Hoax Possibility | Live Pterosaur

November 15, 2022September 15, 2023

Freakylinks “Civil War” Pterodactyl Photo and Ptp

six men and a large pterodactyl in an old photo

By Jonathan Whitcomb

In recent years, a few skeptics have suggested that the Ptp image originated with the TV show FreakyLinks with “Coelacanth This”, which was the fourth episode of the first season (year 2000). Unfortunately for the skeptical side, they have not provided any direct evidence but rely on second-hand or third-hand accounts and the skeptics’ unverified imagination.

Those critics do not mention any person who worked on any supposed computer model (or physical model) or who worked with supposed actors in the supposed creation of Ptp. In fact, as best as I can tell at present, they have not mentioned even one person who witnessed anyone working on such a supposed digital or physical model, since they seem to imply that there was either a 3D computer model or a physical model.

By the way, the FreakyLinks TV episodes were scary science-fiction supernatural-themed stories on the Fox network, broadcast from October of 2000 until June of 2001. You might call it a series of hoax shows, except that most viewers are aware, or should be, that they are watching fiction.

The complete image that is now called “Ptp”

“Coelacanth This!” FreakyLinks Episode

The story does not begin with a pterodactyl; that comes later. A group of young investigators dive into a mysterious death from something that could have been a monster of some kind. The drama then evolves into a pterodactyl-like flying creature that keeps coming back every few decades, seemingly because of long periods of hibernation.

Near beginning of this TV episode on the Fox Network

A key point in this fictional story is the discovery of an old photo of six “Civil War” soldiers posing beside the body of a huge Pteranodon-like animal. This is not just implied to be a photograph from the American Civil War: That point is clearly made in the communications between investigators.

The image shown several times in that episode appears to be identical to Ptp. With a deeper examination, however, it is clear that the bottom part of the picture is missing in that episode. Yet the complete image can now be found on a number of web sites, apparently none of which are directly related to any of the production companies involved, twenty-two years ago, in the creation of the TV episode in question.

Most of the Ptp image is seen in this TV episode of FreakyLinks

In other words, where did the complete image of Ptp come from? There seems to be no evidence it came from any production company associated with the episode “Coelacanth This!”. It definitely did not come from anyone capturing the image from any portion of the episode itself. Most likely the producers realized that it was in the public domain, because of its age. They then used it in the production, even though they had used a fake photo in the pre-production web page that promoted the episode.

Let’s now get back to the “Civil War” aspect of the case. This must have been written in the script. So why do the men in Ptp have only a superficial resemblance to Civil War soldiers?

More to the point, why do we see an extraordinary apparent pterosaur, with details that include muscle structure in the neck? If this was a physical model or a computer model or a drawing, created by FreakyLinks, why do the soldiers have uniforms and equipment that are so UNLIKE what non-officer Union Civil War soldiers had? Why should the creature be so accurately portrayed while the men look so much like they lived AFTER the Civil War?

And why do five of the six men have right-handed pistol holsters while one has a left-handed holster? That detail is exactly what we could expect if these men were NOT Civil War reenactors or any other kind of actors. Very likely is this: They were photographed between about 1867 and 1880.

Proper ratio of right-handed to left-handed men

And why were those men standing like that, with one of them having a boot resting of some kind of object? Try this answer: Those men were standing around the large flying creature that we see in Ptp. Apparently this is not a hoax-pterodactyl but a genuine recently-deceased flying creature.

By the way, many persons have reported that they saw Ptp in an old book or magazine decades before the end of the 20th century. Of course, memory can play tricks on us, yet those declarations fit perfectly well with the concept that those six men appear very much like they lived before the beginning of the 20th century. And it’s not just their uniforms and equipment: Each has a beard or mustache style that fits that time period and those men have similar body builds, like they had been eating together for a long time or at least under similar conditions. What are the chances that six actors from the year 2000, chosen randomly, would fit together so well?

