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Boy sees pterosaur in Texas

pterosaur seen by Aaron Tullock in Texas in about 1995I interviewed Aaron Tullock by email in January of this year. I delayed publishing his account until I had established a firm credibility base for this eyewitness, for part of his description of the apparent pterosaur differs from other accounts: The long-tailed flying creature was mostly colored orange and black.

Late in the afternoon of a day with “only a few clouds,” eight-year-old Aaron was looking around the yard of his grandparents’ home. Something flew over his head (coming from behind him, so he could not have seen it coming) and stopped by hovering eight feet above the ground.

The creature flew away before the boy’s mother entered the yard, and she discounted the encounter as a combination of a bird and a child’s imagination. His young age might seem to count against his credibility, but he reported many details that count against this coming from the imagination of an eight-year-old. A number of factors count against any hoax with this account. The long tail with a Rhamphorhynchoid-like shape at the end, together with absence of feathers—these count against any misidentification involving a bird or bat. What’s left except “Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur?”

I’ll give this more attention before I write the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America. (The 2nd edition might not be published before early 2011.)

More: Giant Rhamphorhynchoid flies over Lake Pung, Papua New Guinea

Scientific paper on living pterosaurs

Creation Research Society Quarterly - cover

Creation Research Society Quarterly - coverThe peer-reviewed Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ), Volume 45, Number 3, contains the article “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific,” by Jonathan D. Whitcomb.

Included was the eyewitness account of the Umboi Island native Gideon Koro, interviewed in 2004 by Whitcomb:

“In about 1994, at Lake Pung, Umboi, and in daylight, seven boys, aged about eleven to sixteen, saw what three of them (in 2004) told me was a ropen . . . Their testimonies were videotaped during an interview in the Awelkon Village area . . .

“According to Gideon Koro, who speaks some English, a few minutes after they had arrived at the lake, ‘it came down.’ . . . When I asked about the tail length, he pondered, seeming to recall and estimate; then he said, “seven meetuh.” [seven meters or about twenty-two feet]

“Gideon was sure that the creature was a ropen. . . . When I asked about feathers, he at first appeared to be puzzled; his answer and mannerisms then seemed to me to reveal that he was surprised that I should ask that question: ‘There’s no feathers’ . . . I then asked, ‘Was there just skin?’ The Kovai word ‘byung’ came up as did the English term ‘flying fox.’ Gideon agreed that the skin was like that of a fruit bat.”

More: Credibility of the Umboi Island Eyewitnesses

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Table of Contents for the nonfiction book "Live Pterosaurs in America"From Chapter Two of “Live Pterosaurs in America” (nonfiction book on Amazon.com)

“The greatest danger facing innovators, rebels, and those who search for living pterosaurs—that’s a newspaper. National newspapers ignored the success of the Wright Brothers (their December, 1903, successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina). News reporters and editors, many of them, assumed that the controlled powered-flight of two bicycle mechanics was a lie, that it never happened. Even as late as 1908, many newspaper professionals thought the Wright Brothers ‘better liars than flyers.’ After all, a well-funded government-sponsored flying machine had crashed only a few days before the Wright Brothers were said to have first flown. But lack of news reporting and abundance of lie-insinuations can relate to both flying machines and flying pterosaurs.”