, Nov, 2010), or buy one for a gift.

Giant Pterodactyl

2010-10-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

A typical American would visualize a short-tailed pterosaur from the phrase "giant pterodactyl." But most American eyewitnesses who have encountered an apparent living pterosaur describe a long tail, and the tail is often said to end with a "diamond shape" or some other-described enlargement at or near the end of the tail.

So what is surprising about long-tailed pterosaurs, aside from the declarations that they are not really all extinct? From what I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have learned over years of interviewing, the ratio in those eyewitness sightings is at least four-to-one, meaning at least 80% of the flying creatures are apparent Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs, and that brings up two surprises: Popular modern scientific models include the idea that Rhamphorhynchoids became extinct before their short-tailed cousins, and the long-tailed pterosaurs have been thought much smaller, on the average, than the short-tailed ones.

Whitcomb's most recent nonfiction cryptozoology book, the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, explains why these things are not as shocking as they first appear, even though most Americans find the idea of living pterosaurs shocking in itself. The revised edition of the book will be published around the end of November, 2010.

Live Pterosaurs in the Western United States

2010-10-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

Reports of modern living pterosaurs are not restricted to any particular region of the United States. Eyewitness accounts include locations in the West, including California and Washington State.

Southern California Pterosaur

A couple in Sun Valley noticed something in the sky. The woman said that it was a bat, but the man saw a “bright radiation like light coming from the belly of this Pterodactyl looking animal.” As the creature flew right over the couple, the man was convinced that it was no bat. He reported, “ it was bigger with large wing span and when it flapped its wings it was kind of a slow lazy flap kind of gliding through the air.” He estimated the wingspan at 15-20 feet . . .

Pterodactyloid in Southern California Desert

We were sitting in the late afternoon shade of a ridge . . . enjoying the solitude and peace and quiet of the desert when it passed over. I . . . looked up. It was soaring along the side of a plateau not far from us . . . [I said] 'that looks just like a Taradactyl!’ . . . My friend looked in the binoculars and said it looked like one but it had to be a kite or something because they were extinct. . . . I grabbed the binoculars . . . I saw was large and very much alive. . . . Its skin, I say skin because there were no feathers, . . . looked like dull leather sort of dusty . . . The back of the head was pointed.

Two Pterosaurs in Washington State

“I was 15 yrs old [when] I saw two ropens together sitting on a fence. I was riding my bike home from a friend’s house around 5 pm . . . I heard a strange noise [a kind of] screech. . . . on a wood plank fence were two of the biggest bird-like creatures I could ever imagine! . . . I noticed . . . their heads, then I thought this can’t be! Could they be dinosaurs? . . . One was hopping off the fence and appeared like it was teasing the other one. They were huge! . . . [Their] heads I would have to say it was maybe 4 ft long with the beak. . . . Their tails were . . . maybe 6 ft long . . . [From the second edition of the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America (to be published in the Fall of 2010)] (Sighting in the state of Washington)

Dinosaur birds or pterodactyls

From what we have learned from many fossils, those flying creatures used to be common. Not any more. But according to certain eyewitnesses, they are not extinct. According to certain cryptozoologists, they are alive but uncommon. [They are called by some people "dinosaur birds" or "pterodactyls."]

Live Pterosaurs in the Southern United States

2010-09-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

I have interviewed eyewitnesses of apparent live pterosaurs, and those eyewitnesses have seen what they have seen in many states, from Washington state to Florida and from California to Maine. But let's now consider a few reports from the Southern states.

Live Pterosaurs in the United States

This post gives a few details about sightings in Arkansas, Ohio, and South Carolina. The apparent pterosaur in Arkansas had a wingspan estimated at twenty-five to thirty feet--not likely any bird. The Ohio pterosaur have have been less gigantic, but it was still shocking to the lady who was driving the car that seemed to have been dive-bombed by a flying creature that did not have feathers. Her experience was similiar to the one by the eyewitness Susan Wooten, except that Wooten was driving in daylight and in South Carolina. She also saw an huge apparent pterosaur (with absolutely no feathers) that dived down in front of her car while she was driving down a highway. I found each of these eyewitnesses credible.

Pterosaurs Living in the United States

This includes another sighting in Ohio (this one in Antwerp), but this was in daylight. The Marfa Lights (a type of "ghost light") are mentioned as is a sighting in Marion County, Texas, by an eight-year-old boy. A California sighting is also mentioned, with the creature's wingspan estimated at 8-10 feet.

