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.

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.

This post, number 101 on Live Pterosaur, should list the best of the first one hundred posts, and it will; but first we go to the Santa Clarita Valley, California, in particular in the 1880′s. From a 2007 article in the Signal newspaper (of Santa Clarita Valley):

The creature, according to Lyon, was “as big as a horse, had wings like an oversize bat, big bulgy eyes the size of mushmelons that glowed like Southern Pacific headlights, and a long, woolly tail.”

Well, most Californians, at least in the twenty-first century, would doubt that all those description details would be accurate. But what if they were exaggerations or modifications of an actual flying creature in California, in the 1880′s? What if some of those descriptions had some basis in fact? Try to think of a scientifically-classified bird or bat, in California, that could have been anything like what was seen; regardless of the degree of exaggeration, it seems more like something unclassified, pterosaur or not.

Now to some of the best posts on Live Pterosaur, from September of 2008, to August of 2011.

Hoax Insinuations

Why should a modern living pterosaur be very much like most of the pterosaurs that left fossils that paleontologists have already discovered? This post briefly illustrates this point.

At least one species of Rhamphorhynchoid (long-tailed pterosaur) known from fossils, the Scaphognathus crassirostris, did have a head crest. The presence of a head crest on a ropen (or modern long-tailed pterosaur) is hardly a sign of a hoax; how many potential hoaxers would know about that fossil? . . .

Ridicule from skeptics comes from our adopting the obvious interpretation of those eyewitness descriptions: a modern living pterosaur. “Unlike pterosaur fossils” is not just inaccurate: It is irrelevant.

Kongamato and Bird Watching in Africa

[Regarding sightings of possible pterosaurs in one area of Africa] 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).

Cuba Sighting of 1971

I did interview him by phone just a few weeks ago, and I found his response to my surprise phone call truly enlightening: He was highly credible in his manner of speaking and his answers to my unexpected questions. This mature man has not been playing a hoax for four decades, for everything points to an honest reporting of a real experience.

American Ghost Lights

Prosecution: To get to the point, some time ago you scared some people in Gurdon.

GL: Sorry, sir. I meant no harm.

Prosecution: Did you know that they thought they’d seen a ghost?

GL: Heck, I aint no ghost. I didn’t even see ‘em ’til they started a-hollerin’.

Prosecution: But just one night earlier, in that same neighborhood, near the railroad tracks, you were involved in a killing weren’t you?

Defense Attorney: Objection: irrevelant.

Judge: Sustained.

Objective Investigations

When Woetzel had his sighting one night, he described the strange flying light that he had observed. He did not imagine any shape to the light, no form that would suggest a modern pterosaur. He only reported what he had seen.

When Jacob Kepas climbed up a mountain ridge with a local guide, their first viewing location was insufficient for Kepas to be sure that what he was observing was a large winged-creature. Only after the guide had climbed up to a higher viewing location was it ascertained to be what they had suspected.

. . . when Paul Nation videotaped the two strange lights on the ridge, he did not say that he had observed the shapes of two pterosaurs. He described the lights that he had seen; he admitted that no shape was observed.

Fossils are Evidence of Life, not Extinction

Darren Naish . . . believes that there are “no indications from the fossil record that pterosaurs survived beyond the end of the Cretaceous . . .” He also proclaims that “the fossil record convincingly demonstrates that pterosaurs became extinct . . .” What he fails to include in his long post, however, is an explanation for how any fossils can demonstrate the extinction of even one species, let alone all species of a general type.

Both paleontologists concentrate on old questionable accounts, avoiding the critical eyewitness sightings that most heavily support the concept of modern extant pterosaurs.

How Absurd! A Frigate Bird!

I’ve lost count of how many times I have responded to that video footage, explaining that it does not show any ropen but only a common ocean-going bird.

I am concerned that some of the 176,000 viewers may have been mislead in some way, for that Frigate Bird looks nothing like the descriptions that I have received from eyewitnesses of the ropen, regardless of what beach is in that video. Ropens are nocturnal creatures, for the most part, appearing dark and featherless, not with a white throat-chest common for some Frigate Birds

Smithsonian Attacks Ropen “Myth”

I came across a Smithsonian blog post by Brian Switek. I do not question the honesty of Mr. Switek; in fact I agree with his point that an amateur video of a Frigate bird is not evidence for a living pterosaur, namely the cryptid called “ropen.” Nevertheless, a number of problems appear and they are serious.

Switek gives no evidence against any of this, apparently only mentioning the religious nature of Woetzel’s beliefs, as if that were enough to dismiss his ideas about living pterosaurs. I suspect Switek has never thought about Isaac Newton’s relationship to this, for Newton had religious beliefs similar to those of Woetzel.

Bulverism Revisited

When someone publishes a web site with a URL that includes the words “stupid” and “lies,” and the point of the site is to ridicule those who promote the idea of living dinosaurs or living pterosaurs, “bulverism” probably fits . . .

