Jonathan Whitcomb | Live Pterosaur

November 9, 2022December 15, 2022

Comparing Worldwide Sightings of Living Pterosaurs: Long Tails

By Jonathan Whitcomb

How common are reports of long tails on apparent modern pterosaurs! We now begin with a report from Sudan, Africa, as I wrote in the fourth edition of my book Searching for Ropens and Finding God (page 152):

Flying Creature in Africa

I received another email, one directly from an eyewitness himself:

“In Sudan the classic house is one level made of mud bricks and walls, 3-5 rooms, 1-2 bathrooms and a kitchen, each room being a separate unit, but connected by a roofless hallway that leads to the patios.

“One evening in July of 1988, we had some guest over the house. . . . The guest were in the living room which was at one end of the house . . . I took the tray [of cookies and tea] walked through the open hallway and proceeded to the living room.

“When I got to the patio, I noticed something on the roof of my uncle’s room. . . . I was standing by the bathroom, about 10 feet away from it. . . . I seen it very clearly . . .

“It was very large, about 4 or 5 feet in height. It was an olive brown color, no feathers. It was leathery looking.. . . It had really large black claws and its tail looked like a lion’s tail . . . very long and had a bushy or hairy tip.

Ropen Sightings in Papua New Guinea

During my expedition on Umboi Island, in the southwest Pacific in 2004, I was fortunate to interview three young men deep in the interior of that island. They were in a group of seven native boys, about ten years earlier, who had a shocking encounter with a gigantic ropen. Soon after arriving at the crater lake Pung, in the middle of the day, the creature flew over the surface of that lake.

While questioning Gideon Koro, I asked how long the tail was: He said, “seven meetuh” (7 meters or 23 feet). His brother Wesley later told me that the ropen they had encountered was “too big”.

Non-native eyewitnesses in Papua New Guinea have also described a long tail on an apparent “pterodactyl” or “prehistoric” flying creature. Duane Hodgkinson, in 1944, saw one with a tail he estimated to have been “at least ten or fifteen feet” long. Brian Hennessy’s creature (1971) had a tail that he described as “longish narrow”.

Other eyewitnesses, in many areas of the world, often describe apparent pterosaurs as having long tails. In addition, many of those persons also saw some kind of appendage at the end of the tail.

Conclusion

It seems that at least one species of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur lives in many areas of the planet. These flying creatures are generally nocturnal and rare in any particular area at any particular time.

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Ropen pterodactyl

Within a few weeks after my return to the United States, two other Americans searched that same island for the ropen. They were able to explore areas in the north, where I had not been, and interview natives that I had not been able to contact.

Photo of a living pterosaur

In 2007, a businessman encountered a gigantic pterosaur as it flew in front of his car in Irvine, California, near the university, according to what he reported to me. The tail alone was about 15 feet long . . .

Flying creature with a long tail

Eyewitnesses from around the world testify of the featherless flying creatures that they have observed, unlike any bat and obviously not any bird.

Rhamphorhynchoid sighting in Minnesota

Three of us seen it. It was just turning light and it was gliding over a two lane road in front of the truck headed for a swampy area in Minnesota. . . . The teeth were all sharp, yes that’s how close we were. It had a spade tail as long as its body and a crest on its head with wings like a bat. Its color was reddish brown.

Living pterosaur in the United States

How could they now be living in California, Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Ohio, New York, and many other states? Did not pterosaurs become extinct millions of years ago? Cryptozoology is the study of reports of creatures (or apparent creatures) whose descriptions suggest something other than animals classified by standard biology as extant.

Cognitive bias and living pterosaurs

Jonathan Whitcomb, executive director of Animal Discovery in Utah, suggests why a few professional paleontologists, along with some amateurs, have loudly objected to conclusions from investigators of eyewitness accounts of apparent non-extinct pterosaurs: “Most likely they’re afraid that public respect for traditional paleontology may be damaged.”

Pterodactyl with a long tail

Eyewitnesses from around the world testify of the featherless flying creatures that they have observed, unlike any bat and obviously not any bird.

Living pterosaur sightings

In 2007, I was on Bragg Street and I heard the trees ruffle and that same thing flew from one side of the street to the other. It was beside the bike trail before you get to Central Women’s Prison. I knew I wasn’t crazy: This time a guy at the other end looking towards me saw it [at] the same time. We just stared and both said, “Did you see that?”

