Fossils | Live Pterosaur

January 15, 2013January 2, 2014

Modern Flying Dragons

Cover of a nonfiction paleontology book about pterosaurs and their fossils

How do flying dragons relate to pterosaurs? Old stories and ancient history—those contain the word “dragon,” and some of the accounts involve large creatures that fly, and sometimes those flying creatures resemble pterosaurs, at least to some extent.

Peter Wellnhofer works at the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, a research institute. He is recognized as the foremost pterosaur-fossil expert in the world. I mention this to illustrate the depth of the pterosaur-extinction assumption, that it is not confined to common paleontologists. It seems like all of them assume universal extinction.

I also mention Peter Wellnhofer because of what he wrote in his book, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs, regarding old records about flying dragons. I am fortunate to own a copy of his book.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs

Published by Salamander Books, Ltd., in 1991

Large hardback, 192 pages

In general I highly recommend this book as a reference to fossil discoveries of pterosaurs and what has been learned about these amazing flying creatures of the past. I do not, however, feel any need to adopt his assumption about universal extinction of pterosaurs or to adopt his assumption about many millions of years of age for the fossils.

Today I read an interesting proposition in this paleontology book:

“Dragons of the Myths”

If we pursue the history of the investigation of pterosaurs, the flying saurians of prehistoric times, there is a natural link in our minds with the myths and legends of dragons. . . .

For 16th and 17th century scholars dragons were still a reality. For example, in the Schlanganbuch (Snake Book) by the famous Swiss naturalist and town doctor Conrad Gessner, dating from 1589, there is a chapter called “Von den Tracken,” in which he describes and illustrates various dragons.

He also describes a battle between a Swiss called Winkelreid and a dragon which took place near the Swiss village of Wyler. The scholarly Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher provided a picture of this fight in his great work on natural history Mundus Subterraneus (The World Below the Earth) in 1678. According to this the dragon had a long neck and tail, four legs, and wings.

The Viennese paleontologist Othenio Abel suggested in this context that the drawing could have been based on fossil reptile finds, possibly long necked plesiosaurs from the Jurassic strata of Wurttemberg.

At a time when even naturalists believed in fabulous creatures and monsters, the discovery of fossil bones and remains of skeletons in caves must have reinforced ideas of dragons. Old names like Dragon’s Cave, Dragon’s Rock, or Dragon’s Stone still occur on modern maps.

I agree with Wellnhofer that we naturally have a tendency to connect pterosaur fossils with dragon legends. But unless he neglected to mention important evidence, he is speculating about fossil discoveries reinforcing belief in dragon stories. Even if there is some truth to that, it would not explain the dragon stories themselves.

He mentions a few geographic names that might have been related to ancient fossil discoveries, but he mentioned nothing about the many geographic names that contain nothing like “rock” or “stone” but do contain references to encounters with living creatures.

Wellnhofer also mentioned nothing about reports of strange flying creatures much earlier in history than the 16th and 17th centuries and more recently, such as from 1890 to the present. Those many accounts could have taken up many pages of his book, rather than just the few paragraphs that he chose to dedicate to dragons.

But writing extensively about sightings of pterosaur-like flying creatures would be expected of a nonfiction cryptozoology book, not a paleontology book. Nevertheless, this line of thinking brings up a question: Was Wellnhofer’s choices (in writing these few paragraphs about dragons) greatly influenced by the dogma of universal extinction of all species of pterosaurs? Since the book in general appears to have been written entirely within that paradigm, I suggest those few paragraphs were also written within it. Anyone desiring to gain much knowledge and understanding of dragon legends, and how they might relate to extant pterosaurs, needs to research in other books.

If significant truth lives in even just one of the old legends or stories of flying dragons, the intelligent and objective researcher will need to search further than in the brief writings of those who assume modern flying dragons could never have existed. My advice? Search!

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs, by Peter Wellnhofer

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Pterosaurs, or Flying Dragons, in California

News headlines in an 1891 newspaper included:

PTERODACTYLS

Sport Gunning for Dragons Near Fresno

Two Screaming Dragons Snap Their Jaws . . .

Flying Creature Sightings in Georgia

Cooler weather does not mean pterosaur sightings come to a halt, for they continue. This past Wednesday, January 2, 2013, I received an email from an eyewitness in Missouri. The sighting was not old: “about 45 minutes ago.”

Live Pterosaur in Georgia?

Reports of living “pterodactyls” in Georgia . . . probably relate to sightings of some flying creatures in South Carolina and Florida, according to author Jonathan Whitcomb . . .

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

October 5, 2012

Modern Pterosaur Expert

I have no desire to beat dead fossil bones into dust; paleontology has a critical role in understanding pterosaurs. Acknowledging the countless contributions of paleontologists (especially experts on pterosaurs) who have taught us much about those flying creatures of the past, however, I still lift up the modern eyewitness, pointing to the human experience of encountering a modern pterosaur. But does that make me a pterosaur expert?

