Month: January 2012

image_pdfimage_print
Posted on

An Old Cryptozoology Book

image_pdfimage_print

I’m sure I’ve read this book at least once, in my youth long ago. On the Track of Unknown Animals, by Bernard Heuvelmans, is now considered a classic in cryptozoology, originally in French but often encountered in its 1958 or 1959 English edition with its 120 sketches, a well-crafted assortment of strange creatures and a few monsters. Yesterday I found a library copy and took notes on sightings of apparent pterosaurs. This classic now deserves quoting, again.

classic book of cryptozoology

Chapter twenty-one, “Kongamato, the Last Flying Dragon,” begins by quoting Charles Kingsley (The Water-Babies): “People call them pterodactyls; but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.” On page 485 the author digs into the meat of a live pterosaur in Africa.

In 1923 Frank H. Melland published an account of his travels entitled In Witchbound Africa . . . [It included] rather vague rumours about a much-feared animal called “kongamato,” said to live in the Jiundu swamps in the north-west corner of No. Rhodesia near the frontier of the Bengian Congo and Angola. . . . The natives told him that it was a bird, but not exactly a bird, more like a lizard with wings of skin like a bat’s . . . the beast’s wingspan was between four and seven feet . . . it had no feathers at all . . . [with skin] bare and smooth, and its beak was full of teeth. . . . he showed the natives pictures . . . They immediately [pointed out] the Pterodactyl, excitedly muttering “kongamato!”

Amazon gives two prices for this out-of-print cryptozoology book, On the Track of Unknown Animals: $135.00 and $339.66, revealing its collectible status.

Kongamato or Pterodactyl of Africa

The kongamato is sometimes compared with the ropen of Papua New Guinea or the long-tailed pterosaur seen in Eastern Cuba in the mid-20th century. This kind of cryptid has been reported in many parts of the world, including North America, Australia, Europe, and Africa.

Kongamato Crossing the Atlantic?

One species of crane flies over the Himalayan Mountains regularly, sometimes at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Large nocturnal pterosaurs, under the right wind conditions, could cross the Atlantic, from Africa. As more sighting reports come in from Africa and North America, we need to look at the possibility that some of the flying creatures on different sides of the Atlantic may be closely related or even the same species.

Books About Live Pterosaurs in North America

It seems we now have three nonfiction books about extant pterosaurs in North America . . . These paperback books are Big Bird (by Ken Gerhard), Live Pterosaurs in America (by Jonathan Whitcomb, third edition), and Bird From Hell (by Gerald McIsaac, second edition).

Books on extant pterosaurs are not so rare as they were when On the Track of Unknown Animals was first published.

*****************************************************************

Ad

Third edition of "Live Pterosaurs in America"

Get the details lacking on the online blog posts and web pages. Buy Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, by the nonfiction author who interviews eyewitnesses from around the world, the live-pterosaur expert Jonathan David Whitcomb. Get the facts, eyewitness accounts from many U.S. states: California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, Kansas, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, New York, and other states.

From a review of the second edition of this cryptozoology book, on Amazon, by “stevie” (the third edition is slightly expanded, even better than the second edition):

“This is an updated review of the book and I am changing my rating to 5 stars. This book has been on my shelf for almost a year now. I pick it up every now and then and a part of me becomes more impressed by the book every time. . . .

“Whitcomb painstakingly reviews every account for credibility and reason. This man is not a crank. He tries to weed out would be hoaxes and miss-identification. This is not a guy looking to create evidence to confirm his own beliefs. On top of this, I have great respect for a guy who follows his dreams so passionately. He has traveled to Papua New Guinea to search for the creature there and this book is somewhat of a sequel . . .

“I do believe the author tried hard to deliver these stories and was very good at it. This is well written and very hard to put down.”

Posted on

Nocturnal Pterosaurs in San Diego

image_pdfimage_print

How fortunate that I noticed that email message! An eyewitness reported a pterosaur sighting in San Diego, California (in my own backyard, compared with Papua New Guinea where I started searching for pterosaurs in 2004). Two flying creatures were seen at about 8:00 p.m., on November 4, 2011, near the junction of two freeways (Hwy 94 and Hwy 805). In his own words (after some English corrections):

“I was at my friend’s house. Well it was a really clear night, because it had rained the day before. We were standing in the street and I couldn’t keep my eyes off the stars, they were really bright. Then from the west came this dark object in the sky. It was right over us about, I say, 40 yards [high]. As it got closer we both yelled, “What the hell is that?” It looked like a huge bird. It was gliding . . . I was stuck looking at it the entire time. I began yelling at it, then it turned around and it stood still in the air. It was flapping its wings while it was there. Then outta nowhere here came another one. It was waiting for it; as it got close to the other one, they both went east.”

From looking at all his emails, I believe that “outta nowhere here came another one” is a figure of speech and that the second creature flew from the direction of the ocean like the first one had.

I later talked with the eyewitness by phone, verifying his credibility (I found nothing in his words or manner of speaking that would suggest the possibility of a hoax). He varied in his estimate of the flying height: thirty yards instead of forty yards. The tail was long and straight. With one of the flying creatures, he noticed a movement that he interpreted as evidence for the animal’s breathing. I asked the man to send me the other eyewitness’s phone number, if his friend would agreed to be interviewed.

This account is consistent with the concept that modern pterosaurs are mostly nocturnal, generally flying at night much more than in daylight. Why are some sightings during the day? They are probably the exceptions, suggesting that the animals can sometimes be disturbed from a daytime sleep, and a severe disturbance may cause a nocturnal flying creature to take flight in daylight, when humans are much more likely to notice them. (Only once do I recall seeing a wild owl. It was flying over a freeway near Long Beach, California, in daylight. Most owls are nocturnal, but people rarely notice and recognize them in the dark.)

