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Why do Pterodactyls Attack People?

YouTube thumbnail for a modern-pterodactyl video

By Jonathan D. Whitcomb

On December 2, 2023, I uploaded to YouTube a video that now looks like it could become viral or at least attain the rank of “mini-viral”. If you’d like to watch it while remaining on this blog, click below and you’ll remain on this post:

Without the late Brent Sawin interviewing Frank Sicilia, we would not have this important video footage of this eyewitness and his testimony. Thank you to all who made possible this disclosure to the world.

Three cousins were fishing at night in Pennsylvania when they were attacked by a huge flying creature. Frank estimated the wingspan: between twenty and twenty-two feet.

It hovered for a short while before diving down toward them, and those dives numbered at least twelve to fifteen times. One of the fishermen left, and the other two, including Frank, remained with their fishing lines and kept whacking the legs and lower body of the flying creature each time it came down.

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Preschool Girl Attacked in Oklahoma

The eyewitness contacted me and related the terrifying details: When she was a small child, in daylight as she was walking to her house in rural Oklahoma, a huge hairy flying creature, with teeth in its mouth, dived down towards her. Fortunately, she ducked down to the ground just in time and escaped.

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Pterodactyl Sightings in the U.S.A.

It was the summer of 1977 and I was 17 at the time. I was fishing at a gravel pit in Heyworth, IL and the dawn had just [broken]. . . . As I stood there a creature glided down from my right to just above water level directly in front of me, no more than 50′ from where I was. . . .

I realized this was no ordinary bird but appeared more like a featherless reptile.

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Ropen Danger to Children – Big Flying Creature

Is it possible that a ropen with a wingspan of about 16-18 feet could have carried away a two-year-old boy in southern Arizona, in 1945? About 24 hours after his disappearance, he was found alive, sleeping in a dug-out hole in the ground 15 miles from where he went missing.

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Pterodactyls ALIVE in the USA!

Apparent modern living pterosaurs, a.k.a. “pterodactyls” or “dinosaur birds”, have been seen in North America for centuries, including sightings in the United States of America. The following are the locations covered . . .

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New Pterodactyl Sighting Reports

These two encounters are described here in this video on the “Protect Animal Life” channel. First was a terrifying pterodactyl sighting in Washington state, with Mom and Dad suddenly realizing that their whole family could be in danger. Second was an encounter in Topeka, Kansas, and the wingspan was as wide as the street.

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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, in the United States.

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Loss Aversion and Living Pterosaurs

I now write about a cognitive bias, loss aversion, that appears to have had a major influence over a critic of my research. Since I am diving into a potential weakness in this man’s thinking, I do not mention his name.

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Flying Dinosaur in Canada – I saw a Pterodactyl

. . . here is one such account of an encounter with such a flying creature (in part): “I saw something similar to a pterosaur in Maple Ridge, British Columbia Canada. It was approximately 1 a.m., in the summer of either 2013 or 2014. . . . What appeared to be a pterosaur flew past, it was high up in the sky, and I just spotted the GIANT wings”.

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Video About Support for Modern Pterosaurs on YouTube

eyewitness (portrayed) of a modern pterosaur in Arkansas

By Jonathan Whitcomb

Many videos on YouTube are positive about the possibility that not all “pterodactyls” became extinct millions of years ago. On November 24, 2023, a video was uploaded on the YT channel Protect Animal Life, and it directs viewers to six other videos that are on five channels:

Pterodactyl or Flying Dinosaur NOT Extinct

If you would like to watch it on this WordPress platform, click below:

By clicking on the above image, you can stay on this blog (Live Pterosaur) but still watch the video. You’ll even remain here on this post.

The following are the six videos mentioned in the new video (for links to them, see the bottom of this blog, below the “###”):

“Legend or Lie? Tombstone Thunderbird”

This is the least supportive of the concept that one or more species of pterosaurs may still be living. In fact, if you watch only the first two thirds or so of it, you’ll miss the surprise near the end: Although the newspaper article in The Tombstone Epitaph may have a number of falsehoods, it may be based upon an actual event with two ranchers who tried following a large flying creature before their horses refused follow it.

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eyewitness (portrayed) of a modern pterosaur in Arkansas

Ropen of Arkansas Reenactment Living Pterosaur Pterodactyl

Jacob Guerra introduces this video, and after providing basic facts about the state of Arkansas he gets into a dramatic presentation of an encounter a lady had with a gigantic flying creature that flew in front of her pickup truck on a small bridge in a rural area.

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three men in a Youtube video

Pterosaurs Seen in the United States

Explorers and cryptozoologists Milt Marcy and Peter Beach explain how they witnessed bioluminescent flying creatures at the Yakima River in Washington State and an apparent living pterosaur in Papua New Guinea.

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Ropen or Pterodactyl? American Eyewitness Talks

The American World War II veteran Duane Hodgkinson was interviewed, in 2005, by the cryptozoologist Garth Guessman. The resulting video (on the YouTube channel Protect Animal Life) is one of the most popular on YT for supporting the possibility of modern living pterosaurs. The sighting itself was in New Guinea in 1944.

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Jonathan Whitcomb explains the skepticism he had in 1968

Flying Dinosaur or Pterodactyl Sightings

The investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb explains how he can understand the perspective of a typical skeptic: In about 1968, he was a skeptic himself, although he now firmly believes in modern pterosaurs. His sister, who was in high school at the time, had a friend who declared that she had seen a gigantic “pterodactyl” that flew up into the foothills just north of Altadena, California.