Pterosaur Sighting in Cuba

Of course, Cuba is not part of the United States, notwithstanding the military base at Guantanimo Bay. But that is not far from the southern U.S., and that is where an American Marine saw two pterosaurs in daylight, in 1971. He still stands by his testimony of that experience.

The head was disproportionately large with a long beak and long crest behind. The spine had clear vertebrae at the shoulder diminishing in size as it went lower. It had a kite-like wing structure where the bat-skin type of membrane was stretched over what appeared to be extensions of the hand . . .

Modern Pterosaurs in Ohio and Kentucky

2010-09-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Giant Pterosaur in Northern Kentucky

A "giant pterodactyl type bird" was seen by a man and his wife in 2001, in the middle of the day, near the Ohio River, in Kentucky. The creature was red with smooth leathery skin. It had no feathers. The man said that the wings were "extremely long." The tail, he said, was "curled up," although he did not say how much of a curl that was. Some kind of protrusion or "knob" was on the top of the head [sounds like a head crest]. The wingspan was "at least 20 feet or better." They noticed "hair about 5 or 6 inches long . . . just above its feet."

Louisville, Kentucky, Sighting (second-hand account)

From a person in Lexington, Kentucky, I received an email (in 2007) with this second-hand report of a living pterosaur: "I have never had a sighting of a pterodactyl (alas!), but I have met an individual who claimed to have had one."

" . . . for many years I was employed at an auto manufacturing plant in Georgetown (Ky). During the late 1990s I met a co-worker, David R., who commuted from Louisville (Ky). One conversation [we had] was unforgettable. This is what he told me: Twenty years before (late 1970s), when David was 18 years old, he was walking home alone one night through Louisville streets lit by a full moon. Suddenly. a huge shadow swept over him and the surrounding neighborhood. Both startled and puzzled, David looked upward into the night sky. Flying across the face of the moon was the outline of an enormous bird. Terrified, David ran the rest of the distance to his home. He described the monster bird to me: its beak, head crest, wings, and tail. I was stunned. 'That sounds like a pterodactyl,' I told him. 'Yeah ! Yeah !' he agreed excitedly. 'One of those dinosaur birds!'"

Kenton, Ohio, Pterosaur Sighting

" . . . in June of 2010, a lady reported a 'pterodactyl' that flew right in front of her car at night. In her own words, 'I was driving on Route 309, just outside of Kenton, Ohio, . . . I had a creature swoop down and glide over my hood of my car. It glided smoothly and looked like a Pterodactyl, . . . it smoothly flew into a thick area of trees . . . I could see almost the bones in its wings but I did NOT see feathers at all.'"

Pterosaurs and Cryptozoology

2010-09-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

I reply to a blog post from Paul Pursglove of the United Kingdom ("Pterosaurs and Cryptozoology"). Before delving into details on his post, however, let's consider something known by almost everyone exposed to Western science but rarely appreciated by anyone. "Pterosaur" refers not to a species but to many species; in fact there are two major types: Rhamphorhynchoid and Pterodactyloid. So how is that not appreciated? Critics of living-pterosaur investigations ("LP" cryptozoologists) have failed to consider a problem with what some of them so loudly proclaim about pterosaur "extinction." It is not proven; it is assumed.

How many species of pterosaurs may have lived without leaving any fossils that have been discovered! How many species may have been rare! How many species may have been common! How rare the paleontologist who considers the obvious implication: Fossils in museums and laboratories cannot prove the extinction of any general type of organism---not even one general type! And "pterosaur" refers to a general type of organism. How simple that is! How rarely acknowledged! All we might say with certainty is that many individual dinosaurs and pterosaurs died in ways that allowed their bodies to become fossilized, and a worldwide catastrophe seems a likely explanation for many deaths. But many deaths do not necessarily add up to an extinction of a general zoological type.

Now to the post (July 1, 2010) by Mr. Pursglove. I appreciate the openness in the last sentence: "I would be delighted if someone found a modern day pterosaur, but I am not going to join the search myself." I don't recall any other critic who came to the point so plainly about having no desire for personal involvement in searching for living pterosaurs. But he is open about being practically-closed, and part of my purpose is to encourage major expeditions and research into living pterosaurs. So let us examine his post in detail.

Pursglove says that "the reports of sightings have been coloured with the changes in scientific thinking about pterosaur anatomy over the years." If so, why does he give no details? What sightings? What years? What anatomy? What "scientific thinking?"