If anyone else has seen an apparent pterosaur in the San Diego area, please contact me, Jonathan Whitcomb.

San Diego, California

Books about live pterosaurs in North America

It seems we now have three nonfiction books about extant pterosaurs in North America, so let’s take a look at some basic facts (before I insert an ad for my own book). These paperback books are Big Bird (by Ken Gerhard), Live Pterosaurs in America (by Jonathan Whitcomb, third edition), and Bird From Hell (by Gerald McIsaac, second edition).

Pterodactyls in San Diego

According to one of the two eyewitnesses of the large flying creatures, they had long tails and wingspans around 20-30 feet, as they flew only about a hundred feet above San Diego, California, in November of 2011. The tails were long and straight.

Hoax Potential and Pterosaur Wingspan

It appears perfectly harmonious with the idea that at least most modern species experience growth throughout lifespan, with extremely large individuals being rare. The degree of rarity should be much greater than shown, for the largest modern pterosaurs should be noticed by eyewitnesses much more frequently than smaller ones; small pterosaurs can easily be ignored, for they often are not noticed as anything unusual enough to cause eyewitnesses to take a closer look and see that it is no bird.

Jonathan Whitcomb is a pterosaur expert, not in the sense of knowing many details about fossils: He interviews eyewitnesses of apparent modern pterosaurs that are observed around the world.

Posted on

The Alchemist and Live Pterosaurs in America

image_pdfimage_print

How can the nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America be related to Paulo Coelho’s worldwide best-selling allegorical fiction The Alchemist? Certainly not in book sales, and it’s not a direct relationship; it’s in what Coelho calls a “personal calling.” I don’t want to give away an important surprise for those who have not yet read The Alchemist, but it’s in how something in a shepherd boy’s quest resembles something in the history of living-pterosaur investigations since the late twentieth century (traveling back and forth, literally).

The Alchemist (a different kind of relationship between the two books)

Before Januaruy 17, 2012, the Wikipedia page on The Alchemist said, “It has sold more than 65 million copies in more than 150 countries.” On that day, Jonathan Whitcomb, a volunteer Wikipedia editor and author of the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America, noticed that figure on book sales of The Alchemist. He had just finished reading the book, delighting in its message and delivery, but the “65 million” reminded him of two things.

The back cover of the English paperback that Whitcomb had just read referred to the number of copies sold of all the books by Paulo Coelho, not just The Alchemist. It was “more than 65 million copies in 150 countries.” It looked like too much for a coincidence . . .

Sixty-Five Million

Coelho’s own web page reveals that twenty-one million copies had been sold worldwide. I believe that the back cover of the paperback I had read was correct, that the “sixty-five million” was the total number of sales of all Coelho’s novels (not just this one short novel) up until that paperback printing of the English version of The Alchemist (a few years ago). . . .

On rare occasions I edit Wikipedia pages, and on January 17, 2012, I edited The Alchemist page, to correct that mistake. So why think of it? To most ordinary persons, who will never sell any millions of anything or be famous for anything, twenty-one million seems practically the same as sixty-five million. The problem lies in casual thinking: Too many of us rely on others to think for us, and we do so too often, too much, and in matters too important.

Front cover of the book The Alchemist

Jonathan Whitcomb is a pterosaur expert in the sense that he compiles data from eyewitness reports of apparent pterosaurs that are observed in many countries of the world.

Posted on

Feathers and no Major Hoax Involvement

image_pdfimage_print

To begin, I have never declared that, of all the reported sightings of apparent living pterosaurs, not one was a hoax. The following question is much better: “Did hoaxes play any significant role in these many reports?” That question can be answered decisively: “No.” It comes from careful analysis of the data of ninety-eight sighting reports, compiled in late-2011, and it confirms an earlier analysis.

Setting aside the wingspan-estimate statistics for the moment (perhaps a stronger disproof of the conjecture of a significant number of hoaxes), let’s consider the featherlessness concept, for we now have more sightings and more data to analyze. Why consider how sure eyewitnesses have been about the lack of feathers in the flying creatures? A hoaxer would have no reason to show doubt about the lack of feathers, for that would be essential to convince somebody that a pterosaur had been observed, therefore, if there were many hoaxers, we would expect a great majority of reports to include a sure conviction of featherlessness. Actual sightings, however, would be expected to have been in various visual conditions making it likely that a significant percentage of reports would indicate uncertainty about featherlessness. (Reports in which feathers were more likely than no-feathers were not considered possible pterosaurs sightings and were not included in this study of ninety-eight eyewitness sightings.)

Of those eyewitnesses giving some indication of the probability of the lack of feathers, 43.5% reported definitely-no-feathers and 56.5% reported only-probably-no-feathers. (Thirty-six of the overall ninety-eight reports gave no indication one way or the other.) This in itself is solid evidence that no significant number of hoaxes were involved in these ninety-eight reports.

Pterosaur Wingspan Estimates and no Hoax

If a significant number of hoaxers made some of these fifty-seven estimates, and a significant number of those hoaxers were trying to portray Rhamphorhynchoids, there would have been a steeper decline above seven feet. But in fact, 26% of reports involved wingspans estimated at 9-13 feet, completely out of line for this particular hoax conjecture.

Hoax of Pterosaurs

With many eyewitnesses, with sightings in many American states, I have found something interesting about reports of featherless appearances. A hoax would be expected to include certainty of no-feathers, for why would a hoaxer want to leave any room for doubt? But the overall descriptions in the many sighting reports I have examined show something different: The definitely-no-feathers are out-numbered by the probably-no-feathers.