Addendum

There’s more to the mystery. What about the fake photo used in the pre-production web page? It was very likely intended, before filming, to be the image used in the episode itself. Here is a likely explanation, one that harmonizes with the details seen in the six men of Ptp and the detailed image of an apparent modern pterosaur in Ptp. It’s not the only possibility, just the most likely.

The pre-production image (“AP”) is on the left; Ptp, on the right

As of mid-November, 2022, I (Jonathan Whitcomb) believe that AP was staged by Haxan Films, and the arrangement of the actors and fake “pterodactyl” was an imitation of what is now called Ptp.

In other words, it is no coincidence that both images have the soldier in front with one boot on the beak or head of an apparent creature. I believe that Ptp existed first and AP was created to imitate it.

Keep in mind that the special effects company that worked with Haxan Films at that time was E=MC² Digital. It is possible that the original image that was transformed into Ptp was obtained by E=MC² Digital and assumed, at first, to be under copyright protection.

In other words, as of mid-November, 2022, I do not know if Ptp, with its discoloration and white blotches and scratch mark, is what E=MC² Digital obtained from some old publication or if that original image was altered by E=MC² Digital to make it appear older before giving it to Haxan Films for that episode of FreakLinks.

Regardless of whether E=MC² Digital altered the original (that became Ptp) or not, I believe that Ptp (or the original of it) became the model for the creation of the AP photo: Ptp existed first. Nobody that I know of has any doubt about AP: It was a hoax created by using actors and a crude model that was supposed to look like a dead pterodactyl. If fact, that crude fake pterodactyl has been owned by a well-known cryptozoologist for some time, kept as part of his collection.

I believe that two things happened before filming began on the episode “Coelacanth This!”:

The AP photo was found to be poor in quality
Ptp (or the original version of it) no longer had a copyright issue

The main problem with #1 was the “pterodactyl”, which looked not only unconvincing as such an animal but was ludicrously so: If nobody told you that it was supposed to be a pterosaur, you might not guess what it represented.

The main solution with #2 may have been this: The production team or teams came to realize that there was no actual copyright issue, at least if they handled it carefully. They could have come to realize that it was now in public domain, because of its age, or they could have managed to alter it and present it in such a way that it would not have any reasonable way allowing anyone to make a copyright claim on it. Yet there is another explanation.

I believe that the most likely possibility is this: The production teams came to realize that the men who were photographed would no longer be living, so release forms would not be needed from them. In addition, there would not be any issue with copyright, for Haxan would make limited use of the Ptp image, and E=MC² Digital could have further manipulated it. This would allow Haxan to invoke “fair use” with Ptp.

###

Apparently a real photo of a pterodactyl

If evidence shows that it was a physical object [pterodactyl or hoax], rather than only a digitally created non-real object, then we can look deeper into what that strange-looking thing might have been.

YouTube video on pterosaur eyewitnesses and Ptp

See how eyewitness testimony relates to video footage regarding modern living pterosaurs, a.k.a. “pterodactyls”. Also see the Ptp image whose origin comes not from modern actors or Civil War reenactors but from a photograph AFTER that war but before the beginning of the 20th century.

Missing Persons in USA – Attack from a Ropen?

I was 4 years old . . . I was heading to the house from the chicken house [at] about 8 a.m. when a large flying creature tried to grab me . . . The body (about the size of a Volkswagen bug) was covered in hair. . . . It had a beak with teeth . . .

Cognitive biases and modern pterosaurs

Dr. Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale, has commented on the bias called loss aversion: “We don’t like losing stuff . . .”

The Ptp “Civil War” photograph in context

In 2007, a businessman encountered a gigantic pterosaur as it flew in front of his car in Irvine, California, near the university . . .

Pterodactyl photo Ptp

. . . the image we have: apparent American soldiers, dressed like men of the Union army of the Civil War, at least with uniforms that suggest such to the casual observer of the apparently old photo.

The old flying dinosaur photo

I processed the Ptp image and cropped it to help people avoid distractions. Why did I alter the “Civil War flying-dinosaur photo”? I wanted to present it in a form that would most likely be closer to the original image than what we see in Ptp.

