Pterodactyl Sightings – how can they be?

old sketch of a mad man with a knife: chasing a ropen
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By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

Eyewitness report (Use that link to communicate with Whitcomb about a sighting of an apparent living pterodactyl.)

This answers a skeptic who made a comment on one of my Youtube videos; it’s a rhetorical question:

“Why is it that ever since smart phones came out, people continue to claim they saw this type of flying animal but not one single person has video taped it?”

I don’t say that a person making this kind of statement has a split-personality disorder, but he or she appears to be sitting on a fence, ready to hop off into either of the following positions:

  1. God-like omnipotent knowledge
  2. Puppet-like regurgitating of what others have said

Should that skeptic be challenged, he or she can take the role of #2, and if nobody makes a challenge then role #1 is taken, although omnipotence is never stated: Only a knowledge of something is implied.

In this case, role #1 means that the critic knows about every person who has ever lived on this planet who has ever held a smart phone and the critic knows with god-like certainty that not one of those persons has ever recorded video footage of a modern pterosaur.

Here is part of my response to the rhetorical question:

Let’s take that phrase “people continue” and look at it more deeply. For countless centuries people have continued to talk about flying dragons around the world. These are people from various cultures and various languages and various traditions, yet they report seeing the same, or similar, large featherless flying creatures. In old art, they are often depicted with long tails.

Those sightings have continued into recent decades and recent years and recent months; in other words people have always reported seeing these reptilian-like winged creatures. Yet more recently, especially since around the mid-1800’s, eyewitnesses sometimes use the word “pterodactyl”.

In general, eyewitnesses in Western cultures have smart phones, yet those persons live within those Western cultures: They have been raised with the idea that all dinosaurs and pterosaurs became extinct long ago. That means that when the person sees what appears to be a living pterosaur, he or she stares at the thing, trying to figure out what it is or how it might be something other than a “pterodactyl”. In that state the person remains until the creature flies away. Even if the person had enough time to get out the smart phone and set it up for videotaping, that never entered the mind until it was too late.

Most persons living outside Western cultures do not have smart phones, and rarely have a camera of any kind ready at hand should they witness something strange.

Has Anybody ever Videotaped one with a Smart Phone?

I know of a lady in North Carolina who videotaped, with her smart phone, an apparent modern pterosaur, but that is another subject for another time.

old sketch of a mad man with a knife: chasing a ropen

Thumbnail image for the Youtube video “Pterodactyl Sightings – secret pterosaur FEAR” (on the channel Protect Animal Life)

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Pterodactyl Sightings in North America

A Youtube video on the channel Protect Animal Life

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Strange flying creatures

Nocturnal pterosaurs have always lived among us, but hidden by something. Enter now the realm of a new branch of cryptozoology, a branch overshadowed by the dogma of a “universal extinction.” How did scientists miss living pterosaurs? Get the answers here . . .

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Videos about living pterosaurs

This is the #1 channel on Youtube for videos on these amazing featherless flying creatures, apparent modern pterosaurs.

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Apparent living pterosaurs in the USA

Jonathan Whitcomb, of Murray, Utah, has been receiving emails, and an occasional phone call, over a period of 13 years, from eyewitnesses from five continents, and most reported sightings are in North America.

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The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur

Patty Carson was a child when she witnessed a large flying creature at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in around the year 1965. This Youtube video gives some of the details on that “pterodactyl” sighting.

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Flying creatures without feathers

For the protection of human life, I now publish a portion of the email communications I had with a lady who lives in Long Valley, New Jersey.

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Pterodactyl sightings

The nonfiction author Jonathan Whitcomb, of Murray, Utah, in 2017 and 2018, interviewed four eyewitnesses of an apparent “pterodactyl” in central Utah. He now declares that those reports from Draper, Salt Lake County, help distinguish Utah in a map showing where similar sightings have been reported across the United States.

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Popular PAL Videos on Modern Pterodactyls

banner for the Youtube channel "Protect Animal Life"
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By the investigative journalist Jonathan David Whitcomb

For twenty months I’ve been producing and uploading to Youtube short videos about modern living pterosaurs, what many call “pterodactyls”. The following are some of the more-popular ones on my channel Protect Animal Life.

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long-tailed ropen pterosaur with "in 2020"

Pterosaur Sightings in 2020

Length: 2:40

Get details on two encounters with non-extinct “pterodactyls” in the year 2020 with this video: “Pterosaur Sightings in 2020”.  It begins with a report from Manitoba, Canada. The second encounter was in the hills of North Carolina, USA. This was uploaded to Youtube on September 22, 2020. (This is video #89)

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native of Papua New Guinea and black ropen or pterosaur

Pterodactyl Attack

Length: 6:09

This is nothing close to a first-hand account given to me, as is the usual with reports that I publicize, but perhaps third-hand at best. In Papua New Guinea, maybe a few decades ago, a native fisherman was attacked by a “kor”, which is probably related to the ropen of Umboi Island to the south, maybe even the same species.  This is the story of a hard-fought battle between that fisherman and a possible non-extinct pterosaur.