Ropen as a living pterosaur

This page contains hundreds of references to sightings of apparent living pterosaurs, accounts from around the world.

A non-extinct pterodactyl

Featherless flying reptiles appear to live across the globe, shocking and sometimes frightening eyewitnesses of these apparent modern pterosaurs. The animals are also called “pterodactyls” or even “flying dinosaurs” or “dinosaur birds”.

If it has a long tail, it is called “ropen”, but in some areas of Africa this reptile-creature is known as “kongamato”.

Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur

It is a strange description, to be sure, that combination of a head crest and a Rhamphorhynchoid-like tail that has a structure at tail-end. It appears almost as strange as a description of a platypus, to someone who knows about mammals and ducks but who has been ignorant of that strange animal that now lives in Australia.

Contact Jonathan Whitcomb

Communicate with the cryptozoologist

October 26, 2022December 15, 2022

Cognitive Biases and Modern Pterosaurs

people who promote healing from addiction

By Jonathan Whitcomb

With all the potential of the human mind, we’re still hampered by many cognitive biases. Hardly any adult is free from this kind of weakness in thinking. In fact, the more fervently we would insist we’re immune the more likely we are to fall into at least one of them.

Let’s begin with two reevaluations I’ve recently made regarding my research on eyewitness reports of modern pterosaurs.

I reevaluated how many people have seen a “pterodactyl”

In 2019, I wrote the blog post “How many people see living pterodactyls?” Here is a key point, my opinion at that time:

[About] 37,500 Americans have told somebody something to the effect that they saw a flying creature that appeared more like a pterosaur than a bird or a bat . . .

But looking back on the 19 years of my investigation in this branch of cryptozoology, I should have received more emails from eyewitnesses, if more than 20,000 Americans fit the above. I now believe it’s more like this: 15,000 living Americans have reported such an encounter to another person.

Important to note is this: The vast majority of persons who received these shocking reports were not cryptozoologists or paranormal investigators but friends and family members of the eyewitnesses.

I reevaluated the general number of modern living pterosaurs

I don’t have a number or a range for how many “pterodactyls” live on this planet or even just in the United States. But I now believe that these flying creatures are rare, not just uncommon. The scarcity of convincing photos and video clips helps make this point.

Cognitive biases and living pterosaurs

For some time, I thought that confirmation bias may have been the most significant of the cognitive biases regarding living-pterosaur investigations during the past two or three decades. I was aware of some of the factors of another bias but did not know it had a name: “availability cascade”.

It refers to “a self-reinforcing cycle that explains the development of certain kinds of collective beliefs” (Wikipedia). This explains why so many Westerners react the way they do when they first encounter a report of a person seeing a living “pterodactyl”.

Availability cascade

This is a self-reinforcing activity whereby a belief, in people of a culture or community, gains more and more popularity through repetition. How does this relate to sightings of apparent living pterosaurs in the United States? It’s in extinction indoctrination.

Of all the various types of cognitive biases, availability cascade now seems to have had the greatest negative influence on American thinking, regarding modern pterosaurs, from around the late 19th century to the present.

Critics of these investigations in cryptozoology seem to constantly fall into the availability cascade bias constantly without knowing it. Even before the beginning of the 19th century, when Benjamin Franklin was still living, the idea of pterosaur extinction was hatched. The problem grew throughout that century and was amplified during the 20th century.

Fortunately, the news about pterosaur sightings has been presented to the public since the beginning of the 21st century, because of the internet. On the downside, attacks against the investigations have also increased.

The truth, however, will prevail in the end.

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Confirmation bias and living pterosaurs

As an adult, you have preexisting assumptions on various matters. We all do. When we encounter a new idea seemingly related to something we already have an opinion on, we might fall into a confirmation bias.

How many persons have seen a living pterosaur?

Some years ago, I estimated the total number of persons living worldwide who had some kind of encounter with a living pterosaur, yet we need to keep in mind that most of those persons had just vague encounters at night, with no clear view of any form or features of the animals: between 7 million and 128 million humans who had mostly brief shadowy encounters.

Living pterosaurs

How did scientists miss living pterosaurs? Get the answers here, hidden secrets about how these amazing flying creatures of the night have gone mostly unreported . . . [book about modern pterodactyls]

Common Cognitive Biases

Why do these biases happen? Attention is a limited resource. This means we can’t possibly evaluate every possible detail and event when forming thoughts and opinions.