Apparent modern pterosaur in Mexico

I’ve been talking to my mother about the pterodactyl like creature she saw about 15 years ago. . . . in Lázaro Cardenas, Michoacán (Mexico) . . . Small pterodactyl like animal. Leathered. . . . Wingspan, as they weren’t completely open, could be a meter (bit more or less) . . .

Marfa Lights and flying predators

What kind of flying creature is the ropen? When eyewitnesses describe the features of this creature, it becomes obvious: The ropen is a large long-tailed pterosaur, AKA “pterodactyl.

The flying creature “ropen”

What do we know about the ropen? It is not confined to Papua New Guinea, which makes sense when we consider that the largest ones have wingspans greater than twenty feet. Flying creatures similar to the ropen of the southwest Pacific have been reported in Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America.

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.

###

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.

September 27, 2017

Evidences Jonathan Whitcomb was in Papua New Guinea in 2004

Jonathan Whitcomb in Lae, Papua New Guinea, standing by two natives

By the American cryptozoologist Jonathan D. Whitcomb

I don’t know of anyone who has disputed the reality of my expedition on Umboi Island in 2004, but a few skeptics have tried to pin the label “deception” on me and my associates or on those we have interviewed, and many Westerners have a tendency to come to disbelieve in historical events as time carries us further away from the past. The following is written as evidence that I really did go on an expedition in Papua New Guinea in 2004. See a post with my passport stamps if you will, as it offers additional evidence that I traveled to the southwest Pacific in that year.

A few weeks after my two-week expedition on Umboi Island, two other Americans explored there, Garth Guessman and David Woetzel, and some of the natives confirmed to them that I had indeed been on their island recently. In mid-2017, the native Rex Yapi spoke with Luke Paina, and my expedition in 2004 was confirmed. (Luke was my interpreter, bodyguard, and counselor during our expedition.) In addition, the village leaders Mark Kau, pronounced “cow,” and David Moke, pronounced “moe-kay,” can confirm I was there, if anybody wants to go to Opai Village and ask them.

Jonathan Whitcomb near Gomlongon Village, Umboi Island, 2004

Quoting from the fourth edition of my book Searching for Ropens and Finding God:

Preparing against foreign diseases and parasites went better. I purchased a generous supply of Malarone pills to reduce malaria risk, an expensive drug but with few side effects. Over several weeks, I was pumped up with standard inoculations: polio, diphtheria, tetanus, typhoid, and one or two kinds of hepatitis.

Jonathan Whitcomb’s prescription for malaria-prevention pills: Malarone

International Certificate of Vaccination (with the front page) for Whitcomb

Immunizations given – Long Beach (California) Health & Human Services

Boarding pass for Jonathan Whitcomb: Los Angeles to New Zealand

The flight from LAX to New Zealand was overnight and then some, and together with crossing the International Date Line put the date of Sep 21, 2004, for my arrival in the southwest Pacific (I left California on Sunday, Sep 19th).

Whitcomb’s boarding pass for Air New Zealand flight-NZ171 to Cairns, Australia

Air Niugini flight-PX-102 from Port Moresby to Lae on September 22nd

Currency exchange between U.S. dollars and kina, Sep 23, 2004, in Lae

New Expedition Expected Late in 2017

We hope that a new ropen expedition will begin on Umboi Island before the end of 2017, although no such search has happened there since 2004. Look for future details on this Live Pterosaur blog.

###

Flying Dinosaurs in Papua New Guinea

From 1994 through 2009, about nine Americans have intermittently (and usually two or three at a time) visited remote islands of Papua New Guinea, searching for flying creatures: living pterosaurs.

Ropen of Papua New Guinea

Duane Hodgkinson, now a flight instructor in Livingston, Montana, in 1944 was stationed near Finschhafen, in what was then called New Guinea.

Cryptozoology books for LDS readers

I offer the following three nonfiction books that I have written, each of them about evidences for non-extinct pterosaurs, what many Westerners call “pterodactyls.”

