This post, number 101 on Live Pterosaur, should list the best of the first one hundred posts, and it will; but first we go to the Santa Clarita Valley, California, in particular in the 1880’s. From a 2007 article in the Signal newspaper (of Santa Clarita Valley):
The creature, according to Lyon, was “as big as a horse, had wings like an oversize bat, big bulgy eyes the size of mushmelons that glowed like Southern Pacific headlights, and a long, woolly tail.”
Well, most Californians, at least in the twenty-first century, would doubt that all those description details would be accurate. But what if they were exaggerations or modifications of an actual flying creature in California, in the 1880’s? What if some of those descriptions had some basis in fact? Try to think of a scientifically-classified bird or bat, in California, that could have been anything like what was seen; regardless of the degree of exaggeration, it seems more like something unclassified, pterosaur or not.
Now to some of the best posts on Live Pterosaur, from September of 2008, to August of 2011.
Why should a modern living pterosaur be very much like most of the pterosaurs that left fossils that paleontologists have already discovered? This post briefly illustrates this point.
At least one species of Rhamphorhynchoid (long-tailed pterosaur) known from fossils, the Scaphognathus crassirostris, did have a head crest. The presence of a head crest on a ropen (or modern long-tailed pterosaur) is hardly a sign of a hoax; how many potential hoaxers would know about that fossil? . . .
Ridicule from skeptics comes from our adopting the obvious interpretation of those eyewitness descriptions: a modern living pterosaur. “Unlike pterosaur fossils” is not just inaccurate: It is irrelevant.
Kongamato and Bird Watching in Africa
[Regarding sightings of possible pterosaurs in one area of Africa] No “pterosaur” category can be found on any birdwatcher’s report form, and no lack of pterosaur sightings by organized birdwatchers counts against the many reported sightings of living pterosaurs. This Wikipedia implication could just as well be used as if evidence against the existence of bats (or against UFO’s or against Fourth-of-July fireworks displays).
I did interview him by phone just a few weeks ago, and I found his response to my surprise phone call truly enlightening: 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, for everything points to an honest reporting of a real experience.
Prosecution: To get to the point, some time ago you scared some people in Gurdon.
GL: Sorry, sir. I meant no harm.
Prosecution: Did you know that they thought they’d seen a ghost?
GL: Heck, I aint no ghost. I didn’t even see ‘em ’til they started a-hollerin’.
Prosecution: But just one night earlier, in that same neighborhood, near the railroad tracks, you were involved in a killing weren’t you?
Defense Attorney: Objection: irrevelant.
Judge: Sustained.
When Woetzel had his sighting one night, he described the strange flying light that he had observed. He did not imagine any shape to the light, no form that would suggest a modern pterosaur. He only reported what he had seen.
When Jacob Kepas climbed up a mountain ridge with a local guide, their first viewing location was insufficient for Kepas to be sure that what he was observing was a large winged-creature. Only after the guide had climbed up to a higher viewing location was it ascertained to be what they had suspected.
. . . when Paul Nation videotaped the two strange lights on the ridge, he did not say that he had observed the shapes of two pterosaurs. He described the lights that he had seen; he admitted that no shape was observed.
Fossils are Evidence of Life, not Extinction
Darren Naish . . . believes that there are “no indications from the fossil record that pterosaurs survived beyond the end of the Cretaceous . . .” He also proclaims that “the fossil record convincingly demonstrates that pterosaurs became extinct . . .” What he fails to include in his long post, however, is an explanation for how any fossils can demonstrate the extinction of even one species, let alone all species of a general type.
Both paleontologists concentrate on old questionable accounts, avoiding the critical eyewitness sightings that most heavily support the concept of modern extant pterosaurs.
I’ve lost count of how many times I have responded to that video footage, explaining that it does not show any ropen but only a common ocean-going bird.
I am concerned that some of the 176,000 viewers may have been mislead in some way, for that Frigate Bird looks nothing like the descriptions that I have received from eyewitnesses of the ropen, regardless of what beach is in that video. Ropens are nocturnal creatures, for the most part, appearing dark and featherless, not with a white throat-chest common for some Frigate Birds
Smithsonian Attacks Ropen “Myth”
I came across a Smithsonian blog post by Brian Switek. I do not question the honesty of Mr. Switek; in fact I agree with his point that an amateur video of a Frigate bird is not evidence for a living pterosaur, namely the cryptid called “ropen.” Nevertheless, a number of problems appear and they are serious.
Switek gives no evidence against any of this, apparently only mentioning the religious nature of Woetzel’s beliefs, as if that were enough to dismiss his ideas about living pterosaurs. I suspect Switek has never thought about Isaac Newton’s relationship to this, for Newton had religious beliefs similar to those of Woetzel.
When someone publishes a web site with a URL that includes the words “stupid” and “lies,” and the point of the site is to ridicule those who promote the idea of living dinosaurs or living pterosaurs, “bulverism” probably fits . . .
Is it reasonable that everyone who disagrees with us, on any subject, must have unworthy motivations? Why should the subject of living pterosaurs be different, with only believers having an “agenda?”
Evolution, Religion, and the Extinction of Pterosaurs
My associates and I are not members of the same church; I even doubt if two of us are members of the same religious organization, although we are Christians. But our critics seem to have missed a critical point about the possibility of religious bias: The eyewitnesses make the case for modern living pterosaurs, and they are of various faiths and non-faiths, various opinions about evolution, various cultural backgrounds, various countries, and various native languages.
Over several years, I have noticed a common weakness in criticisms of our investigations. Those eyewitness reports that we have upheld as critical and most credible to our work—those have mostly been ignored by most critics. Why do those critics write paragraph after paragraph about old sighting reports that neither we . . . nor our critics consider very credible? . . . Why not compare at least two reports that we have presented as critical? The only reasonable explanation for that neglect seems to me to be that critics want only to dismiss, as quickly as possible, any thought about modern living pterosaurs; they are not searching for the truth about that possibility.