Press release on living pterosaurs

“Two eyewitnesses of strange flying creatures in North America were college professors: One had taught biology; the other, aeronautics. I concluded that each of those two men had, more likely than not, witnessed a flying creature unlike any known bird or bat.“

Civil War pterodactyl photo

For almost any person who reads the CWP online page, it would seem obvious: Ptp came from that episode of Feakylinks in the year 2000. . . . Yet here is the real point: NOBODY can get the entire image of Ptp from the episode Coelacanth This!, yet on the internet you can find complete images of Ptp . . .

More on living pterosaurs

Late in 2006, Garth Guessman, a living-pterosaur investigator, interviewed three Americans who had worked in or visited a medical mission in Central New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea. The three had separate sightings of what may be Pterodactyloids (short-tailed pterosaurs).

Bias about living pterosaurs

[Are Biblical creationists biased regarding these apparent living pterosaurs?] Some . . . assume that universal pterosaur extinction cannot be successfully challenged and that those who mention eyewitness sightings are misguided in a severe bias. The problem with that position becomes obvious when we examine the eyewitnesses: Few of them are creationists.

Bias and pterodactyl sightings

Jonathan Whitcomb confesses that in about 1969 he disbelieved an eyewitness of an apparent “pterodactyl” that a high school student reported had flown up into the mountains north of Altadena and Pasadena, California.

Report a pterosaur sighting

Communicate with Jonathan Whitcomb by email.

October 18, 2022September 15, 2023

The Ptp “Pterodactyl” Photo in Context

six men and a large pterodactyl in an old photo

By Jonathan Whitcomb

We’ll get into the “Civil War pterodactyl” photo later, after taking that image in context with two sightings of apparent modern pterosaurs: one in the 20th century and the other in the 21st century. But even before getting into those two encounters with very large flying creatures, I submit the following:

Introduction

Over the last 19 years, I’ve spent well over 14,000 hours in my investigation of eyewitness reports of apparent living pterosaurs, including many aspects of how and where these flying creatures may live on this wonderful planet of life. During those two decades, I’ve encountered many skeptical remarks, and it seems that most of the critics appear to have given little thought to the possibility that not all species of “pterodactyls” are extinct.

Two sightings in eastern Cuba: by Eskin Kuhn and Patty Carson

[We’ll get into the 19th century photo later in this post.]

I’ve discovered for myself, through eyewitness testimonies, that a number of species of these creatures live in many areas, probably on all continents except Antarctica. Unfortunately, many Westerners have not been informed of the many reports; others react by ridiculing the idea that “flying dinosaurs” might still fly.

I admit I’m human and have the same potential pitfalls that we all may fall into. Just like other people, I may be susceptible to confirmation bias: seriously considering only potential evidence that fits into one’s previous opinions. That is part of why I often use the phrase “apparent pterosaur” when referring to a particular sighting report from an eyewitness: I seriously want to be objective each time I examine an eyewitness testimony.

Yet it seems that some critics dismiss a sighting report after giving it six minutes of consideration at most. One critic might have some advantage over me: more education or native intelligence or perceptiveness, maybe. But take it in context: In relation to one such critic (spending six minutes on this topic), I have over 8 million times as much experience on the subject of the possibility that not all species of pterosaurs are extinct.

In mentioning all that, I do not mean to brag about myself or to imply that all of my work over the past two decades has been without mistakes or faults: I emphasize that some of my associates and I have spend a great deal of time in this narrow branch of cryptozoology, and the subject deserves public attention.

Sighting location of an apparent long-tailed pterodactyl in Irvine, CA

In 2007, a businessman encountered a gigantic pterosaur as it flew in front of his car in Irvine, California, near the university, according to what he reported to me. The tail alone was about 15 feet long, and the flying creature was flying not far above the road where the man was driving. Much of this area is part of a wildlife refuge.

After he contacted me, I drove to that location in Orange County and measured the width of the road, for he said that the total length of the creature was equal to that road width. I paced it off: 30 feet.

Near a sighting location in Altadena, California, mid-20th century

The second sighting covered here was between about the years 1968 and 1971, near the intersection of Altadena Drive and Allen Avenue in Altadena, California. I spoke with the eyewitness by phone about her encounter when she was a high school student (a good friend of my sister’s at that time).

The flying creature, which she called a “pterodactyl”, was as large as a bus, and at that time there were no mini-buses for either the cities or the schools: Any flying creature the size of a bus in the mid-20th century in Southern California would have been enormous.

