Recent Pterosaur Footprints?

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I recently had two long conversations with a man who encountered what he believes may have been recent footprints of one or two pterosaurs in Mexico. I have no expertise in pterosaur footprints, and saw at most only a limited resemblance between his sketches and the few images available online; nevertheless, the overall circumstances suggest that this deserves a closer look.

Why Footprints of a Flying Creature?

To begin, the footprints in this remote area of Mexico were not all clear impressions; in fact, most of them were more scuff marks. So why believe that they were from one or more flying creatures? They were separated by 15-20 yards where there was no evidence of any creature on the ground. This might be dismissed if the marks were few in number, but the man walked for a long distance, following the intermittent footprints. The distance between the areas was too great for a non-flying animal to jump, besides which there does not appear to be any reason for any jumping animal (without wings) to have made such a tremendous effort to leap such distances so many times.

Why a Large Flying Creature?

The man firmly believes it was a large flying creature. Why? The impressions in the soil were one inch deep, and he could not make that deep of an impression, even after jumping on the soil nearby; it must have been a heavy animal. One of the kinds of footprints was about 18 inches by about 20 inches (the man compared the size with his foot); that is a large foot. During the excursion in which he recorded the following photos, there had been much rain just before the impressions were discovered.

Why a Pterosaur?

A number of eyewitnesses have reported strange flying creatures in this general area, with some descriptions correlating with a pterosaur. In addition, it is not a great distance (for a flying creature) from southwest Texas, where some Americans have reported apparent living pterosaurs.

Photographs and Sketches of the Footprints

The following photos and sketch are by the man who examined the footprints. He is not an expert in interpreting such things, but has agreed to have these images published in case this evidence turns out to be important. In the photos, the lighter areas of soil are what the man believes are the foot-impression areas. I told him that the photos appeared to have been taken close to mid-day, when the shading is the worst possible for showing depth. He will try to obtain better photos.

The location is secret, but is known to be not too far from the border with Texas. The following shows the larger kind of impression (there are two general kinds, although they resemble each other somewhat).

Footprint image 219sketch of the larger footprint

Secret location in Mexico

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