The two sketches above are both composites from multiple sketches shown to two eyewitnesses. The top one was chosen by Brian Hennessy, a psychologist; he saw a "prehistoric" flying creature in daylight, in 1971. The bottom one was chosen by Duane Hodgkinson, a flight instructor; he saw a "pterodactyl" flying in daylight, in 1944. (Both sightings were in New Guinea) As I reported in my scientific paper "Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific" (Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 45, #3), the differences in relative lengths of head crest in the sketches are within a reasonable margin of eyewitness error: The apparent differences in headcrest length do not necessarily mean the creatures themselves differed much in this feature. The point? At least in these two sightings (two of the most important reports; two of the most credible eyewitnesses), the accounts are markedly similar, notwithstanding the difference between the years 1944 and 1971. Mr. Pursglove, however, has given us no relevant details, in his original post, to support his apparent insinuation that eyewitnesses are improperly influenced by images (perhaps in books, magazines, or various media) that change over a period of years.

Pursglove also says that "most of the sightings occur in areas where UFO sightings are common." Again, he gives no details. Does he know that apparent pterosaurs are seen in many areas of the world? If I am not mistaken, UFO's are also seen in many areas of the world. And airplanes fly at night in many areas of the world. UFO's do not cause us to doubt the existence of night-flying airplanes. What is his point?

He says that "I cannot find a sighting reported by a biologist or a palaeontologist with detailed knowledge," but he never asked me. Perhaps no other cryptozoologist in the world has interviewed more living-pterosaur eyewitnesses from North America and Europe than I have (I have also interviewed many eyewitnesses in Papua New Guinea, but there biologists and paleontologists are uncommon except as visitors). I would have at least referred him to Professor Peter Beach (in the northwest U.S.). Just ask.

Pursglove says that the ropen "reported from the Malaysian islands and New Guinea" is reputed to be a very large long-tailed pterosaur. Yes, according to the Western usage of the word "ropen," it is indeed proclaimed by cryptozoologists Paul Nation, Garth Guessman, David Woetzel, and me (Jonathan Whitcomb) to be a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur; over a number of years, this idea has spread both within the cryptozoology community and elsewhere. Among the natives of the Southwest Pacific, the ropen is known by many names in many languages. (Pursglove mentions a few of them.)

He may have read more relevant web pages, and apparently at least one of the newer pages, than most critics, for he mentions the names "duwas" and "kor." Apparently he has not read my book Searching for Ropens (second edition), for he assumes that appearances of a long-tailed flying creature, at dusk, are more common than sightings of the flying lights (we call them "ropen lights," "indava," etc). The reverse is true in Papua New Guinea.

But what does he mean by, "sightings have not been confirmed?" That sounds vague to me. On Umboi Island, in 2004, I interviewed many eyewitnesses. Three of them (Mesa Augustin, Gideon Koro, and Wesley Koro) all saw the same giant flying creature, in daylight, at the same time. Each eyewitness confirmed that sighting. I know of another sighting on the northwest coast of Umboi; scores of natives had gathered for a funeral procession when a glowing ropen flew overhead. Many sightings have involved multiple eyewitnesses, so how are those sightings not "confirmed?" If Pursglove means that no photos or videos have been recorded during a sighting, then he has not read enough. Paul Nation videotaped two indava lights, in late 2006, on the mainland of Papua New Guinea, and that video footage was later analyzed by a missile defense physicist.

I could go on, but the point is this: We need to think both clearly and deeply, and we need to listen to those who specialize in the investigation of eyewitness sightings of apparent living pterosaurs. In addition, we need to understand that cryptozoology (living pterosaurs in particular) is far outside the field of paleontology. Let us search for living pterosaurs, not search for paleontologists who may have seen them.

Marfa Lights of Southwest Texas

2010-08-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

As of mid-2010, there seemed to be little to connect the mysterious Marfa Lights of Texas with the mysterious sightings of apparent living pterosaurs in Texas. I know of many "ghost light" legends and eyewitness accounts in various parts of the United States; many of those I attribute to the Min Min phenomenon: bioluminescent barn owls, according to the researcher Fred Silcock of Australia. But Marfa Lights are different.

Before dismissing accounts of strange flying lights in Texas, consider what has been written:

Marfa Lights of Texas

Why consider that American “ghost lights” relate to live pterosaurs? Consider the ropen light of Papua New Guinea. From them we can learn that at least some living pterosaurs are bioluminescent, in particular the apparent Rhamphorhynchoids of the Southwest Pacific. Now consider how many strange lights are reported across the United States: North Carolina (Brown Mountain Light), South Carolina (Bingham Lights), Arkansas (Dover Lights), Washington state (Yakima Lights)–those are only a sample. Strange lights have appeared across the United States for decades or centuries; apparent pterosaurs have also appeared across the United States for decades or centuries.