I mention those two sightings, out of the hundreds of reports I’ve received, to illustrate a consistency: Apparent gigantic pterosaurs have been reported to fly in North America in both the 20th and 21st centuries, so why should they not have lived in the 19th century?

What six soldiers tell us about a large flying creature

The most relevant part of the Ptp image (click to enlarge it)

First, look at the general appearance of those six men. Of course they have individual differences, but look at the similarities.

They are not, on average, especially thin
Not one is very heavyset
Not one is clean-shaven
Not one appears to be a corporal or sergeant or officer
Not one has an oval belt buckle
All six have a pistol holster

Set aside point #1 and see that these are not a group of Civil-War reenactors from the 20th century or 21st century: The combination of point #2 through point #6 proves that.

Was each image of a soldier cut from other photos and then pasted together to make an apparently consistent group of soldiers? Try to find even just two old photos that have soldiers that look like these men. Good luck: They are not from the American Civil War.

NOT from the Civil War

I’ve written much about this in other blog posts, so we’ll only touch on it briefly here. Several factors suggest that these men were photographed together. In fact, they appear to have lived together: perhaps camping, traveling, and eating together for quite some time.

For example (point #1), most common Union soldiers during the Civil War had well-enough food to survive, but they were often thinner than the average of the men in Ptp. It’s not obvious at first glance, but there is a difference.

Two details alone indicate that these men very likely were photographed AFTER the end of the Civil War: rectangular belt buckles and pistol holsters. It’s likely that the photo was recorded during the Reconstruction period, many years before the beginning of the 20th century.

The apparent stay-still prop under the beak of the creature suggests this photo was taken before about 1880. Some photographers at that time used such props to help people remain still during the seconds needed for an exposure.

The apparent flying creature was a physical object

Whether that thing was a flying creature or a prop made to look like one, consider this: Apparently it was dragged into this clearing and then perhaps repositioned. The drag mark could have been made by the beak before the made the final adjustment in pulling out the wings. That could be why the end of the drag mark is not exactly at the point where we now see the end of the beak.

Apparent drag mark in the soil: This was a physical object

Why emphasize the point that it was a real object that the men were standing around. Some skeptics suggest that the apparent “pterodactyl” was just a drawing or a 3D computer animation model. Several factors discredit that hypothesis or theory. (See other blog posts and Youtube videos by Jonathan Whitcomb to get more details.)

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Missing Persons in USA – Attack from a Ropen?

The following Youtube video covers three possible “pterodactyl” attacks against children, during the past 80 years . . . The states involved were Arizona, Oklahoma, and Texas [although an attack against men fishing on the Delaware River at night—that is included as well].

Pterodactyl photo from the 19th century

Let’s now turn to answers to a few skeptical criticisms of the apparently old photo that I have labeled “Ptp”, what some call the “Civil War pterodactyl photo”.

American soldiers and a pterodactyl in a photo

Rectangular belt buckles were not, apparently, worn by common Union soldiers during the American Civil War . . . [Men seen in the Ptp “pterodactyl photo” have rectangular belt buckles: ALL SIX men]

Pterodactyl Sighting in Delavan, Illinois

It scared the living daylights out of me because it was the size of our house . . .

A modern pterosaur kills chickens and house cats in Nevada

While . . . in the garage, I heard something very heavy land on the tin roof . . . It landed softly, and after the roof rafters creaked, then I heard claws scratch the roof . . .

Pterodactyl sighting in Arizona

. . . she was driving her daughter and her friend to a local market when they spotted the unusual creature on August 16 at around 7.30 p.m. . . . “I said ‘look at that bird! What kind of bird is that?’ My daughter said ‘it’s a bat’. I said ‘no, it’s too big to be a bat and it has a tail… it looks like a pterodactyl.’ . . . The woman described the animal as featherless and having a tail “with something on the end of it”.

Sightings of pterosaurs . . . 2016

[In] St. Louis Mo. . . . I was ten years old at a family BBQ with my dad…it was before dusk and still enough light in the sky that it was still blue . . . we heard this horrific screech from right above the trees in the surrounding yard. I looked up and saw something AMAZING ! It was a real live Pterosaur!

Report your pterodactyl sighting

I encourage people around the world to report their sightings of apparent living pterosaurs to me or to one of my associates. Why tell someone about your sighting? It helps bring the world closer to officially discovering these amazing flying creatures.