Is it reasonable that everyone who disagrees with us, on any subject, must have unworthy motivations? Why should the subject of living pterosaurs be different, with only believers having an “agenda?”

Evolution, Religion, and the Extinction of Pterosaurs

My associates and I are not members of the same church; I even doubt if two of us are members of the same religious organization, although we are Christians. But our critics seem to have missed a critical point about the possibility of religious bias: The eyewitnesses make the case for modern living pterosaurs, and they are of various faiths and non-faiths, various opinions about evolution, various cultural backgrounds, various countries, and various native languages.

Over several years, I have noticed a common weakness in criticisms of our investigations. Those eyewitness reports that we have upheld as critical and most credible to our work—those have mostly been ignored by most critics. Why do those critics write paragraph after paragraph about old sighting reports that neither we . . . nor our critics consider very credible? . . . Why not compare at least two reports that we have presented as critical? The only reasonable explanation for that neglect seems to me to be that critics want only to dismiss, as quickly as possible, any thought about modern living pterosaurs; they are not searching for the truth about that possibility.

From the nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America, we read of a startling sighting in a remote California desert:

We were sitting in the late afternoon shade of a ridge, on lawn chairs, enjoying the solitude and peace and quiet of the desert when it passed over. I caught the sight of it with the corner of my eye and looked up. It was soaring along the side of a plateau not far from us . . . I remember saying ‘. . . that looks just like a Taradactyl!’ . . . My friend looked in the binoculars and said it looked like one but it had to be a kite or something because they were extinct. . . . I grabbed the binoculars . . . What I saw was large and very much alive. Its hue was close to the hue of the desert sand but more the color of rust. Its skin, I say skin because there were no feathers, . . . looked like dull leather sort of dusty looking. . . . The back of the head was pointed.

[From page 16 of the first edition of the book] I interviewed this eyewitness and questioned her about details. She answered thoroughly, demonstrating her credibility. I have communicated with her since that 2007 interview and she maintains the truthfulness of her account; I have no reason to doubt her experience. This sighting seems to have been of a Pterodactyloid pterosaur, for it had no tail: only “a nub where a tail would be.”

Occasionally I encounter an objection like “if pterosaurs were still living, we would see them flying around.” Several answers pop up, suggesting the critics who ask that kind of question have failed to think deeply about it. The main problem is circular reasoning, for the objection is an attempted refutation of eyewitness sightings: “They could not have seen a living pterosaur because they are no longer living <–> Pterosaurs are no longer living because nobody has seen one.”

Over many years, I have flown from and to airports in many cities. I love to gaze out the window soon after taking off and soon before landing. During all those observations, however, I don’t recall observing any human, not even one, although I look for people. It’s not that humans are extinct; they just have a shape that makes them difficult to see from above (most of them), and few humans spend much time walking near airports.

I’ve lived more than half a century in Southern California, but I have never seen a mountain lion in the wild. It’s not that I’ve never walked through a wilderness area; mountain lions keep hidden, most of the time. But a few Southern Californians do see them.

At the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, in Southern California, near Irvine, in the summer of 2007, a man was driving north from the university, with the ponds on his right. From the marshy area on his left a very strange flying creature flew across the road, right in front of him, flying into the sanctuary. Much has been written about this sighting of an apparent modern pterosaur, but let’s now consider the eyewitness. How difficult it must have been for him to find somebody to talk with about his experience! It was almost a year before he contacted me, and it’s my work (or my pastime, depending on who you ask) to interview eyewitnesses of apparent pterosaurs.

The point? It’s not that eyewitnesses of apparent modern living pterosaurs are extremely rare; the creatures may be somewhat rare and nocturnal, but eyewitnesses in Western countries may be ridiculed for reporting something we’ve been taught should not exist. Therefore most eyewitnesses keep quiet, as if hiding what they’ve seen by trying to make themselves invisible.

I am grateful for those special persons who have reported their experiences to me, for they have thereby contributed to sharing this wonderful news to the Western world: Pterosaurs live!

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Did you know that living pterosaurs have been reported in North America, even in the United States? Yes! Get the details of many eyewitness sighting reports  by purchasing a copy of this nonfiction book on Amazon.

Learn much more about the South Carolina sighting by Susan Wooten. But this cryptozoology book is packed with many more sightings, eyewitness encounters from across the United States: California, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Wisconsin, Ohio, and many more states.

“The problem with science is that we think we know it all and that is far from reality. This book shows courage to continue the search. If you have an interest in cryptozoology you should read this.” Dale Reeder, Pennsylvania

For many weeks, this has been the best-selling nonfiction book (Amazon.com) about living pterosaurs. It is in pure cryptozoology genre, unlike some books about modern living pterosaurs and dinosaurs, with exciting observations by shocked eyewitnesses. Find out for yourself why many Americans are awakening to the knowledge that these creatures still fly, not just in remote jungles but right here in the United States.