UFO Reports Suggesting Non-Alien Intelligence

James Bunnell, author of . . . Hunting Marfa Lights, has long assumed that they are caused by some kind of energy that may relate to the geology of the area. The problem with that approach is the apparent intelligent behavior of the lights.

. . . Marfa Lights might appear for one night or two nights in a row, then leave, not to came back for several weeks or so; it is the coming back that is critical: Aliens that fly over bushes near Marfa, Texas, and returning every few weeks, would be anything but intelligent; there is nothing much there but bushes.

American Ghost Lights

With American ghost lights, intriguing possibilities arise. What about the Hornet Light of Missouri or the Gurdon Light of Arkansas or the Chapel Hill Light of Tennessee? Are they from pterosaurs or from barn owls? The behavior of those lights gives us a clue: The three lights appear to behave like hunting barn owls. Don’t bother hunting for strange lights in those three areas if your interest is only in modern pterosaurs or in headless ghosts who search for their missing heads.

But with the Marfa Lights of Southern Texas, well, that is another story, and apparently a nonfiction one. Those lights behave like intelligent glowing flying creatures that are hunting bats. Could not barn owls learn to catch bats? Perhaps they might, but it would be a remarkable adaptation. The big problem with a barn owl interpretation of the Marfa Lights, however, is in the behavior of those lights. Their complex dance routine flies in the face of barn owl intelligence . . .

Texas Pterosaur in 1995

2010-07-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

Strange as the story may seem, an eight-year-old child's telling of an encounter with a living pterosaur does not prove the power of a young imagination; of course the strangeness does suggest to an adult that the experience was only imagined, but nobody forces any adult to disbelieve any story of a child. Several things have led me to believe that Aaron Tullock, as a child, saw a living pterosaur, regardless of American indoctrinations into universal extinctions, and I submit this account as credible.

As an adult, Mr. Tullock got in touch with me, sending me his drawings and submitting to my interview questions. I was satisfied with his responses. Here are excerpts from the blog Live Pterodactyl (Texas pterosaur sighting):

This thing flew over my head, about eight feet off the ground, and stopped and hovered in mid air. I was facing west, so the creature flew from east going west which means it came from our land across the road, which is a nice mix of oak and pine forest and thick swamp. . . . It stopped in mid air and hovered there by flapping its featherless, bat-like wings, which were about four feet in span, maybe five. It had a tail about three feet long, with the . . . flange on the end . . . no head crest and no feathers at all, although there was kind of a longish bump on the back of the head. . . .

Dracula-Like Pterosaur in Texas

2010-07-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I received an email from a young lady who was only a child when she was terrified at the sight of a giant flying creature behind her house. Here is part of her account:

Brownsville, Texas about 1995, I figure. Well, when I was about 11-12 yrs old I went outside around late morning to see why our dog hadn't touched her dog food . . . I found her cowering around the side of our house as low as she could get . . . I heard [a] weird noise that made me turn my head. In the open backyard next door was what looked like a 9 or 10 ft tall man (not sure but he was taller than the roof of the house next door) draped in a long black coat or cape, looking away from me...I thought of dracula and then the man turned and I realized that this man didn't have a face like a man at all!

I froze in fear trying to figure out what I was staring at. Then slowly I watched what looked like disgusting black leathery . . . bat-like wings unwrap from around [it] . . . I was so scared . . . [it] stared right at me with its large black eyes and walked closer to me (it had been about 40 ft away maybe) slowly . . . the shape of its head . . . somehow looked like a pterodactyl. I thought that was crazy and when it turned its head back to me I began walking slowly back to my house backwards and then the thing appeared to just lift off the ground and it swooped, only it looked like it was floating, gliding . . .

I ran into my house and slammed the sliding glass door behind me . . . Well, my parents never believed me. They thought I had made it up! My dad showed me pictures of blue herons and how big they could get, but they looked nothing like what I had seen!

But it was a pterodactyl. It had a stump looking thing on the top of its head It's wing span was about the length of the side of the neighbors house so, maybe 30 ft? All I know is that it was the scariest thing I had ever seen . . .

Spain 1, Netherlands 1; Not Soccer, Not Football; Pterosaur Sightings

2010-07-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

Forget about the World Cup, for the moment: Spain defeating Netherlands 1-0 in the international soccer finals. These two countries tied 1-1 in something completely different: modern sightings of apparent pterosaurs.

