Fossils | Live Pterosaur

July 26, 2010August 19, 2011

Challenges to live-pterosaur investigations

What is the biggest problem faced by those who search for living pterosaurs and try to bring their investigations to light? Being attacked by a large ropen—that is not even close to the top of the list. Personal financial sacrifice, as in using personal savings to travel to Papua New Guinea—that is one challenge. The most difficult problem relates to American culture, which is an attitude common in developed countries in general: severe bias against the possibility that one or more species of pterosaur is still living.

A hoax can challenge any serious investigation, whatever is investigated. But one hoax perpetrated by an anonymous person or persons has been especially challenging. Around 2003 or 2004, a web site popped up called “Objective Ministries.” It is now widely believed to be an elaborate hoax. But one page declares much about living pterosaurs, including apparent plans for an expedition in Africa. The “university” named and the persons named now appear to be fictional, part of the joke. The problem for serious researchers and investigators of modern living pterosaurs is this: Some people will be so repulsed by those “objective ministries” pages that they might reject any serious investigation. Tragic!

Another challenge to our investigations is the “tiny minority” position of Wikipedia. This makes any very unusual research or investigation almost impossible to portray in a very positive light on a Wikipedia page. Popular opinions rule on certain web pages and Wikipedia is a good example of that. Of course other wiki’s cover that problem, in particular is this seen on “Creationwiki” (see Pterosaur on their site).

Another problem comes from a few paleontologists who insist dogmatically that fossils, somehow, are evidence that all species of pterosaurs became extinct many millions of years ago. But those critics make no distinction between extinction and near-extinction. And they fail to acknowledge that fossilization is not a common way for a living organism to pass away after death, thereby making a “lack of recent fossils” practically meaningless in the subject of eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs.

Am I mistake about lack-of-fossils evidence? Then why are there so few pterosaur species that did leave fossils, compared with all the pterosaur species that could have lived during all those supposed millions of years when standard models insist that they lived? No, an apparent lack of “recent fossils” cannot reasonably be used to dismiss eyewitness accounts. To insist that a lack of pterosaur fossils in particular strata is evidence that no species of pterosaur could now live is no more reasonable than insisting that no species of pterosaur could have lived anciently unless we now have a fossil of that species. That kind of faulty reasoning is another problem we face, for educated paleontologists may be assumed to reason reasonably, and sometimes that is far from the case.

July 14, 2010September 18, 2010

Foxes, paleontologists, and cryptids

Please understand my intentions with the following humor, for I do not downplay the importance of paleontologists; they are essential, the experts in learning from fossils. But the fox has his or her own specialty and the paleontologist likewise. The point? Cryptids are outside paleontology and an apparent lack of fossils in certain categories of strata should not be viewed as strong evidence for extinction of a general type of organism.

What’s the difference between a fox and a paleontologist? After a successful hunt, one is lick’n bones of chicken; the other is pick’n bones of therizinosaurus. It makes no rhyme, but a paleontologist is not usually associated with light verse: Don’t confuse Darren Naish and Ogden Nash.

How else is a fox like a paleontologist? When fully mature, neither one should be mistaken for a playful puppy, else you may be lick’n your wounds. More important, both of them can sometimes roam outside their proper place.

One Monsterquest episode involved an expedition to New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea. On the surface, it appeared to be a search for giant nocturnal flying creatures that some cryptozoologists believe are modern living pterosaurs (in reality, it was a dramatic production project to make an intertaining show; it was not a scientific investigation). Of all the potential explorers to take with them, Monsterquest chose a paleontologist. What’s wrong with that? It’s like inviting a fox to inspect an electric-fence security system for a chicken yard; you know that the fox will advise you to immediately stop wasting electricity on the worthless contraption. Likewise a paleontologist will be totally predictable, regardless of eyewitness evidence that a cryptid is a “living fossil.”

That brings up another similarity between a fox and a paleontologist: They both have to eat. I condemn neither of them for the need to survive. But I must point out that crytozoology is far outside the realm of paleontology, and any apparent or real lack of known fossils in any particular series of strata is not evidence for the non-existence of life. The world of living organisms is far bigger than all the fossils ever found. When paleontologists dismisses a large number of eyewitnesses with insinuations of misidentifications and improper motivations, those paleontologist have gone far outside the special field in when they are experts. They have no more right to ridicule those specific eyewitnesses than a fox has a right to eat chickens in a specific chicken yard.

The paleontologist Glen Kuban has been associated with a mild case of bulverism because of his web page criticizing the concept of modern living pterosaurs. I have known of some non-paleontologists who seem to be trying to defend traditional models of that field by using extreme bulverism. I invite all critics to keep to the issues involved: Avoid personal attacks such as insinuations of lies. Kuban has at least used a number of examples of eyewitness cases, even though he has avoided the more important cases. His portrayal of problems in the objectiveness of investigators or their lack of clear thinking seems to be in the background rather than the foreground, so I classify his page as using mild bulverism.

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Child Care in Long Beach, California

Pterosaur Sighting in Ohio (Antwerp, Ohio, sightings and the minister near Mount Vernon, Ohio)

July 6, 2010July 6, 2010

Fossils are evidence of life, not extinction

I know of three paleontologists who have openly criticized living-pterosaur investigations. So how do I answer the Mesozoic objection? Let’s examine specific comments from specific paleontologists.

Darren Naish criticized the idea of extant pterosaurs in a late-2007 online post. He 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.

Mr. Naish seems to have failed to apply simple clear reasoning. Fossils tell us nothing about true extinction, notwithstanding one worldwide catastrophe that killed many individual creatures; near-extinction is a world apart from true extinction. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between extinction and near-extinction is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

But Naish is not the only paleontologist to miss this critical point. Glen Kuban also appears dedicated to ridiculing living-pterosaur investigators or at least actively fighting against any hope that pterosaurs still live; he also appears to believe that fossils are evidence for the extinction of all species of pterosaurs. But his long web page bears a striking resemblance to the one written by Naish: Both paleontologists concentrate on old questionable accounts, avoiding the critical eyewitness sightings that most heavily support the concept of modern extant pterosaurs.

See “Extinction or Near-Extinction, What Distinction?”

Science and modern pterosaurs

Something in our Western culture seems to say “unscientific,” whenever the subject of modern living pterosaurs comes up. It’s not the countless fossils sitting on countless shelves in countless laboratories and museums, for countless fossils are very similar to presently-living organisms. Could it be that we have been indoctrinated, for generations, into the idea that all dinosaurs and pterosaurs have been extinct for many millions of years? Indeed, that is what projects the feeling of “unscientific,” when an eyewitness reports a living pterosaur. The feeling is absent from natives of third-world countries, where the extinction dogma is absent. They have no problem with a living dragon.

“Superstitious” cannot reasonably be used to dismiss native-eyewitess testimonies; their superstitions are left out of their testimonies. “Religious bias” cannot be reasonably used to dismiss American-eyewitness testimonies; the creationist researchers are not, for the most part, the eyewitnesses, but the creationists interview and quote those of various beliefs who describe obvious pterosaurs. And the testimonies of natives of Papua New Guinea coorelate with those of Americans and Australians: mostly large or giant flying creatures, with no sign of feathers and with very long tails.

Let us promote scientific investigations of reports of modern pterosaurs.

The sketch above was drawn by the eyewitness Eskin Kuhn, who observed two long-tailed pterosaurs flying in daylight over the Guantanamo Bay military station, in 1971.

More: Scientific Paper on Living Pterosaurs