Africa Sightings | Live Pterosaur

May 1, 2014October 27, 2014

“The Bible of Modern Pterosaurs”

pre-publication version of the front cover of this nonfiction book

Searching for Ropens and Finding God was published on April 18th, the third edition of the book that I started writing, in its first edition, in 2005. It’s the fruit of thousands of hours of research and writing, but why should it be labeled “the Bible of modern pterosaurs?” At 9×6 inches, with 353 printed pages, it covers eyewitness sightings from around the world, including Europe, Africa, North America, and the southwest Pacific (including Australia and Papua New Guinea). New chapters were added to the second edition, including Chapter 21: “Pterosaurs in the USA,” which chapter by itself is 100 pages. Judge the quality of the book for yourself, but it’s much bigger than anything else I’ve written.

Herodotus, known as the “father of history,” is reported to have said, “wings are not feathered, but resemble very closely those of the bat,” when he referred to the “winged serpents” known in Egypt and Arabia in his time; yet no mention is made of Herodotus in Searching for Ropens and Finding God, for that historian lived twenty-four centuries ago, and my book really is about modern pterosaurs.

The fiery flying serpent flies through but a few paragraphs, for although Moses lived many centuries ago, featherless long-tailed winged creatures are tied to the real Bible in my “Bible of modern pterosaurs.” Yet many pages promoting disbelief in the General Theory of Evolution were removed from earlier editions of my book. I have assumed that readers of this third edition will already believe in God, with little need for me to provide additional evidences for literal interpretations of the Old Testament, so this book is filled much more with astonishing eyewitness encounters.

Searching for Ropens and Finding God (back cover)

Quoting from page 179 of the book (sighting in Maryland):

On September 15, 2013, I received an email just one hour after the sighting:

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“This may not seem strange to you but it was certainly the first time I have had a sighting of a pterodactyl. It was around 12:30 p.m., sunny skies, cooler temperatures (75 degrees). It was extremely large (way too large to be considered an eagle and there were no feathers). The head was certainly noticeable and the large wing span and tail. The skin was grey (?) in color and wrinkled. Flying alone.

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“Not sure if you are still keeping tract of them but one was spotted in Maryland today, 9/15/2013. Super amazing. . . . I will never forget it.”

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

The fourth edition of this nonfiction paperback on modern pterosaurs is being published around the first week of November, 2014. This supersedes the third edition, with a few new sighting reports and many minor revisions and corrections. Purchase the newer edition, for it’s at the same price.

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Ropen (sighting in Africa, quoting from Searching for Ropens and Finding God)

“It was very large, about 4 or 5 feet in height. It . . . [had] no feathers. It was leathery looking. It had a large long, wide beak and the classic appendage (the long bone looking thing sticking out the back of its head). . . . It had really large black claws and its tail looked like a lion’s tail . . . very long and had a bushy or hairy tip” . . .

January 10, 2013January 2, 2014

Pterosaur Eyewitness Reliability

I’ve not yet seen with my own eyes a living pterosaur. I explored a remote island in Papua New Guinea in 2004 but failed to see the ropen. I walked through a wildlife reserve in Orange County, California, in 2008, but failed to see the ropen-like flying creature. I set up a game camera in Lakewood, California, in mid-2012, but after examining 9,823 photographs I have failed to see any image of a living pterosaur. So why do I believe that they exist? It’s the eyewitness reports.

What do the following descriptions have in common (quoting eyewitnesses)?

no feathers / tail it was very long & had a bushy or hairy tip / long bone looking thing sticking out the back of its head
the same sort of texture as suede (i.e no feathers) / had a long thin tail
They don’t have any feathers / tails about 3 to 4 meters long / LONG NECK
no feathers / [tail length] 7 meters / diamond [on tail]
no feathers in sight / longish narrow tail / [out the back of the head] It was like a horn
did not appear to have any feathers / a long, skinny, pointed tail / diamond shape at the tip [of the tail]
he had no feathers
the head had a crest . . . solid, not feathery at all / tail was very long / [tail] ended in a thick, heart-shaped pad

Featherlessness and a long tail—these are reported from around the world. Sometimes an eyewitness will also report a head crest, sometimes a long neck, sometimes a structure at the end of the tail (“diamond”). For the above, here are the eyewitness report locations:

Sudan, Africa – July of 1988 – from a native
Spain – summer of 2007 – from a man from England
city of Pagbilao, Quezon Province, Philippines – around 1994 – from a native
Lake Pung, Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea – about 1994 – from natives
Bougainville Island, (Papua) New Guinea – 1971 – from an Australian
Brampton, Ontario, Canada – 2004 – from a Canadian
Zaandam, Holland (Netherlands) – from a Dutch man
Near Winder, Georgia, USA – 2008 – from a Georgian lady

Many other eyewitness reports we could examine, with flying-creature descriptions that clearly tie in with the above sightings. I once interviewed an attorney who had witnessed a giant featherless flying creature with a tail about fifteen feet long. Last week I received an email from a U. S. marine stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; he saw a large flying creature with a “cone protruding from behind its head” and a “very long tail” that had “a diamond shape at the end.” That sighting was on January 2, 2013.

These kinds of descriptions can be found in accounts from around the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia and Papua New Guinea, although not every eyewitness has noticed every one of the following details:

lack of feathers
long tail
structure at the end of the tail
head crest
long neck

But many eyewitness report two or three of the above, especially featherless appearance and long tail.

Eyewitnesses from various countries, of various cultures, with various languages—those common persons have encountered uncommon flying creatures, but significant details in descriptions are commonly repeated: long tail, head crest, structure at tail end, no feathers. Those differences in the eyewitnesses, when added to similarities in descriptions, equal an actual creature, a real flying creature, not extinct but living in our modern world of diversified humans.

Why Doubt Pterosaur Extinction?

Is the pterosaur-extinction idea a modern concept? No. It’s an old assumption, originating about two centuries ago, and it deserves to be buried alongside the long-held assumption (long ago dismissed) that the sun revolves around the earth.

The first pterosaur fossil discovery, in 1784 (four years before George Washington was elected president), was decades before Charles Darwin began writing about evolution. Where did those early fossil researchers get the idea of pterosaur extinction? It was just an assumption, originating from a few researchers who were ignorant of extant nocturnal pterosaurs. That leaves a world of room for us to doubt the universal extinction of all species of pterosaurs.

For those who still think extant pterosaurs are hard to believe, they should try explaining human mentality to an animal. The less intelligent animals live by instinct and to some extent by experience; the most intelligent animals learn more from experience and from following parents who have experiences the younger ones have not yet had. I know that human imagination is important, but some humans would be much better off following the examples of intelligent animals, for imagining ancient extinctions is far less reliable than listening to eyewitnesses of living creatures.

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Clear Thinking

“Trust one eyewitness of a plane crash over the imaginations of a hundred professors who’ve agreed how that plane should fly.”

Bulverism and Extant Pterosaurs

C. S. Lewis, in the mid-20th Century, noticed an unfortunate trend becoming popular . . . bulverism

February 4, 2012

Lighting the Flying Creature of the Night

This is not to illuminate the bioluminescent pterosaur of Marfa, Texas, or of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea. Indeed, that kind of glow actually hides the form and features of the flying creature that produces the light. Setting aside bioluminescence, we now consider why some night sightings have contributed to the credibility of the live-pterosaur investigations.

I recall part of a comment from a critic, some years ago, ridiculing the credibility of eyewitnesses who “misidentify” birds or bats at night. But he was only tossing out a generalization, assuming that all reported sightings (those encounters that serious invesigators publicize) all fit neatly into his mental image of a dark landscape where people imagine that birds and bats are pterosaurs. Science thrives on details of human experience, so let’s examine particular sightings.

Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaur in Sudan, Africa

In this sighting, the eyewitness could see details, for the flying creature was close and it was lit by a nearby porch light.

The boy was walking from one mud-brick hut to another, one night in 1988, carrying a tray of food for family members. . . . The boy froze as the creature stretched its wings and hopped right over his head, causing him to drop the metal tray of dishes.

Driving Near Kenton, Ohio

In the third edition of my book Live Pterosaurs in America, I mentioned a sighting near Kenton, Ohio.

At 11:15 p.m., she was driving near Kenton, Ohio, on Route 309. With clear sky and a still-full moon, the landscape was brightly lit. A creature swooped down—an obvious “pterodactyl”—gliding gracefully over the hood of her car. She watched it fly into some dense underbrush of trees. . . . “I could see almost the bones in its wings but I did NOT see feathers at all. None. . . . it was bright out . . . because of the full moon being high in the sky.”

