At first the comment sounded reasonable: "in a nation with millions of birders . . . the evidence for any big flying creature [large living pterosaurs] should be a lot better than it is." But I soon noticed a few critical problems with this reasoning.

 

The press release prompting the subject was about the estimated 1400 Americans who have seen obvious living pterosaurs in the United States within the past three decades, and some of them may very well have been birdwatchers.

I noticed that the critic had concluded, "the evidence . . . should be a lot better." But what does that person know about living-pterosaur work over the past 15 years? How many Americans know about expeditions in Papua New Guinea in 1994, 1996, 2002, 2004, and 2006, all of them to search for living pterosaurs? I doubt the critic knows much more than most Americans.

And why should birdwatchers be much different than other humans? Nobody wants to be called "crazy" after telling people about a live pterosaur. Those few Americans who have seen feather-less flying creatures with long tails (or no

tails) rarely tell many people about it.

 

According to the non-fiction book Live Pterosaurs in America, sightings have been in California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and other states.