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pterodactyl sketch by Susan Wooten and landscape in South Carolina

Pterosaur Sightings in South Carolina

This Youtube video had the most views in the late summer and early fall of 2020, on the PAL channel (Protect Animal Life).

Sighting #1: The wingspan was estimated to be 10-14 feet and this report includes the words “no feathers”.

Sighting #2: This sighting by Susan Wooten is well known in this branch of cryptozoology. One phrase to consider is “had no feathers”.

Sighting #3: In the Clinton area of South Carolina was this encounter, and the phrase to remember is this: “as big as a plane”.

Sighting #4: The eyewitness used phrases like “made a terrifying call” and “we ran like lightning back to camp”.

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Modern Pterosaurs

It did not appear to be covered with feathers but had a leathery texture. Soon after it passed us, it flew over a more brightly lit sports area which highlighted even more the leathery appearance, also bringing more detail to view. . . .

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South Carolina pterodactyl sightings

Susan Wooten, of Greenville, South Carolina, was driving from home to Florence (about [1986]) when she saw a giant creature glide over the highway in front of the car.

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Are all pterosaurs extinct?

. . . descriptions of these “flying dinosaurs,” commonly called by some people “pterodactyls,” make it obvious that they are non-fictional and very much non-extinct.

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Are pterodactyls alive?

What amazing encounters! In California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and many other states, eyewitnesses have seen strange featherless creatures flying overhead. These are not bats; most have long tails and are bigger than any bat. [the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America by Jonathan David Whitcomb]

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An Apparent Living Pterodactyl Reported in Utah

large pterosaur seen by Sandra Paradise in Georgia, USA
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Press Release from Jonathan David Whitcomb, originally published as a Facebook “Note” (but FB Notes may eventually become extinct)

MURRAY, UT, April 24, 2020/~~~ The nonfiction author Jonathan Whitcomb, of Murray, Utah, in 2017 and 2018, interviewed four eyewitnesses of an apparent “pterodactyl” in central Utah. He now declares that those reports from Draper, Salt Lake County, help distinguish Utah in a map showing where similar sightings have been reported across the United States.

On April 18, 2020, Whitcomb made public that map and now asks people to contact him if they have seen anything similar, wherever it was. He and his associates look for any kind of support people may give to their research and to their searching for non-bat featherless flying creatures that some persons call “flying dinosaurs.”

Map of USA with colors indicating pterosaur sightings per human population

From Declaration on Eyewitness Reports of Apparent Living Pterosaurs

Over the past 16 years, hundreds of eyewitnesses have contacted Whitcomb from five continents, and some of those were from 41 states of the USA. Three of those states now stand out in the number of reported sightings of apparent pterosaurs in relation to each state’s human population: Hawaii, Utah and Arkansas, in that order.

Whitcomb admits a few challenges for this branch of cryptozoology: “Bigfoot is a far better known cryptid, yet my associates and I face a bigger problem than competition for attention: generations of Western tradition that insists all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs became extinct millions of years ago. That controversy has given us negative attention. On top of that is the possibility that in some areas of the world somebody might see a frigate bird and think they had witnessed a non-extinct pterodactyl. Not everything that looks like a pterosaur is one.”

One of those areas is around the Hawaiian Islands, where the great frigate bird may be seen by over a million tourists each year. From a distance, those birds may appear to be featherless to some naive tourists, even though Whitcomb insists that at least some of the reports he receives from Hawaii are clearly not due to any frigate birds being misidentified.

Yet if skeptics eliminate Hawaii from the list of 41 American states with reported pterodactyl sightings, because of frigate birds, where does that leave Utah and Arkansas? Whitcomb loves to point out that problem with the frigate-bird explanation for reports of living pterosaurs in general. He declares, “Oceanic frigate birds do not congregate far from the ocean and surely not in Utah, Arkansas, Oklahoma or Kansas, where pterosaur sighting reports dramatically stand out.”

In the past thirteen months, Whitcomb has uploaded to Youtube 54 videos on sightings of animals he believes are descended from ones closely related to pterosaurs known, by paleontologists, from fossils. Years earlier, he wrote a scientific paper hoping to encourage scientists to take eyewitness sightings from Papua New Guinea seriously: “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific.” It was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in 2009. In recent years, most eyewitness reports sent to him have been from North America.

Whitcomb led an expedition in Papua New Guinea in 2004, where he searched for the ropen of Umboi Island. Since then, he has written five nonfiction books on modern pterosaurs and has published over a thousand blog posts and other web pages on that branch of cryptozoology. His Youtube channel is “Protect Animal Life.”

