"Live Pterosaurs in America" by Jonathan Whitcomb

Live Pterosaurs in America (2009, nonfiction) is still more popular on Amazon.com than most of the many nonfiction cryptozoology books. Here is the main text of the title page:

Reports of giant flying “ptero-dactyls” in American skies—these have floated around the internet for years; but they had been mostly devoid of interview details. Until about 2005, even when an eyewitness was named, the interviewer was often anonymous; even when an eyewitness was credible, and the account published in a newspaper, the story was ridiculed, discouraging others who had also seen strange flying creatures. Where could eyewitnesses go? Who would believe them?

Since the two ropen expeditions of 2004, in Papua New Guinea, more Americans have become exposed to the living-pterosaur investigations and the many resulting eyewitness interviews. Many web pages have sprung up, many of them by explorers themselves. But despite other web pages, by scornful critics who never went anywhere and never interviewed anyone, these two expeditions, and those that preceded and followed them, are causing an awakening, the birth of a new perspective about extinction-assumptions regarding pterosaurs.

How are sightings in the United States related to those in the Southwest Pacific? How do some apparent nocturnal pterosaurs pertain to bats (and how are bats irrelevant)? How could modern living pterosaurs have escaped scientific notice? These mysteries have slept in the dark, beyond the knowledge of almost all Americans . . . until now.

A common objection to the idea of living pterosaurs is simply “they all became extinct millions of years ago.” But why should anyone believe that extinction idea? In Western countries, in particular the United States, universal extinctions of dinosaurs and pterosaurs is drilled into us from kindergarden onwards. No reasons for total extinction are offered, only continuous indoctrination.

We need to listen with open minds to eyewitnesses who have seen creatures that cannot easily be explained as non-pterosaurs. This will eventually free us to discover and classify modern living pterosaurs.

With all the web pages, blogs, and forum postings about possible pterosaurs reported in Papua New Guinea, the United States, and Africa, what about other continents? Well, Europe has its share, although I suspect that several things cause fewer eyewitnesses to share their experiences with me. Let’s consider excerpts from a few reports.

In the Netherlands, about five kilometers northwest of Amsterdam, a number of years ago, on a hot summer afternoon, a featherless creature flew “coming out of the city and flying to a big canal.” The wingspan was estimated at 2 meters; the length, 1.5. The creature “had little hands on the front of his wings, he was dark elephant grey.”

In Spain, “near los desert del palmas,” at a music festival one summer night in 2007, flying about 30-40 feet over the heads of a few music fans at the edge of the festivities, was a creature that had, instead of feathers, the color and apparent texture of suede. The eyewitness saw that it was unlike a bat for it had a long thin tail. He told me, “I haven’t been able to find any species of fruit bat ANYWHERE that has a long, straight tail . . . I’d recognise a fruitbat if I saw one.”

In England, in 1987 or 1988, a ten-year-old girl saw “a glowing object which seemed to open up to what I thought looked like a dragon.” She was shocked and told nobody about it for many years. She told me, “I do still remember what I saw and think that it may have been a pterodactyl that decided to ‘glow.’”

These three eyewitnesses have one thing in common: extreme hesitancy to talk about what they saw. This fear to disclose a sighting may be even greater than a similar fear in the United States.

Welcome, RM-2

I’m grateful to this new subscriber, from the UK, who has been active in cryptozoological research (he recently gave me important information on another unrelated sighting report). By the way, Namibia, on the southwest coast of Africa (much desert), is the second most sparsely populated country in the world, according to Wikipedia. [Blog Intro]