Living Pterosaurs

Ropen Sighting Near University of California at Irvine

Ropens, or flying dinosaurs

When a Child Sees a Pterosaur
Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs in Acambaro
Ropen-Pterosaur in Oregon and Washington?
. . . Expedition by Woetzel and Guessman
Ropen Only Extinct on Wikipedia
New Book on Living Pterodactyls
Destination Truth Ropen Episode
No “Ropen Myth” in Washington State
. . . Flying in Los Angeles County
Pterosaur on Destination Truth
Ropen Dismissed by Smithsonian
[and more about these flying creatures]

Expedition on Umboi Island

Paul Nation, the most active LP explorer
Garth Guessman, another active cryptozoologist
Hoaxes Fail to Explain U. S. Living-Pterosaur Reports

May 4, 2017May 30, 2017

Modern Pterosaurs and Confirmation Bias

By the cryptozoology author Jonathan D. Whitcomb

In my recently published nonfiction book Modern Pterosaurs, I referred to a critic who wrote a long online article “that attacks the possibility of extant pterosaurs: bampp (big anti-modern-pterosaur page—but you won’t find that label or phrase on the page itself).” That critic has edited bampp a lot in recent weeks, making it difficult for me to refer to it directly without committing myself to constantly updating my online writings with less relevant details. I now refer to him as Wampp (writer of the anti-modern-pterosaur page), and I acknowledge that he may end up revising bampp as I point out errors in it.

This skeptic has made many mistakes, and appears, to me, to have fallen into both confirmation bias and belief perseverance. As I cannot read his mind and he has not responded to my request for him to investigate the possibility of confirmation bias on his part, I’ll take the general case: Skeptics in general have been misguided by generations of indoctrination into 19th century dogmas, including the idea that all species of pterosaurs became extinct long ago. Yet I’ll begin with myself.

Did Whitcomb fall into confirmation bias?

Wampp has said, “his own approach and arguments seem to entail large doses of [confirmation bias],” when referring to me, yet he gives no explanation or example of it. I will do so, although he may not like it, for it points in a completely different direction from what he tries to portray in bampp.

Ptp photograph: folded wings of the animal: evidence that this was a real pterosaur

I began my passionate investigation, of eyewitness reports of apparent pterosaurs, in 2003, and yet I knew about the Ptp photograph for many years, possibly as long ago as 1968. Yet I never wrote, between 2003 to 2012, about my belief in its authenticity, for I had little confidence that it was a genuine photograph of a modern pterosaur.

If I was afflicted with “large doses” of confirmation bias from 2003 to 2012, why did I not believe this photo was authentic? To the best of my memory, when I first saw this image I was bothered by the wings, for they reminded me of canoes, or of the possibility that the soldiers had cut a canoe in half to make a model of a monstrous flying creature. I eventually thought about how long this photo may have been around. During my youth and young adult years, why had I read nothing about any scientist who had pronounced any support for evidence of a modern pterosaur, if the photo was authentic?

Before 2003, I had assumed that scientists were objective (at least some of them) and that a genuine photograph of a modern pterosaur would eventually be recognized and officially acknowledged as authentic, if the photo had been around for many decades. After I began my investigation in this narrow field of cryptozoology, I again saw the image. I looked at it with the negative bias I had from earlier years, however, and the apparent lack of support from any scientist led me into a confirmation bias. I saw that apparent lack of scientific support as if that in itself were evidence that I had been correct in thinking that the photograph was a hoax.

So yes, I did fall into a confirmation bias, but I have recovered, and how greatly it differs from what Wampp would have guessed! My conversion came, in part, from an email I received from a canoe expert: He told me most plainly that the wings in the Ptp photograph are not a canoe or two halves of a canoe.

Did Whitcomb fall into belief perseverance?

