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.

The Wikipedia post for “kongamato” includes “the area concerned is advertised as a prime birdwatching site,” bringing up the question of why birdwatchers do not report living pterosaurs in Africa. Wikipedia gives no answer, implying that the possibility of a live pterosaur in Africa is therefore doubtful. From Wikipedia’s “birdwatching” page, we learn that many birds “are more readily detected and identified by ear.” That makes sense if many birds are often hidden by vegetation, and they are. The photos on that page make even more sense, for birdwatchers are watching in daylight, when they can see. The point? Many reports of living long-tailed pterosaurs suggest that the creatures fly at night.

But the Wikipedia implication includes no hint of just what “area” is involved. It covers at least hundreds of square miles of remote wilderness, mostly far removed from any organized birdwatching activity. The commenter who inserted the sentence about birdwatching fails to see what is needed here. Hundreds of millions of dollars would need to be raised, to bring every birdwatcher in North America and Great Britain together in Africa; night-vision equipment would need to be used for countless weeks. After all that, if there were no living-pterosaurs reported by any birdwatchers, then the commenter could proclaim that no pterosaurs appeared while they were all beating the bushes.

The implication has another problem. Birdwatchers need to be credible (according to traditional interpretations of “credible”), otherwise nobody will pay attention to their reports. And what credibility rating does Wikipedia give to reports of living pterosaurs? The birdwatchers who receive most attention come from Western countries, and reporting (to Westerners) a living pterosaur in Africa (instead of a Red-billed hornbill) gets you medical attention. Birdwatchers could very well be watching living pterosaurs in Africa, but they are more likely to report what they see to knowledgeable natives, not to fellow birdwatchers.

No “pterosaur” category can be found on any birdwatcher’s report form, and no lack of pterosaur sightings by organized birdwatchers counts against the many reported sightings of living pterosaurs. This Wikipedia implication could just as well be used as if evidence against the existence of bats (or against UFO’s or against Fourth-of-July fireworks displays).

Since Paul Nation’s 2006 video recording of two lights on a ridge deep in the mainland of Papua New Guinea, cryptozoologists have a new name for the ropen: “indava.” It’s not that everything about the glowing indava is identical to ropen lights; indeed, the indava seems to glow for many more seconds than the apparently giant ropen that flies between mountains on Umboi Island. But both creatures have been described, by local natives, as giant flying creatures.

Evelyn Cheesman appeared to have no thought about pterosaurs when she observed the strange glowing objects that flew near the top of a mountain ridge. The British entomologist would surely have been interested in the explanation of “large flying animal” if the local villagers had said anything; but they were reluctant to talk about the lights. Nevertheless, Cheeman wrote about the mystery in her book, The Two Roads of Papua (published in 1935). Her observations were a few mountains to the north of Paul Nation’s later observations.