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Pterodactyl or Ropen on Camera on Flying Dinosaur

Cynthia Lee, in Raleigh, North Carolina, recorded with her cell phone camera two large ropens. Those flying creatures were close enough that she was able to record both of them while the city bus she was on began to pull away. The apparent pterosaur that was flying much lower was being chased by a bird.

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Pterosaurs Seen in the United States

This YouTube video is on the channel Dino Discovery. Milt Marcy and Peter Beach are interviewed concerning their pterosaur sightings and investigation into these flying creatures in the United States and in Papua New Guinea.

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Ropen or Pterodactyl? American Eyewitness Talks

In this YouTube video, the flight instructor Duane Hodgkinson reveals what he and his army buddy saw in 1944 in the southwest Pacific: a “HUGE” “pterodactyl” that flew overhead, just west of Finschhafen. The YouTube channel is titled “Jonathan Whitcomb”.

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Pterodactyl or Ropen on Camera on Flying Dinosaur

This is one of many videos on Whitcomb’s YouTube channel “Protect Animal Life”. It mostly covers two “pterodactyl” sightings in the United States. One of those encounters was in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Flying Dinosaur or Pterodactyl Sightings

This is also on the “PAL” channel (Protect Animal Life): Jonathan Whitcomb’s confession that he disbelieved a sighting report when he was young (in about 1968). The encounter was in Altadena, California, a little north of Pasadena.

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Legend or Lie? Tombstone Thunderbird

This YouTube video leaves a crack in the door for believing that an apparent pterosaur flew near Tombstone, Arizona, in the late 19th century. “KGUN9” is the name of the YouTube channel (Whitcomb is not connected with it).

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Ropen of Arkansas Reenactment Living Pterosaur Pterodactyl

The main point in this YouTube video is the sighting of a huge pterosaur that flew over a small bridge in rural Arkansas years ago. The YT channel is THE ROPEN NETWORK (not owned or controlled by Jonathan Whitcomb).

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Missing Persons in USA – Attack from a Ropen?

Jonathan Whitcomb with sketch of a pterosaur

By Jonathan David Whitcomb

The following Youtube video covers three possible “pterodactyl” attacks against children, during the past 80 years, in the United States. (Click the image below to watch the video while remaining on this blog post.) The states involved were Arizona, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Ropen Danger to Children – Big Flying Creature (Youtube site)

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Western Oklahoma

The following are some of the words of the eyewitness (Sara) from Oklahoma. The encounter was a few miles south of Cordell. (edited slightly for English)

In 1977, in sw Oklahoma, . . . I was 4 years old. My older siblings just left off on the bus for school. 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 wings where slick like a bat. The body (about the size of a Volkswagen bug) was covered in hair. . . . It had a beak with teeth and I turned . . . and screamed. It missed me and it squawked a mean squawk. I kept looking up as I ran in the house.

Sara also reported to me that the huge flying creature had teeth in its beak, and she knew, even at only four years old, that it was not normal for a bird to have teeth.

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Eastern Texas

Now for the words of a grandmother in Texas, a few years ago:

My grandchild was outside playing just before dark at twilight. This grey reddish, giant looking bird, with no feathers, tried to take him. I grabbed him and ran inside the house. My grandchild didn’t see the danger. He kept on playing inside. It’s been three years since that [happened]. I never mentioned it [until someone asked me if I had seen this kind of flying creature]. I thought, no one would believe it . . .

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Another Oklahoma Pterosaur Sighting

I’m a truck driver and I was headed eastbound [on July 17, 2012] on I-40 about 30 to 40 miles west of Oklahoma city around 2:30 p.m. I was [on] the phone with my wife when I saw something I had never seen before flying southward in front of me . . .

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New Mexico and Texas

I live in central N.M.. Fourteen years ago, in [Socorro], N.M., me and a close friend, who now has a masters in biology, were hiking during the midday sun at [a] box canyon . . . and saw a large flying animal. . . . It had a 20-30 foot wingspan . . .

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Missing Persons & Pterodactyl Sightings – Ropen?

This Youtube video, on the channel “Protect Animal Life”, features Frank Sicilia, who was attacked by an apparent “pterodactyl” while he was fishing on the bank of the Delaware River.

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Missing persons and pterodactyls

From I can tell so far, from reading his book, most persons in these cases are never found, alive or dead. When a person or a body is found, it is often miles away and where that person or body should not have been found. It’s often at a much higher elevation, even on or near a mountain peak or ridge or it’s a body at the base of a cliff.

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Pterodactyl Attacks in British Columbia

This horse was not killed by a bear, a wolf, or a cougar. . . . None of these animals carries part of their dinner to the top of nearby trees, and they certainly have no reason to break branches on those trees.

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Modern pterodactyl danger

Almost never will a modern ropen or pterodactyl attack a person, yet those less-common times when someone is attacked—those deserve attention.

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Declaration on Living Pterosaurs

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.

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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”

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“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.

car crash on the sci-fi TV episode "Coelacanth This!"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.

FreakyLinks TV episode with photo of a pterodactylMost 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.

six soldiers are right-handed; one is left-handedProper 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?

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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.

comparing two photos of possible modern pterodactylsThe 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!”:

  1. The AP photo was found to be poor in quality
  2. 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.

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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.

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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.

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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 . . .

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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 . . .”

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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 . . .

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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.

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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.

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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) . . .

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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.

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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.

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