First let’s consider a pterosaur sighting in Africa and compare it with one in Australia. The extremes are distance from observer to flying creature: 10 feet away and 17,000 feet away. Neither of these encounters are found in the third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America or the second edition of Searching for Ropens (my nonfiction cryptozoology books of sightings of apparent pterosaurs). I plan to include them in an e-book, to be published soon.

Pterosaur in Sudan, Africa

“Walking from one mud-brick hut to another, early one night in 1988 (in Sudan, Africa), the boy noticed something on the roof of a nearby hut. Lit up by the patio light, perched on the edge of the roof, the creature appeared to be four-to-five feet tall . . . and leathery (no feathers). A “long bone looking thing” stuck out the back of its head, and its long tail somehow resembled that of a lion.”

That “kongamato-pterodactyl” web page fails to mention, however, that the creature hopped from one mud-brick hut to another RIGHT OVER THE BOY’S HEAD. The distance between the feet of the creature and the head of the boy must have been about ten feet, if that much. After the boy had grown into a man, he gained access to a computer (not everybody in Sudan has a computer) and sent me an email, with details about his encounter. I found his report highly credible, both in his honesty and in the high probability that it was a pterosaur.

Pterosaur, perhaps, in Victoria, Australia

I say “perhaps” because the flying creature, observed in about 1998, was so far away from the eyewitness. I say “pterosaur” because the sighting is consistent with other sightings in Australia, encounters that were much closer to the eyewitnesses, and because the creature appeared to be about the size of a “Cesna” but was slowing flapping its wings. After receiving a long email from the Australian man, I came to believe that he had seen what he suspected he had.

What I saw was what I first thought was a pelican flying about 3000 feet high but realised pelicans at that height did not look as large as this. I was standing outside about nine o’clock one night. It was full moon and very bright with a cloud bank to the south east extending to and over the Ranges. Mt. Dandenong is about 2000 feet high and the clouds were much higher than this.

I glanced to the south and something caught my attention. It was something flying that appeared to be at the height of light planes that fly around here as Moorabbin Airport is not far away. This thing was at least as large as a light plane, say a Cesna.  It was about 5 klms away and was lazily flapping it’s wings, flying to the east in at that point a clear sky. It appeared to be lit up by the moonlight and shining as if it had no feathers. . . . I could see it quite clearly. I had it under observation for about 5 mins whence it disappeared into the cloud bank.

Extremes in Delayed Reactions

From the third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, a lady gives us a positive perspective on her two 2008 encounters in Georgia.

Fifteen miles of her commute [in northeast Georgia] is on a two-lane 55-mph road through woods alternating with pastures; This part of Highway 82 has few houses and almost no stop signs. . . . She had woken up early and could not get back to sleep, so she left her house [to drive to work] at 6:45 a.m. . . . She had driven less than ten miles, just leaving an area of pasture, entering an area of thick woods, around a mild downhill curve, with high banks and brush on each side of the road, when an animal suddenly flew from the right, just over the front of her car. Although alone, she yelled, “What the — what — what is that?” She was stunned.

She had another encounter two weeks later, at a different part of the same stretch of highway. But the point is how she looked back on her experiences with apparent living pterosaurs:

The lady used to dread her daily commute to work; that has changed. She told me, “The world is now totally different. I feel blessed that God has allowed me to see this creature that should not be here, and yet is, this strange dragon-like thing that lives somewhere in the woods in this redneck little town.”

Her experiences differ greatly from those of seven boys who encountered the giant ropen at Lake Pung:

On the remote island of Umboi, in Papua New Guinea, seven boys climbed up to Lake Pung, just north of their village. Within a few minutes they saw the giant creature fly over the water. The boys ran home in terror and the memory of that fear lasted for years. In 2004, Jonathan Whitcomb explored part of Umboi Island. He interviewed Gideon Koro, who confirmed their encounter, calling the creature by its local name: “ropen;” two other young men verified Gideon’s account.

Of course the circumstances between these cases differs considerably. Gideon and his friends were exposed to a creature that was notorious, on Umboi Island, for eating human flesh (at least taking dead human bodies from graves). The lady in Georgia was protected in her car, with no knowledge of any potential danger from any strange flying creature. With all that said, I suspect the flying creatures seen by these eyewitnesses (in Sudan, southern Australia, southeastern USA, and Umboi Island) are related, even if they represent different species.