Just a few kilometers northwest of Amsterdam, Netherlands (Holland), K.H. saw, between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., one hot summer day, a strange creature, dark elephant grey, with no feathers, flying only 30-40 meters away from him. The "wings looks more that from a bat."

In the summer of 2007, a British man attended a music concert in Spain, perhaps near "los desert del palmas." On one of the nights, while he and his friends were outside, near their tents, he saw something flying overhead. He assumed, at first, it to be an owl, for he knew that birds do not usually fly at night. As he looked more carefully, he "realised it was definitely no owl I'd ever seen before." It was the color of suede or sand and the texture was similar to suede (no feathers). It had a long tail and was "100% not a bird."

I have interviewed only a few European eyewitnesses, over the years. It may be that these apparent pterosaurs (mostly, apparent Rhamphorhynchoids) are less rare in North Ameria than in Europe. Nevertheless, these sightings (in the Netherlands and in Spain) support the case for worldwide distribution of this kind of mostly-nocturnal flying creature.

For information on sightings in the United States, see this page on the cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America.

Modern Coelacanth and Modern Pterosaurs

2010-06-23T05:12:00.000-07:00

The following is taken from the web page "The Living Coelacanth."

To be enlightened by the lowly Coelacanth, look not at the anatomy of fishes but at the mentality of humans. . . . Biologists of the 19th Century had no radiometric methods of dating fossils. (In truth, fossils are not dated, even today, by potassium-argon or similar methods. . . .) Did they allow the outward appearances (bony armor and potential leg-evolution) to influence their decision to categorize the Coelacanth fish as an ancient fish? Could the apparent non-existence of living Coelacanths have influenced their judgment? Of course.

The point is that the idea that the fossils of Coelacanths represent fish that lived many millions of years ago is traditional. The belief that this fish is ancient comes through intense indoctrination over many human generations. Now, what is ancient about the Coelacanth? . . . why not consider it a modern fish? It lives now.

. . . For the General Theory of Evolution to be perceived as anything other than a fairy tale, there must be fossils of creatures that are significantly different from living creatures. Every discovery of an organism previously classified, from fossils, as “ancient” eliminates another example of something that fits the standard evolutionary model.

How does a modern Coelacanth relate to a modern pterosaur? Both indicate that what was once thought to be ancient is, in fact, modern. It demonstrates the value of the concept that no organism that ever existed on this earth has existed only in the distant past: There never were any "ancient" creatures on this planet.

Modern Pterosaurs in Africa

2010-06-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

Much has been written about the pterosaur-like kongamato of central Africa. But some obscure reports deserve attention: similar flying creatures in other areas of Africa. Consider a few of these reports, in addition to one perspective on why the kongamato has not yet been documented by bird watchers.

"Pterodactyl" in Sudan, Africa

Walking from one mud-brick hut to another, early one night in 1988, the boy noticed something on the roof of a nearby hut. Lit up by the patio light, perched on the edge of the roof, the creature appeared to be four-to-five feet tall, olive brown, and leathery (no feathers). A “long bone looking thing” stuck out the back of its head, and its long tail [like] that of a lion.

"Flying Snakes" and Pterosaurs in Namibia

In 1942, a flying snake like animal swooped down from a cave in the vicinity of a farm near Kirris West sixty miles east of Keetmanshoop, in south-west Namibia.The flying snake, or whatever it was, frightened Michael Esterhuise, a farm hand, severely and left a trace on the ground and a burning smell. . . .

Up to now I had thought the dragon-like flying snake of Namibia was a distinct cryptid from the ropen of Papua New Guinea, but the Namibian animal is reported to have a light on its head, just as the ropen has a light, but on the tail. See p.124 Searching for Ropens 2nd ed. Jonathan Whitcomb.

Bird watching sans pterosaurs

The Wikipedia post for “kongamato” includes “the area concerned is advertised as a prime birdwatching site,” bringing up the question of why birdwatchers do not report living pterosaurs in Africa. Wikipedia gives no answer, implying that the possibility of a live pterosaur in Africa is therefore doubtful. From Wikipedia’s “birdwatching” page, we learn that many birds “are more readily detected and identified by ear.” That makes sense if many birds are often hidden by vegetation, and they are. The photos on that page make even more sense, for birdwatchers are watching in daylight, when they can see. The point? Many reports of living long-tailed pterosaurs suggest that the creatures fly at night.