The data used to construct the map of sightings in the United States, showing the dominance of Hawaii, Utah, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas, was obtained from the site Declaration on Eyewitness Reports of Apparent Living Pterosaurs and from the 2010 census.

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from web page "Declaration on Eyewitness Reports of Apparent Living PterosaursHundreds of sightings of modern “pterodactyls” worldwide

Flying dinosaur sightings around the world

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one of Whitcomb's web pages: misc Umboi Island photos

“More Pterosaurs Online” (Youtube video)

Online resources for sightings of living pterosaurs

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large pterosaur seen by Sandra Paradise in Georgia, USA

[The tail] “was obviously a part of the body”

Sandra Paradise describes the huge flying creature she saw in Georgia

In this Youtube video, uploaded on May 8, 2020, on the channel Protect Animal Life, discover how shocked Sandra Paradise was to see a living pterosaur just a few miles from her home, just east of Winder, Georgia (United States) in the summer of 2008.

The above sketch she drew and sent to Jonathan Whitcomb. She responded to the suggestion that what she saw was a great blue heron that was carrying a snake in its mouth. Sandra dismissed that speculation, for the flying creature was nothing like any great blue heron.

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Video on Pterosaur Sightings in South Carolina

A blog post on a Youtube video on the PAL channel (“Protect Animal Life”).

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Modern Pterosaurs

Pre-publication version of book's front and back covers
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By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

Not all pterosaurs are extinct. Considering all the investigations and research done over the past two decades, it is practically impossible for all their species to be extinct, unless hundreds of thousands of persons worldwide have been encountering flying creatures that are not descended from ancient pterosaurs yet have appeared to have inherited a significant number of their obvious characteristics. That seems unlikely.

“Scary Flying Creatures in the Southwest Pacific” (video)

The video above is mostly on a few sightings of apparent living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea, including some of the more frightening encounters.

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Modern Pterosaurs in Australia

From the nonfiction book Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition), by Jonathan David Whitcomb:

Pages 31-33:

The couple was taking a walk in December of 1997, at 10:30 p.m., (in Southwestern Australia, probably a pleasant evening) between the suburbs of Ocean Reef and Heathridge, on Marion Avenue, when they saw, about half a mile inland, something in the sky. As it drew closer, gliding south, parallel to the coast, it shocked them with a “lizard appearance” and a wingspan of thirty to fifty feet. . . .

[in the words of a scientist (one of the two eyewitnesses)]

We had been walking in the evening and had just crested a hill and were on the down slope along a major thoroughfare. In the distance, I perceived an object in the sky. . . . its progress had brought it closer and while its shape did resemble a bird, I thought by now that from its apparent distance, it must be the largest bird I had ever witnessed.

It did not appear to be covered with feathers but had a leathery texture. Soon after it passed us, it flew over a more brightly lit sports area which highlighted even more the leathery appearance, also bringing more detail to view. . . .

I . . . estimated the size to be in excess of thirty foot, possibly as great as fifty foot. My eyes told me it was nearer the greater of these, my rational mind wants me to believe the lesser, since either of these is astounding for a flying creature . . .

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Modern living pterosaurs

A modern pterosaur!? How could it be? Extraordinary but true, huge flying creatures, with no feathers yet unlike any bat, live among us, although they mostly fly at night.

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Pterodactyl sightings in South Carolina

I never heard of Charlamagne tha God (CTG on this blog post) until I read the new comments under my video.

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Not all pterosaurs are extinct

. . . if my assessment of each of those 128 reports was anywhere near the mark, it is practically impossible for all of those reports to have come from non-pterosaurs: Not all pterosaurs are extinct.

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Pterodactyls alive

Eleven sighting reports of ropens, a.k.a. flying dinosaurs, in North Carolina, including Raleigh, Durham, Conover, Wilmington, Guilford County, Kernersville, and Charlotte . . .

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Living pterosaurs in a newspaper article

“As a self-described ‘modern pterosaur expert,’ the Utah-based author is circulating news and running websites that describe encounters with prehistoric, flying reptiles that scientists classify as thoroughly extinct.” [referring to Jonathan Whitcomb]

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Modern pterodactyls

The nonfiction author Jonathan Whitcomb, of Murray, Utah, in 2017 and 2018, interviewed four eyewitnesses of an apparent “pterodactyl” in central Utah. He now declares that those reports from Draper, Salt Lake County, help distinguish Utah in a map showing where similar sightings have been reported across the United States.

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Strange flying creatures in North Carolina and Utah

A nonfiction-cryptozoology author has analyzed eyewitness accounts of apparent non-extinct pterosaurs, commonly called “pterodactyls” or “flying dinosaurs,” and found that several states in the USA stand out, including Utah.

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Flying creatures in the southwest Pacific

Ropens and other modern pterosaurs live in and around Australia and Papua New Guinea . . . Reports of Live Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific

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