Philippines | Live Pterosaur

February 17, 2018March 17, 2018

Recently-Reported Sightings of Living Pterosaurs: USA and Philippines

Cuba ropen - "Please report your sighting"

By the modern-pterosaur investigator Jonathan Whitcomb

Some of the eyewitness reports that I receive come from encounters years earlier, sometimes even decades earlier. Let’s now look at four accounts of sightings that were reported to me within the past few weeks, regardless of when the encounter took place.

Since the word “dinosaur” is mentioned in one of these, let’s be clear about it. In a scientific or technical sense, pterosaurs (aka “pterodactyls” by non-scientists) and not dinosaurs. Many people associate them with dinosaurs because of the popular idea that they lived together many millions of years ago. In reality, pterosaurs and dinosaurs are two distinct types of animals, regardless of when people believe that they lived.

Sighting in California, S.F. Bay area

I got the following in January of 2018, a few days after the sighting:

Fremont, CA – 1/14/2018 – around 10pm PST
I witnessed a pterodactyl from roughly 50-75 feet away. It was gliding steadily, without flapping its wings, seemingly meer [mere] feet above the rooftop of an adjacent building. Wingspan, estimated 12 ft., distinctly visible diamond shape at end of tail. Crown of head tough to make out behind wing at angle of sight.

The eyewitness replied to my questions and indicated the tail was long.

Sighting in Illinois

In 2007 at around 3 pm
Somewhere between Schaumburg and Elgin IL while driving west on I-90 at 55 mph for 4-6 seconds I saw a flying creature that didn’t make any sense. The animal was black but in the bright sunlight I could make out wrinkles or texture on the surface or the wings. I often take a minute to admire the golden eagles that circle the highway. This creature caught my attention because the size and shape of the wings which looked more like bat wings than bird wings. There were no feathers and the creature had a long spiked tail. I couldn’t place what I was looking at. It was no bird I could identify. I watched this creature travel southeast toward Busse woods.

Sighting in Southern California

On January 31 2018 at 6:25 pm I watched a very large creature fly from west to east over Eastern Anaheim California. At first I thought this was an airplane of some sort or another. However shortly after sunset any aircraft would have exterior lights and make an engine noise. This was totally silent and gliding on very mild breeze of maybe 4-5 miles an hour. As I sat on my front porch looking west and talking on the phone, I saw this creature in flight it appeared to be off white or a pale green. From my vantage point I could see that the creature was about 400 to 600 feet above the ground and about 25 to 30 foot wingspan. I even thought it could be a remote control until it flapped its wings and then I was sure I was witnessing something very special indeed.

Sighting in the Philippines

Its already 2018 when I saw this article and im really curious about it when I read that there are sightings in the Philippines (Pagbilao, Quezon). I have a same experience when I was a child (I really dont remember what specific year it is, approximately it is between 1995-1998) and we are having a vacation in my grandfather’s house in San Antonio, Quezon Province, Philippines. I saw a bat-like flying creature in the ceiling of the house in the 2nd floor, no feathers, almost skinny like a bat, not too dark skin color brown as I remember and its beak is so long and have one horn directly opposite to its beak at the back of its head and I really think it is a dinosaur or somehow a surviving remnants of pterodactyl. And maybe I was child back then but I am aware of what is a bat looks like and it is not a bat, also im aware of dinosaurs. My father told me to just ignore it so I really dont know what happened to the creature afterwards because when I look for it, it already flew away. I wont forget about that day because there is an old movie here in the Philippines titled “Anak ng Bulkan” and I believe that it might be true that there are still remnants of the pre-historic creature back then.

If you have seen anything that might have been a living pterosaur, please report it to me.

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Un pterosaurio en Cuba

Dos estadounidenses han visto un pterosaurio vivo en Cuba: Patty Carson y Eskin Kuhn.

Living pterosaurs in California

A “pterodactyl” or pterosaur has also been reported from other parts of Los Angeles County: San Fernando Valley, Altadena, and twice in the Santa Fe Springs area.

Another Living Pterosaur in North Carolina

. . . two of my friends saw one at different times in NC, Durham. I was alone driving my car, and looked out my sunroof to see what I think was a pterodactyl.

Modern pterosaur in Philippines

At least a few eyewitnesses in the Philippines have reported pterosaur sightings to at least one cryptozoologist; I (Jonathan Whitcomb) have received a few reports myself.

Pterodactyl in California

This report of an encounter in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is found in the second chapter of the book [Live Pterosaurs in America]

Living pterosaurs and frigatebird misidentification

The great majority of those reports were of flying creatures that could not reasonably be attributed to misidentified frigatebirds, for a number of reasons.