As of October 4, 2012, I have never seen anything clearly resembling a living pterosaur, not even a clear and convincing photograph or video that shows details in the form or features of a living pterosaur (and is clearly not a misidentification or hoax). So I, Jonathan Whitcomb, am not an expert on pterosaurs in the sense that I have examined any of those living creatures directly.

Neither do I have any college degree in paleontology, so I am not an expert on pterosaur fossils, at least not in a professional sense. Some undisciplined skeptics have portrayed me and my associates as if we were simply ignorant of pterosaur fossils, knowing nothing about them. That is overly simplistic and misleading: As far as I am aware, none of the leading American living-pterosaur cryptozoologists (with the possible exception of Professor Peter Beach) has any college degree in paleontology, but most of us have read books or other literature written by experts on pterosaur fossils. That may be more than can be said of some skeptics who ridicule our work.

Some of my associates (cryptozoologists who specialize in these marvelous flying creatures) have seen at least one modern pterosaur. But how do the rest of us qualify to be any kind of expert, we who have encountered only eyewitnesses of pterosaurs? It’s in the testimonies. We learn the most from the most credible eyewitnesses who give us detailed descriptions of the flying creatures.

Pterosaur Existence Expert

Here I am an expert: the existence of modern pterosaurs. After nine years, and over 6,000 hours, I have adequate exposure to this concept to write and speak as an expert. A significant portion of eyewitness reports are both highly unlikely to be misidentifications and also highly unlikely to be related to any hoax. The factors which determine credibility are not personal wishful thinking but keeping records of the exact words used by eyewitnesses, asking questions, and analyzing the results. With more experience than any other active cryptozoologist, I may be the world’s leading expert on the existence of modern pterosaurs.

Live Pterosaur Press Room for News Releases

Two large long-tailed flying creatures, apparent pterosaurs, caught the Marine’s attention. He later reported that they were “flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet, very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them.”

Expert on Pterodactyls

A double misspelling of my first name (“Johnathon”) does not necessarily mean that “ape man” has been careless in his reading of my writings on the subject of apparent living pterosaurs (AKA “pterodactyls”), but other evidences suggest he has been careless indeed.

Attacks on Pterodactyl Expert

It was just a few commentators on a cryptozoology.com forum thread who initiated the attack. But it was a rather vicious attack, with one of the assailants using the name “ape man.”

April 24, 2012April 24, 2012

Only One Kind of Discovery for Smithsonian

weighing live pterosaurs against universal extinctions of all their species

Regarding pterosaurs, the only kind of discovery allowed by the Smithsonian is the fossil kind. Apparently no number of eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs can sway their minds. It’s been many months since Brian Switek’s Smithsonian Magazine online post, “Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth,” but they have not budged from their dogmatic position, unless Switek is the exception with that institution, which I doubt.

The Smithsonian should judge human experience, regarding eyewitness sightings of living pterosaurs, objectively. Instead, with Brian Switek’s poorly conceived blog post, dogmatic assumptions are taken as if fact. But where will science go, how will science progress, if human experiences are kicked out the back door?

Observe the weight of eyewitness testimonies, especially the sightings of Brian Hennessy, Duane Hodgkinson, and Gideon Koro. Each of those sightings carries its own weight independently. The combination of all three makes dogmatic universal extinction proclamations ludicrous, when taken in context with the real history of that assumption of extinction.

Smithsonian Gets “Discovery” but Runs Away From Discovery

David Woetzel has explored in Africa, searching for a living dinosaur, and has explored in Papua New Guinea, searching for a living pterosaur. But Switek takes this as if it makes Woetzel’s position weak, and the point of all of this is that Woetzel is questioning scientific assumptions that Switek has taken for granted. Putting this in the context of a court trial: The defense attorney cannot prove his case by saying that the district attorney cannot be believed because he prosecutes people.

From the book Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition):

The world’s greatest expert on chickens—that’s a fox. The details of that expertise culminate in picking bones, executed differently than, but for the same purpose as, the work of a fossil expert: to make a living. The hope differs: The paleontologist searches for ancient bones somehow protected from the destructive forces of time; the fox, for fresh meat, somehow unprotected by the farmer for a time. Interminable dogmatism keeps both of them searching: one for death anciently; the other, death soon-to-be.

We trust no fox to analyze the automatic switch that turns on the electric fence protecting chickens; why trust a paleontologist to analyze reports of live pterosaurs, for supporters of that idea appear to threaten standard paleontology? Both fox and paleontologist have specialized knowledge, with each specialization tied to its own dogma. Trust neither one outside.

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