Recent pterosaur sightings

Most paleontologists will tell you that the Pterosaur (including the Pterodactylus and pteranodon.), a flying reptile of the Mesozoic era, has been extinct for over 60 million years; however, several recent sightings may suggest these large “flying” reptiles are still alive.

Pterosaurs in the USA

How did these creatures avoid media attention? Get the answers from years of work by American cryptozoologists. The old “fruit bat” explanation for reports of pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea–that bat idea has now been shot down . . .

California Pterosaur in Irvine

The total length of the creature was about 30 feet and about half of that being tail length.

September 27, 2022October 1, 2022

A Challenge for the Ptp “Civil War” Pterodactyl Photo and an Answer

pterodactyl wings inverted in an old photo

By Jonathan Whitcomb

In September of 2022, I started taking another look into Ptp, an image that appears to show six 19th-century American soldiers posed around a large dead pterosaur. This apparent “Civil War” photograph has had a number of critics over a period of many years, but one particular challenge appears, at least on the surface, to have destroyed all confidence in the idea that an actual modern pterosaur was involved. Nevertheless, Ptp is not, as of September 26th, completely clear regarding its origin.

An online article dated January 9, 2018, appears to prove positively that Ptp was created through two things: 1) modern actors dressed in 19th-century-style uniforms, making them appear to be common Union soldiers during the American Civil War [and] 2) computer digital processing done by the firm E=MC² Digital, which is declared to have created the “pterodactyl”. I’ll call that article “CWP”, but I won’t link to it, for it has problems that are too off-topic to examine now: We have enough to cover here. Researchers who seriously want to read that article should be able to find it online (the author’s initials are B.D.)

(The point of the folded-wings concept comes up later)

Quoting the CWP online article:

“For it turns out — drum roll please — that the mystery of the PTP photo is one that has a verified solution, one which so many of these people struggling to prove it or disprove it overlooked. . . .”

“very few [people] seem to have gone to the trouble to actually watch the episode in question, episode 4, called “Coelacanth This . . .”

After going over key areas of that article, on September, 26, 2022, and examining the episode itself, I made a discovery: Assuming I have not made a serious error, the author of the CWP article himself has not watched that episode with an eye to an important point that he seems to have tried to make in CWP: He assumes that what he saw in that episode was Ptp, but in one critical perspective PTP IS NOT THERE, even though hardly anyone would notice the difference between the image in that TV episode and Ptp.

Please keep in mind that I am not criticizing B.D. for being careless, not at all. It is an extremely easy mistake to make: I myself made that same mistake, and very few persons in the world have spent more time examining Ptp than I have, possibly only one person.

I am not even declaring that Ptp cannot have been created digitally, with no modern pterosaur even having been involved. In other words, at the moment (3:16 p.m., Mountain Time, Sep 26, 2022), I am not completely convinced the original image of Ptp had a real “pterodactyl”, and I can see the possibility that the apparent flying creature was constructed digitally with no original animal image ever having existed. Maybe the foundational idea of the CWP article is correct in that regard; maybe Ptp is 100% hoax.

Yet in the many hours since I made the above statement, I have made a discovery which may be extremely important. Here’s the point now:

The complete image Ptp, from top to bottom and left to right: all of it

It may seem trivial at first: The above is ALL of the image Ptp. I gave it this title a few years ago, and this is all of it that I have, at least at present.

Before getting to the point, please understand this: I have been assuming, for quite some time, that my critics and I have together believed that Ptp appears in the Freakylinks episode Coelacanth This! and the other “Civil War pterodactyl photo” appears only in the Freakylinks promotional web site. I also assumed that Ptp does not appear in that production firm’s web site. (I have never seen Ptp on their online page and have heard nothing to the contrary.)

From now on, I’ll refer to the other photo as AP, named by Karl Shuker (AP stands for Advance Publicity, meaning it was used before the episode was broadcast over the air).

AP on the left is fake, without any doubt; but Ptp on the right has been on trial for many years, and it has been extremely controversial

So why do I declare that Ptp is NOT in Coelacanth This!? I have carefully examined the four places where Ptp seems to be shown in that episode, but in EVERY CASE not all of the bottom of Ptp is shown. People could say, “Who cares?” or “What difference does it make?”: After all, the important parts of Ptp are shown in that episode. When we look at what is implied in the CWP article, however, it makes a big difference.