August 15, 2014August 18, 2014

Is Dracula for Real?

This vampire idea has nothing to do with the Twilight fiction books by Stephenie Meyer or the films from those novels. It’s not directly related to the 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, either. Since the word “Dracula” has come out in a few of the many sighting reports of apparent living pterosaurs, it’s time to examine an explanation for the origin of the vampire legends in Europe and Asia.

Natural Explanation for Vampire Legends

Not all legends are based solely on imagination or fiction. When enough people see something similar at night, fear can cause imaginative ideas to flourish, in particular when people have little or no knowledge about what they actually observed in the dark. It’s common for us to grasp at conjectures to fill in the void of ignorance, yet what originally caused that grasping is often real human experience.

Vampires in Europe

For thousands of years, vampire legends have floated around in what we now call the Middle East and in ancient Greece, and probably elsewhere: terrifying spirits that drank blood. The kinds of stories better known to the modern Western world, however, more resemble legends from southeastern Europe within the past two or three centuries. From the early-to-mid-1700’s in particular—that’s when the frenzy of vampire gossip took hold in some areas.

European Dracula

Vampire Stories in the Philippines

According to Wikipedia, “The manananggal [related to the Aswang legend] is described as being an older, beautiful woman capable of severing its upper torso in order to fly into the night with huge bat-like wings . . .” This could have come from observations of a ropen, for that modern pterosaur has nothing resembling a lower torso or legs of a human. On Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, one native tradition about the ropen seems related: It is said to transform itself between snake, human, and ropen. On one or more occasions, natives in the Philippines may have seen a woman at night, in about the same area and about the same time as a ropen was seen. This led to the idea that a woman can transform herself into a large winged creature at night.

Bats and Vampire Legends

Also according to Wikipedia, bats were not originally associated with the vampires of European legends, within the past few centuries. “Vampire bat” refers to species in the Western Hemisphere, with that animal being named for its blood-drinking; the European Dracula more likely got the bat-idea from the New World, not the other way around. Little is said about any wings on vampires, on the Wikipedia pages, and much of what is mentioned refers to stories in the Philippines.

So does the Dracula story (about a man transforming himself into a dangerous bat) come from encounters with blood-sucking pterosaurs in Europe? Probably not, although the man-to-ropen transformation legend on Umboi Island appears to resemble that European story. Each area of the world, and each legend, needs to be taken into account separately, which is a bit outside my area of expertise in my interviews with eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs. Nevertheless, it may be worthy of closer scrutiny.

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Dracula-Vampire and Modern Pterosaurs

. . . I don’t dispute this possibility for the origin of the Dracula myth in Transylvania, that it involved one or more observations of a large pterosaur standing on the ground at night. But it is speculation.

Searching for Ropens and Finding God

Similarities of belief are emphasized in Searching for Ropens and Finding God, with mutual faith in the supreme mission of Jesus Christ and with mutual conviction in the historic truthfulness of the Flood of Genesis and agreement in the new interpretation of the biological nature of the fiery flying serpents. No compromise is needed in those beliefs.

October 23, 2012August 25, 2014

Pterosaurs Across the Pacific

Photo by "Roslyn in Starfish Island" Quezon Province

Long-tailed pterosaurs, called by the name “ropen,” are reported in many areas surrounding the Pacific Ocean, including islands near the mainland of Asia. We now have considerable sighting evidence even in Hawaii, islands surrounded by vaste areas of the Pacific.

Two “Pterodactyls” Observed in Philippines in 2008

According to the eyewitness, “I think we’re not the only ones who saw it, because my classmate told me that there are sightings of this thing in Atimonan, Quezon [Province], just one-half hr travel from Pagbilao, and I was told by the local fisherman there that he saw it several times, flying above the sea.”

. . . Question: Did the two creatures have tails?

Answer: YES! they have long tails about 3 to 4 meters long . . .it is not a bird: They don’t have any feathers.

Question: Did you have a good view of them?

Answer: Yes! I was not the only one who saw it . . .

Quezon Province, Philippines

How can long-tailed pterosaurs fly across the Pacific Ocean and be found in many countries? Consider the size of some of these flying creatures. Some eyewitnesses estimate the wingspans: “30-50 feet” (Perth creature), “29 feet” (Finschhafen “pterodactyl”), “seven meters” (for one wing of the Lake Pung ropen, sighting around 1994). What could prevent such huge flying creatures from eventually expanding their habitat across the planet?