Nocturnal Pterosaurs in San Diego

In this sighting in San Diego, California, the two flying creatures (witnessed by two men) were probably lit from both top and bottom: from the moon and from the city lights (although the eyewitness who reported the encounter to me mentioned only the lighting from the moon).

From the west came this dark object in the sky. It was right over us about, I say, 40 yards [high]. As it got closer we both yelled, “What the hell is that?” It looked like a huge bird. It was gliding . . . I began yelling at it . . .

That was a large flying creature at low altitude, perhaps coming within 140 feet of the eyewitnesses. The lighting was adequate for the two eyewitnesses to see the details that were later given to me.

January 26, 2012January 30, 2012

An Old Cryptozoology Book

I’m sure I’ve read this book at least once, in my youth long ago. On the Track of Unknown Animals, by Bernard Heuvelmans, is now considered a classic in cryptozoology, originally in French but often encountered in its 1958 or 1959 English edition with its 120 sketches, a well-crafted assortment of strange creatures and a few monsters. Yesterday I found a library copy and took notes on sightings of apparent pterosaurs. This classic now deserves quoting, again.

classic book of cryptozoology

Chapter twenty-one, “Kongamato, the Last Flying Dragon,” begins by quoting Charles Kingsley (The Water-Babies): “People call them pterodactyls; but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.” On page 485 the author digs into the meat of a live pterosaur in Africa.

In 1923 Frank H. Melland published an account of his travels entitled In Witchbound Africa . . . [It included] rather vague rumours about a much-feared animal called “kongamato,” said to live in the Jiundu swamps in the north-west corner of No. Rhodesia near the frontier of the Bengian Congo and Angola. . . . The natives told him that it was a bird, but not exactly a bird, more like a lizard with wings of skin like a bat’s . . . the beast’s wingspan was between four and seven feet . . . it had no feathers at all . . . [with skin] bare and smooth, and its beak was full of teeth. . . . he showed the natives pictures . . . They immediately [pointed out] the Pterodactyl, excitedly muttering “kongamato!”

Amazon gives two prices for this out-of-print cryptozoology book, On the Track of Unknown Animals: $135.00 and $339.66, revealing its collectible status.

Kongamato or Pterodactyl of Africa

The kongamato is sometimes compared with the ropen of Papua New Guinea or the long-tailed pterosaur seen in Eastern Cuba in the mid-20th century. This kind of cryptid has been reported in many parts of the world, including North America, Australia, Europe, and Africa.

Kongamato Crossing the Atlantic?

One species of crane flies over the Himalayan Mountains regularly, sometimes at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Large nocturnal pterosaurs, under the right wind conditions, could cross the Atlantic, from Africa. As more sighting reports come in from Africa and North America, we need to look at the possibility that some of the flying creatures on different sides of the Atlantic may be closely related or even the same species.

Books About Live Pterosaurs in North America

It seems we now have three nonfiction books about extant pterosaurs in North America . . . These paperback books are Big Bird (by Ken Gerhard), Live Pterosaurs in America (by Jonathan Whitcomb, third edition), and Bird From Hell (by Gerald McIsaac, second edition).

Books on extant pterosaurs are not so rare as they were when On the Track of Unknown Animals was first published.

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Third edition of "Live Pterosaurs in America"

Get the details lacking on the online blog posts and web pages. Buy Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, by the nonfiction author who interviews eyewitnesses from around the world, the live-pterosaur expert Jonathan David Whitcomb. Get the facts, eyewitness accounts from many U.S. states: California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, Kansas, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, New York, and other states.

From a review of the second edition of this cryptozoology book, on Amazon, by “stevie” (the third edition is slightly expanded, even better than the second edition):

“This is an updated review of the book and I am changing my rating to 5 stars. This book has been on my shelf for almost a year now. I pick it up every now and then and a part of me becomes more impressed by the book every time. . . .

“Whitcomb painstakingly reviews every account for credibility and reason. This man is not a crank. He tries to weed out would be hoaxes and miss-identification. This is not a guy looking to create evidence to confirm his own beliefs. On top of this, I have great respect for a guy who follows his dreams so passionately. He has traveled to Papua New Guinea to search for the creature there and this book is somewhat of a sequel . . .

“I do believe the author tried hard to deliver these stories and was very good at it. This is well written and very hard to put down.”