From the nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America, we read of a startling sighting in a remote California desert:

We were sitting in the late afternoon shade of a ridge, on lawn chairs, enjoying the solitude and peace and quiet of the desert when it passed over. I caught the sight of it with the corner of my eye and looked up. It was soaring along the side of a plateau not far from us . . . I remember saying ‘. . . 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 . . . What I saw was large and very much alive. Its hue was close to the hue of the desert sand but more the color of rust. Its skin, I say skin because there were no feathers, . . . looked like dull leather sort of dusty looking. . . . The back of the head was pointed.

[From page 16 of the first edition of the book] I interviewed this eyewitness and questioned her about details. She answered thoroughly, demonstrating her credibility. I have communicated with her since that 2007 interview and she maintains the truthfulness of her account; I have no reason to doubt her experience. This sighting seems to have been of a Pterodactyloid pterosaur, for it had no tail: only “a nub where a tail would be.”

Tags: Book, California, desert, Pterodactyloid