Patty Carson just gave me permission to publish this preliminary sketch of what I call the “Gitmo Pterosaur.” Her 1965 sighting, like Eskin Kuhn’s 1971 sighting, was at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She will be making corrections and refinements, some of which are explained below.

1. Head crest does not actually twist as depicted. This just shows the structure that would be visible at another angle. Patty Carson wrote to me, “The end is sort of twisted at an angled to show you that the end was rounded with a kind of concave surface at the end. At the time of the sighting, I was not able to see that until he was flying away.”
2. The nose was not tipped at exactly this angle (needs correcting).
3. “His left wing is sticking out of his chest instead of the shoulder.”
4. “I need to tighten up the angle of the humerus/radius V . . .”
5. “The teeth are too small” [improved sketch will show larger teeth]
6. “His ear hole doesn’t show” [ear hole needs to be added]
7. “His eyes are ended up too dark. They were more or less the same reddish brown color as his skin.”
8. “His gullet is too far to the left.”
9. “The wrinkles under his throat don’t show up well enough.”
10. “I need to do a better job of wing placing and angles.”

This eyewitness sketch of the “Gitmo Pterosaur” suggests it may be related to the flying creatures seen in the summer of 2008, in Georgia.

Two flying creatures were seen within a period of less than two weeks; one was larger than the other, but they were in the same general area. . . . From the drawings the lady sent to me, I am calling this apparent pterosaur “Hammerhead Ropen.”

The head appendage is somewhat similar to that of the creatures seen by Hodgkinson and Hennessy; but the beak and the appendage seem more like one continuous head-structure. The head-appendage has a somewhat curved shape. Both beak and head-appendage are more blunt than is in the sketches of the Hodgkinson-Hennessy creatures.

The strange creature flew gracefully over the highway, right in front of the car Susan Wooten was driving to Florence, South Carolina. Other drivers stopped their cars on the side of the road (in the general area of Bishopville) but Susan drove on, for she was following a friend and did not want to be separated from her. But what a creature it was!

According to this eyewitness, “It looked as big as any car, and had NO feathers, not like a huge crane or egret. . . . it swooped down over the highway and back up gracefully over the pines.” Years later, she learned of my investigations and reported her sighting. I have since interviewed her several times by email and she has convinced me that she saw basically what she described. I believe it was similar to the ropen of Papua New Guinea: a giant Rhamphornynchoid pterosaur.

Large long-tailed pterosaurs do not seem to be confined to South Carolina, however. I have also interviewed an eyewitness of two similar creatures in Georgia. They appeared to be of the same species, (but not necessarily the same species as the South Carolina pterosaur) seen on different mornings, and both were large, but they were not the same size; that is how the eyewitness concluded that there were two. Contrary to other descriptions of long-tailed pterosaurs, however, these two had rather fat tails and rather fat flanges at the end of their tails.

More about the South Carolina Pterosaur Sighting

More about Pterosaurs in Georgia

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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.

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For many weeks [first edition], 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.

[The third edition of this nonfiction cryptozoology book was published in November of 2011]

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Long Beach Child Care Services (California daycare, licensed)

Cuba: top -- Georgia, U.S.A.: Bottom

“. . . you don’t have to go to New Guinea. Far as I can tell, you can sit on a hill outside the town where I live in the mornings and see them. One sighting was at 7 in the morning, and one was at 9 am. Both days were overcast . . .”

So stated the eyewitness I interviewed in September of 2008. I interview many eyewitesses of apparent pterosaurs (that’s what I do), but few of them are professional artists. I was fascinated by the sketches this woman sent me, and named the cryptid “Hammerhead ropen.” Although I have not yet obtained permission to publish her sketches, I include a rough imitation here (bottom sketch), based on her sketches of the head, for it bears some resemblance to the head of the creature sketched by Eskin Kuhn (top sketch), another talented artist who witnessed two similar creatures in Cuba. The Hammerhead (bottom sketch) was observed in Georgia, U.S.A.