Nonfiction Cryptozoology Book Live Pterosaurs in America

Did you know that living pterosaurs have been reported in the United States of America, for years? Incredible! Until recently, when cryptozoologists have interviewed more carefully, eyewitnesses had been afraid to come forward, for the most part; now those who choose to can remain anonymous and tell of their encounters, amazing encounters with pterodactyls. Read the many eyewitness sighting reports; purchase Live Pterosaurs in America, the cryptozoology book, on Amazon.com.

In May and June of 2010, this book has been by far the best-selling nonfiction book (Amazon.com) about living pterosaurs. In pure cryptozoology genre (unlike some books about these modern living pterosaurs and dinosaurs), it is packed with exciting observations by shocked eyewitnesses. Find out for yourself why many Americans are awakening to the knowledge that these strange creatures are still flying; they still live right here in the United States.

Long-tailed pterosaurs in Cuba

2010-05-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

Eskin Kuhn long ago reported his 1971 sighting at the U.S military base in Cuba. I'm grateful for the telephone interview I had with him early in 2010, for it confirmed the credibility of his testimony. Rather than repeat all the details of his sighting, look at what has already been recorded online.

Pterodactyl in Cuba
A brief overview of the sighting of two pterosaurs

[Two] Pterosaurs…flying together at … perhaps 100 feet [above the ground], very close in range . . . so that I had a perfectly clear view of them . . . the texture of the wings appeared to be very similar to that of bats . . . had a long tail trailing behind with a tuft of hair at the end . . . The head was disproportionately large, with a long crest at the back, long bill, long neck . . . wingspan [was] roughly 10 feet . . .

1971 Sighting by Kuhn
The credibility of Eskin Kuhn's report

The two obvious pterosaurs observed by Eskin Kuhn during his military duty at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1971, were sketched by him soon after the sighting. I have encountered no contradiction in anything that he has said during the past four decades, nothing to discredit his account. I did interview him by phone just a few weeks ago . . . He was highly credible in his manner of speaking and his answers to my unexpected questions. This mature man has not been playing a hoax for four decades . . .

Eyewitness Accounts -- Do Dinosaur Still Exist?
"Out of Place Artifacts" page with the sighting by Eskin Kuhn (a U.S. Marine who had been stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba)

Upon arrival there I learned of voluntary duty available in Cuba, and being much fonder of duty in the field rather than garrison duty, I went. I have never regretted the decision. . . . It was a beautiful, clear Summer day, hot . . . I was looking in the direction of the ocean when I saw an incredible sight. It mesmerized me! . . . I saw two Pterosaurs (or Pterodactyls...what's in a name?) flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet, very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them.

Off the Beaten Track, Looking for Modern Pterosaurs

2010-05-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

Let's look at three less-well-known web sites.

Live Pterodactyl (by Nathaniel Coleman, no close relation to Loren Coleman, but still a cryptozoologist)

What nocturnal creature flies without feathers, according to myth transforms itself into a human form, and is feared by many humans who hand down the stories; also, part of the myth is that it will sometimes put the bite on humans. No, it's not the European Dracula vampire; I forgot to mention that it has a long tail, a head crest, and a body form that has been identified with the silhouette of a Sordes Pilosus Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur . . .

Giant Bat or Modern Living Pterosaur

Many species of Flying Fox fruit bat live in the countries that surround Papua New Guinea: Australia and Indonesia, and those further west: Malaysia and India. But none of the big bats have the amazing pterosaur-like characteristics of the ropen: long head crest and Rhamphorhynchoid-like long tail. In addition, at least one species of ropen has a mouth "like a crocodile" mouth.

Pterosaurs Alive

I suddenly saw, parallel with the water, quite a distance away, a flying object that was strange. Why? Because we knew it was quite far away, but it was as big as a regular bird would appear up close." (The thing flew over the men.) The account in the book continues, "I know what it was. It wasn't a heron; it wasn't a vulture; it wasn't an albatross." The eyewitness was shocked to see that the creature had both a head crest (common in Pterodactyloids) and a long tail with a "diamond tip" (common in Rhamphorhynchoids).

Flying Creature in San Fernando Valley

A report of a large flying creature in Sherman Oaks, California, suggests similarities to the ropen of Papua New Guinea. . . . “It was a very large, winged creature that was gliding maybe 100 yards above us . . . a glow or reflection on the wings . . . The man estimated the wingspan: ten to fifteen feet; the girlfriend estimated twenty feet."