By the way, in CWP itself the complete image of Ptp is not shown: only a cropped version of it. But that may have little relevance except to emphasize the point that B.D. is unaware of the important difference between all of Ptp and part of it.

WHERE DID PTP COME FROM?

For almost any person who reads the CWP online page, it would seem obvious: Ptp came from that episode of Feakylinks in the year 2000. Does B.D. (author of CWP) think that the apparent “Civil War pterodactyl” image in that episode is important in establishing where Ptp came from? Apparently that is the point of his words “drum roll please.”

Yet here is the real point: NOBODY can get the entire image of Ptp from the episode Coelacanth This!, yet on the internet you can find complete images of Ptp, although the smaller cropped images are much more common.

Early on the morning of September 27, 2022, I did a series of Google image searches using an Incognito window to avoid any influence from my previous searches on this topic. Here is the result:

NOT ONE of the complete images of Ptp were from any site or page of Haxan Films or Freakylinks. In addition, if I missed nothing important, NOT ONE of the pages with the complete Ptp image had any link showing that either Haxan Films or Freakylinks ever publicized or published it.

In other words, the apparent proof (for the origin of Ptp) in CWP has now been shot down, and this complete image now requires a deeper examination.

One of many evidences for Ptp authenticity

Notice the strange wing structure below:

At some time between when this animal ended it final flight and the time the photo was recorded, the outer part of both wings became inverted. The apparent top of the outer wing section would actually be the bottom side of the wings during flight. This is hardly the kind of obscure detail that a digital effects company would have thought of and created for a common TV show episode.

In other words, possibly not even one person who viewed that episode of Freakylinks would have noticed this biological detail, so why would any digital effects firm create this and present it to the Freakylinks producers? It would have appeared to them to be too weird in an inappropriate distracting way. Special effects for TV and film are made for the general public, not for a one-in-a-million paleontologist who would have noticed such a detail.

The original Ptp may have had many digital processes done to it, to emphasize the idea that it is an old photo, but the animal shown was NOT created by the digital effects firm that was hired by Haxan Films or Freakylinks.

Indeed, to the best of my knowledge at present, it is possible that those effects that were added to the original image of Ptp were done decades before Freakylinks existed, and their digital effects team imitated those aging effects in AP.

I understand that there may be other factors and that it is still possible that no modern pterosaur was ever photographed with 19th-century American soldiers standing around it, but here it is: The CWP online article has serious problems, only some of which are mentioned here, and there still appears (as of early September 27, 2022) to be a real case that the origin of Ptp may be in a genuine 19th century photograph of a real object, whether it was a recently deceased pterosaur or not.

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Pterodactyl Caught on Camera

Has a pterodactyl, whether or not a ropen or kongamato, or even called a “flying dinosaur”, ever been photographed or videotaped? Yes indeed. This is an overview of the “Ptp” photo that has been associated with the American Civil War . . .

Pterosaur sightings in the United States

“My father and I saw a Huge, featherless bird in Arkansas, between Van Buran and Cedarville when I was 16. I’ve been telling people my story since. We were sitting on big rocks at a cliff about 300 foot above the river when it flew out just under us . . . “

Pterodactyl caught on camera

The biologist Peter Beach, of Portland, Oregon, videotaped a modern pterosaur on New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea, on March 25, 2015, in the presence of Milt Marcy, a businessman . . .

Americans see living pterodactyls

“. . . the number of Americans who have seen an obvious [non-extinct] pterosaur could not be less than 10,000 . . . “

Press releases about pterodactyl sightings

“That encounter in Raleigh early in 2018 was not the first time someone in Cynthia’s family had seen an apparent pterosaur. She told Whitcomb about a sighting many years earlier: “My mother and uncle saw one too while they were playing outside of my grandma’s house when they were really little.”

Sightings of flying dinosaurs

I am a scientist, and I have discovered that the great majority of eyewitness sighting reports of extant pterosaurs are neither misidentifications nor hoaxes . . .

Pterodactyl sightings in the southern American states

I believe I saw a pterosaur last night in Edmond, Oklahoma, just north of OKC. . . . Today I was trying to look up other recent sightings and was shocked to see that two other people have seen something similar in my state.

Pterosaur sightings worldwide

Most of the following are from direct eyewitness testimony sent by email to the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, who now lives in Murray, Utah. Some of the reports, however, involve more direct communication with the persons encountering the flying creatures: face-to-face interviews and phone conversations.