For Americans (and perhaps citizens of other developed countries) who know about recent sighting reports of apparent living pterosaurs, the best known area for sightings may be in Papua New Guinea. In reality, reports come from around the world, including Europe, Africa, Australia, South America, and North America. For now, let’s consider some online sources of information on reports from the southwest Pacific, including Papua New Guinea and Australia.
Philippines Sighting Around 1994
Late in 2008, I received a report from a man in his 20’s who saw what he called a “pterodactyl,” in fact two flying together, when he was a boy in the city of Pagbilao, Quezon Province (not to be confused with Quezon City).
. . . I asked the young man some questions:
Q: Did the two creatures have tails?
A: YES! they have long tails about 3 to 4 meters long . . .it is not a bird: They don’t have any feathers.Q: Did you have a good view of them?
A: Yes! I was not the only one who saw it . . .Q: What time of day was it?
A: It was around 2:00-3:00 pm in the afternoon . . .
[As a boy] I was staying in Alexandra Road area, and was out on an adventure hunt one hot afternoon in a forested area when I came across a pair of them flying together [as they circled the palm trees] . . . at that time I thought nothing more of them . . . at such a young age, at that time, I never knew they were thought to be extinct.
“They were very much bigger than flying foxes and they did not glide like these smaller creatures. I have seen flying foxes many times at my location before.”
Pterosaur “Kor” Fighting a War
I received an email from R.K. (anonymous), of the Manus Island area of Papua New Guinea. . . . The nocturnal flying creatures that he described to me–I believe they are ropens–were common and were dangerous to local fishermen previous to the early 1940′s, when their numbers declined. In these northern islands, the creature is called “kor.”
Here is part of R.K.’s account of the Japanese retaliation against the creatures that had attacked them . . .
Dragons or Pterosaurs in Australia
“My husband and I both sighted a huge creature flying over a densely populated area, while we were out walking one night in Perth, Western Australia on the coastline around 10:30 pm . . . it had a ruddy reddish brown leathery skin . . . it had a long tail and a wingspan that we estimated at between 30-50 feet across. . . .”
[I] drove . . . out to Western Australia . . . [to] see the outback. . . . stopped . . . [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 . . . no sound. [As] it was getting closer . . . had a wingspan [of about] 15 or 20 feet . . . leathery . . . no feathers at all.”