News Reports About Flying Wrights and Flying Pterosaurs

2010-05-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my book, Live Pterosars in America, lie-insinuations can unjustly cast doubt on honest innovators and researchers. Consider a quotation from Chapter Two:

The greatest danger facing innovators, rebels, and those who search for living pterosaurs—that’s a newspaper. National newspapers ignored the success of the Wright Brothers (their December, 1903, successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina). News reporters and editors, many of them, assumed that the controlled powered-flight of two bicycle mechanics was a lie, that it never happened. Even as late as 1908, many newspaper professionals thought the Wright Brothers “better liars than flyers.” After all, a well-funded government-sponsored flying machine had crashed only a few days before the Wright Brothers were said to have first flown. But lack of news reporting and abundance of lie-insinuations can relate to both flying machines and flying pterosaurs.

What is the point? Generations of indoctrination, in Western societies, regarding universal pterosaur extinction---that does not make eyewitnesses unreliable or researchers liars. The ancient idea of an earth-centered universe was taught, for many generations, until Galileo's observations, and the idea of pterosaur extinction was taught, for a few generations, until now. The real news, in the twenty-first century, is not in some new discovery in a new fossil; it is in the discovery that the many eyewitnesses (from different countries and different cultures and different beliefs) cannot all be wrong about living creatures described like obvious pterosaurs.

More about the cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America (nonfiction)

Evelyn Cheesman, Biologist and Eyewitness

2010-04-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Modern living pterosaurs were the last organisms that she would have dreamed could be living deep in the mainland of New Guinea in the 1930's; her specialty was small insects, not giant cryptids. But those strange lights just above the forest canopy---they appeared to defy any common explanation. They could not be made by natives, for how could many natives have coordinated the flashes or lined themselves up horizontally (for a long distance on that mountain ridge) to turn on and off their flashlights in that pattern, even if there were some purpose for all that trouble?

Lucy Evelyn Cheesman (1881 – 1969), British biologist and explorer, never did arrive at any satisfactory explanation; the natives would not explain the lights to her. She would have been shocked at the research done in more recent years, for those lights are seen in other areas of Papua New Guinea and they are now ascribed to the bioluminescent glow of giant living pterosaurs.

Chesapeake Bay Sighting, 1990

2010-04-19T05:02:00.000-07:00

Quotations are from the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America (published in 2009, available on Amazon).

Near the Virginia-Maryland border, a young man (anonymous, but referred to as "DP") was camping with friends, late in the summer of 1990. In his own words:

"We were tubing [inner-tube] in the river, some time in the morning or early afternoon. . . . I suddenly saw, parallel with the water, quite a distance away, a flying object . . . it was quite far away, but it was as big as a regular bird would appear up close. It was gliding, with an occasional slow, smooth flap. . . . It flew directly over us, about twenty yards above us, and . . . it perched on a tree about fifty yards past us. A minute later, it flew away along the same river path, and I’ve never seen anything like it since."

I interviewed the man in 2007, by emails. He told me much:

"I know what it was. It wasn’t a heron; it wasn’t a vulture; it wasn’t an albatross. I had spent countless hours as a child studying dinosaurs and playing with dinosaur models. I know what I saw."

"This . . . had a pterodactyl protruded head and a rhamphorhynchoid diamond-tipped tail. . . . It’s hard to be exact about the size. . . . wing-tip to wing-tip, about 12+ feet? I don’t even know if I’m close. . . . It was brown and leathery."

This description seems to resemble other apparent pterosaur sightings: a combination of head crest and long tail.

Read more about the Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur

Mekong River Lights and Objectiveness

2010-04-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a critic of living-pterosaur investigators will mock us by saying something like, "If it’s big and it looks like a bat and/or a bird, it’s a pterosaur." But what about the Mekong River Lights? These strange glowing orbs are also known as the Naga Fireballs. The October celebrations (on the river separating Laos from Thailand), that honor the lights, attract tourists in the hundreds of thousands. I suggest the lights are from large bioluminescent insects, perhaps unclassified by modern science (or at least unrecognized in its bioluminescent capability).

How do these mysterious glowing orbs relate to investigations of living pterosaurs? It's indirect. For years, my associates and I have investigated reports of large nocturnal flying creatures in the Southwest Pacific; we believe that they are bioluminescent living pterosaurs. We have explored in Papua New Guinea, searching for the ropen and interviewing native eyewitnesses. How anxiously we have followed leads that might bring us closer to the official discovery of living pterosaurs! Often we have been ridiculed for being biased, so biased that our investigations are worthless, according to those who have never even stepped outside their front doors, to look for anything similar. Yet when I investigated some reports of the Mekong River Lights, I found evidence for bioluminescent organisms that are much more likely to be large insects than baby ropens.