Additional Notes (Nov 5, 2012):

After publishing the above information, somebody responded with the idea that “many” sightings of apparent pterosaurs are misidentified Manta ray fish that jump out of the sea. But many problems are found in that conjecture.

The great majority of sighting reports that I have received involved flying creatures that were not over the sea but flying over land. That eliminates the Manta ray conjecture for those sightings.
Those few sighting that were of creatures over the sea—some of them involved long periods of flight, far longer than the few seconds it takes for a Manta ray fish to jump out of the sea and fall back into the water.
Other sightings over the sea involved descriptions that were unlike anything we know about any Manta ray: bioluminescence, for example, or flying in pairs (ray fish don’t jump up out of the water in pairs in a way that would look like two pterosaurs flying in tandem).

The sighting mentioned above, in the Philippines, had critical points from the eyewitness, details absent above:

“. . . a LONG NECK and . . . a horn behind their heads. They have a long beak. I even saw their claws between their wings. . . . They seldom flap their wings, about every three to four seconds.”

That destroys the Manta ray conjecture for this particular sighting in the Philippines.

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From the Third Edition of Live Pterosaurs in America:

Some birds migrate for many thousands of miles. . . . Since humans were inspired by birds to invent flying machines, give credit to birds for that inspiration. And give credit to the lowly Monarch Butterfly for migrating in large numbers for 2000 miles, with individuals crossing the Atlantic Ocean sometimes. But the wings of a giant ropen make the whole planet accessible . . .

Pterosaur in Hawaii

[The eyewitness] stepped out into his front yard and saw, about 100 feet high, a gliding ”pterodactyl.”

Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific

For Americans (and perhaps citizens of other developed countries) who know about recent sighting reports of apparent living pterosaurs, the best known area for sightings may be in Papua New Guinea.

Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea

I believe in living pterosaurs and hope they will soon be officially discovered. More important, I believe in you, that you can soar above dogmatic assumptions about extinctions.

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Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea (nonfiction e-book) now FREE

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July 25, 2011

Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific

For Americans (and perhaps citizens of other developed countries) who know about recent sighting reports of apparent living pterosaurs, the best known area for sightings may be in Papua New Guinea. In reality, reports come from around the world, including Europe, Africa, Australia, South America, and North America. For now, let’s consider some online sources of information on reports from the southwest Pacific, including Papua New Guinea and Australia.

Philippines Sighting Around 1994

Late in 2008, I received a report from a man in his 20’s who saw what he called a “pterodactyl,” in fact two flying together, when he was a boy in the city of Pagbilao, Quezon Province (not to be confused with Quezon City).

. . . I asked the young man some questions:

Q: Did the two creatures have tails?
A: YES! they have long tails about 3 to 4 meters long . . .it is not a bird: They don’t have any feathers.

Q: Did you have a good view of them?
A: Yes! I was not the only one who saw it . . .

Q: What time of day was it?
A: It was around 2:00-3:00 pm in the afternoon . . .

Singapore Flying Creature

[As a boy] I was staying in Alexandra Road area, and was out on an adventure hunt one hot afternoon in a forested area when I came across a pair of them flying together [as they circled the palm trees] . . . at that time I thought nothing more of them . . . at such a young age, at that time, I never knew they were thought to be extinct.

“They were very much bigger than flying foxes and they did not glide like these smaller creatures. I have seen flying foxes many times at my location before.”

Pterosaur “Kor” Fighting a War

I received an email from R.K. (anonymous), of the Manus Island area of Papua New Guinea. . . . The nocturnal flying creatures that he described to me–I believe they are ropens–were common and were dangerous to local fishermen previous to the early 1940′s, when their numbers declined. In these northern islands, the creature is called “kor.”

Here is part of R.K.’s account of the Japanese retaliation against the creatures that had attacked them . . .

Dragons or Pterosaurs in Australia

“My husband and I both sighted a huge creature flying over a densely populated area, while we were out walking one night in Perth, Western Australia on the coastline around 10:30 pm . . . it had a ruddy reddish brown leathery skin . . . it had a long tail and a wingspan that we estimated at between 30-50 feet across. . . .”

[I] drove . . . out to Western Australia . . . [to] see the outback. . . . stopped . . . [something] looked like an airplane, far away. . . . maybe a couple hundred feet [high]. . . . it got nearer to me, I noticed that the wings were actually flapping gently . . . no sound. [As] it was getting closer . . . had a wingspan [of about] 15 or 20 feet . . . leathery . . . no feathers at all.”