If I had been subject, at that time, to belief perseverance, I could have resisted the words of that canoe expert and held onto my previous opinion that the photograph was a hoax. Instead, I looked more closely at the image and soon phoned my friend and associate Cliff Paiva. I did not realize, or had forgotten, when the canoe expert contacted me, that Paiva had studied the Ptp photograph for a number of years and had confidence that it was authentic. After all the above had occurred, I concluded, in agreement with my associate in science, that Ptp has a genuine image of a modern pterosaur.

So no, I did not fall into belief perseverance at that time. Contrary to what skeptics might guess, it was not very convenient for me to publicly give my support to this photograph. My specialty in cryptozoology is reports of living pterosaurs in general, but the great majority of the sightings appeared to have been of ropens. To the point, the flying creature seen in Ptp appears to be a Pterodactyloid pterosaur rather than a modern Rhamphorhynchoid (ropen), although I’m not 100% positive about that. A minority of eyewitnesses report that kind of pterosaur, some even using the word “Pteranodon,” yet it would have been much easier for me if I had received a photo of a pterosaur that appeared more like a ropen. After all, my biggest book is Searching for Ropens and Finding God.

Do skeptics fall into confirmation bias?

I believe they do. When someone has been indoctrinated, for years or decades, into believing all dinosaurs and pterosaurs became extinct many millions of years ago, that person may be surprised at the Ptp photograph. But confirmation bias takes place when that person sees something out of the ordinary, perhaps in the way one or more of the soldiers is standing, and takes that as if it were evidence that the whole photo is a hoax.

In other words, skeptics want to believe in anything that seems to point to a hoax, even if it is far removed from the image of the animal itself. For example, one skeptic mentioned the darkness in the tree background when compared with the darkness in the shirt of one of the soldiers in Ptp. This was publicized as if it were evidence that the photo was a hoax. Yet anybody can look at other Civil War photographs and see many dark shirts of Union soldiers and see how much darker they are than areas in trees in the background.

Belief perseverance also comes into play in the thinking of skeptics. Some of them have, for years, proclaimed that no credible photograph exists with a modern pterosaur. After Clifford Paiva and I made our announcement, in January of 2017, at least one of the skeptics (Wampp) has fought against the mounting evidence being found, in Ptp, for its authenticity. He is still holding onto the 19th century dogmas that my associates and I consider to be unscientific. I call that belief perseverance.

Conclusion

Both confirmation bias and belief perseverance appear to have been involved in regard to the Ptp photograph, but in ways that skeptics probably have not thought of.

###

Is it a Hoax, the Civil War Pterosaur Photo?

The scientist Clifford Paiva has uncovered additional evidence that the Civil War pterosaur photograph called “Ptp” is indeed as old as it appears at first glance: It was probably taken before about the year 1870.

Ptp Pteranodon Photo

That brings up the subject of confirmation bias.

Scott Norman and the Pterodactyl Photograph

This coming July will be the ten-year anniversary of Scott Norman’s sighting of an apparent nocturnal Pteranodon in California. . . . he used the word “Pteranodon” in his report of his mid-2007 sighting, and the head of the animal in the Ptp photograph definitely looks like it belongs to a Pteranodon or a similar pterosaur.

Civil War Pterodactyl Photo

Astonishing discovery by two scientists: Clifford Paiva and Jonathan Whitcomb

Confirmation Bias (Science Daily)

In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias (or confirmatory bias) is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions . . .

Confirmation bias and the Ptp photo

When Americans see something in Ptp that looks unusual to them, like in the way one or more soldiers are standing or in the way one soldier’s shoe is on the beak of the apparent animal, they allow that to turn them away in disbelief, thinking that they have found evidence that the animal itself is a hoax of some kind. That is confirmation bias.

Purchase your own copy of the nonfiction Modern Pterosaurs

From online booksellers’ book description pages:

First edition – This fully supports the literal Flood of Noah in the Bible, although the genre is nonfiction cryptozoology. For countless years, an old photograph has been seen on the internet, and some persons report they had seen it in a book decades before there was an internet. Now two scientists share their astonishing discovery . . .