Objectiveness need not exist only in those who ridicule me and my associates. When a YouTube video of an obvious Frigate Bird (though portrayed as a ropen) received tens of thousands of views, I tried to make it known that it was only a Frigate Bird. When I learned that many ghost lights in North America are probably barn owls (according to the research of Fred Silcock), I tried to make that known. I now believe that a large-insect interpretation is better than a baby-ropen interpretation of those strange glowing orbs that fly just to the west of the Southwest Pacific, between Laos and Thailand. The point? I want the truth, in each strange phenomenon, not just interpretations that seem to bolster my beliefs about the ropen. Maybe, just maybe, my associates and I have conducted reasonably unbiased investigations of this mysterious animal.

But why might the Naga Lights be insects? Hoaxes and non-living explanations fall flat (a long story), so what living things emerge together from a river before flying away? Mayflies do. What small living things glow as they fly (much smaller than barn owls and ropens)? Fireflies do. Both are insects: Bingo.

Read Live Pterosaurs in America, written in the true genre of a cryptozoology book.

Monsterquest and Flying Monsters

2010-04-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

My thoughts about the pterosaur-or-bat Monsterquest episode I put into the first edition of my book Live Pterosaurs in America, taking up six pages of the appendix. (This episode of Monsterquest was broadcast on June 3, 2009. Much of the content of this television pseudo-mini-documentary came from footage shot during their early-2009 expedition in Papua New Guinea.) Concerning these "flying monsters," here is one paragraph from the book:

"Some viewers of this episode may have become convinced that evidence for living pterosaurs is scarce. Why? The eyewitness testimonies, scarcely covered, were overshadowed by a fossil-expert’s declaration about ancient extinctions and his personal disbelief in extant pterosaurs. Truth would have been better served with more coverage of the eyewitness evidence, rather than the overemphasized personal doubts of that man."

It's not that production values were to blame; it was a fine, entertaining show. But the producers (or editor) appeared to force a bat-interpretation into the conclusion. Who would have guessed, after watching this "Demon Flyer" episode, that one of the eyewitnesses mentioned (Duane Hodgkinson) described the tail of the "pterodactyl" as "at least" ten to fifteen feet long? Who would have guessed that at least nine expeditions, over fifteen years, preceded the Monsterquest expedition? Who would have guessed that a professional paleontologist would be unqualified to make both a pre-judgement and post-judgement of the cryptozoological investigations? Who would have guessed that most living-pterosaur investigations have been done by creationists?

I am happy that this episode was produced and aired for many Americans to see. I just hope that they can see much more of the truth about the serious investigations, for the producers of Monsterquest were not serious about conducting any scientific research. They successfully produced an entertaining show.

Live Pterosaurs in America (nonfiction by Jonathan Whitcomb) is in the pure genre of a cryptozoology book.

Pterosaur eyewitness Gideon Koro, of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, described the ropen.

New Enlightenment on the Marfa Lights

2010-03-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Regarding the post "Marfa Lights: new insights," (strange ghost lights in southwest Texas) nobody seems to be certain what causes the flying lights. A new idea is that they resemble ropen lights (of Papua New Guinea) enough to suggest the possibility that they may be the bioluminescence of similar pterosaur-like creatures. They certainly behave like nocturnal predators, returning to the same area near Marfa, Texas, every few weeks or so. But those who firmly believe that extant modern pterosaurs fly through the night skies of North America---even they are not sure that Marfa Lights are bioluminescent pterosaurs.

It's not that dancing Marfa Lights behave like the ropen light of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, for that ropen flies alone and glows for close to five-to-six seconds at a time, consistently. (Dancing Marfa Lights may last as long as hours.) But other flying lights in Papua New Guinea are ascribed to pterosaur-like animals like the ropen, and those flying lights sometimes behave somewhat like Marfa Lights: They fly in groups.

Believers in modern bioluminescent pterosaurs are not the only ones capable of observing strange lights, and one does not need to be labeled "creationist" to believe that something strange is creating strange flying lights. Consider the mid-20th Century entomologist (biologist who specializes in insects) Evelyn Cheesman:

In her book The Two Roads of Papua, (published in 1935) Cheesman mentions the strange flying lights that she felt had no reasonable human-origin explanation. She was puzzled by them but saw no easy way to get to the ridge where the lights consistently appeared. Seven decades later, Paul Nation (from Texas but not close to Marfa) videotaped two indava lights and the footage was analyzed by a missile defense physicist: The lights were not from camp fires, nor from car headlights, nor from any airplane, nor any meteor, nor any flashlight. The location of those lights was just south of where strange lights puzzled the British entomologist decades earlier.