Hoax Criticism and Wingspans January 24, 2012
Posted by Jonathan David Whitcomb in Uncategorized.Tags: hoax
add a comment
Estimated pterosaur wingspans, analyzed in recent statistics of eyewitness reports, show what would be expected of a variety of pterosaur species of different sizes, observed under various conditions by eyewitnesses having various abilities in estimating sizes. In other words, the sighting reports support the honesty of eyewitnesses, in general.
The following two graphs show a slow decline in numbers of reported sighting as the wingspan increases. The first graph has a column for every two feet of wingspan, increasing in wingspan to the right (the two greatest wingspans being beyond the scope of the graph). The second graph is similar, except that the columns are three feet apart in wingspan and the greatest two wingspan estimates are included.
The second graph is better at showing the steady decline to the right, but this graph gives too much emphasis to the “b” column peak. In the first graph is it more difficult to see the slow slope to the right, but the peak is more accurately shown to be spread out around the lower-to-middle wingspans.
Nocturnal Pterosaurs in San Diego
I later talked with the eyewitness by phone, verifying his credibility (I found nothing in his words or manner of speaking that would suggest the possibility of a hoax). He varied in his estimate of the flying height: thirty yards instead of forty yards. The tail was long and straight. With one of the flying creatures, he noticed a movement that he interpreted as evidence for the animal’s breathing.
Pterosaurs in Pennsylvania December 21, 2011
Posted by Jonathan David Whitcomb in United States of America.Tags: bioluminescent
add a comment
In North America, now including Pennsylvania, an apparent modern pterosaur that glows at night—that is often associated with the ropen of Papua New Guinea, although we need many more sighting reports and better sighting observations. I don’t blame the eyewitnesses; I respect them for reporting their sightings to me. But my associates and I hope for more of those close sightings that allow for many detailed features to be observed.
Bioluminescent Flying Creature in Pennsylvania
. . . I received an email from a lady who was a passenger in a car one night; both driver and passenger saw a glowing creature as the strange thing flew by. Afterwards she did some research . . . “I have found that a pterosaur is identical to what we saw.” . . . The sighting was in Pennsylvania, and I believe it involved bioluminescence. . . . the flying creature ”was not too terribly high off the ground” and that it was ”quite large and seemed to be lit or glowing. . . . It was one of the strangest things I have ever seen.” She is one of the few eyewitnesses who have reported both a form of an apparent living pterosaur and a glow coming from the creature . . .
Pterosaur Observed in Pennsylvania
. . . in southwest Greensburg, Pennsylvaniva, a karate teacher and two of his students were talking outside. Above some small trees . . . they saw something that at first could have been mistaken for a large bird. . . . [The karate teacher said:] it caught my eye. Being that far up the “birds” body still appeared to be much larger than my 100 pound dog . . . The wingspan appeared to be at least six feet and although it was a bit away from us you could clearly make out a long “horn” or “cone” type protrusion coming out of the back of its skull . . . [The head] was at the end of an elongated neck.
We could here it splashing around, and Carrie ran around the building to see it. There are always ducks in that water as well as rats and other things. When she came back . . . she said it had taken off, Carrie said it was in the water splashing and eating or grabbing something in its mouth. [mid-2006, at 8 p.m.]
“Hoaxes are disproved,” declares Jonathan Whitcomb, author of the nonfiction book, Live Pterosaurs in America. After compiling data from reports collected from early-2004 to mid-2009, from eyewitnesses across the United States, he found three kinds of evidence disproving any hoax- explanation.
Pterosaur Sightings and Eyewitness Activities December 15, 2011
Posted by Jonathan David Whitcomb in Uncategorized.add a comment
What are eyewitnesses doing when they encounter apparent pterosaurs? Activities vary widely, but several things are more common, namely driving or sitting as a passenger in a motor vehicle, and enjoying some form of recreation on or near a body of water (creek, river, lake, or sea).
Driving While Under the Influence of a Pterosaur
I doubt we will ever have Drive Safely While Witnessing a Live Pterodactyl Week. But in the United States, driving may be the most common activity when someone sees an apparent living pterosaur . . . Within a period of about three years, I received reports of at least ten sightings involving driving, in seven states: South Carolina, California, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, Ohio (3), Georgia (2). With sighting dates from about 1980 to 2007, one involved driving a tractor, the rest involved driving a car.
Pterosaur Interupts a Bike Ride
“I was approx. 1/2 mile from home, riding [a bike] down an old country road . . . I looked to my left, and on a wood plank fence were two of the biggest bird-like creatures I could ever imagine! I almost crashed my bike! They were about 50 ft from me; the first thing I noticed was their heads, then I thought this can’t be! Could they be dinosaurs?”
Tom Carson . . . had no knowledge of his sister’s 1965 sighting until he spoke with Patty a few weeks ago (the flying creature seen by her was an apparent Rhamphorhynchoid). His three-second encounter was about a year later, in 1966, but in the same area of Cuba: Guantanamo Bay. . . . The flying creature he saw seems to have been the same species as the one his sister had seen and the one Eskin Kuhn would see in 1971. Tom told me it appeared to have no feathers and was bigger than a pelican. The tail was odd, like one would expect of the shaved tail of a dog.
Looking Through a Telescope
Around 2007, a man was looking through his telescope when he saw a “dinosaur bird.”
“My father has been the subject of much ridicule after claiming to have seen a ‘dinosaur bird’ fly across the moon. His neighbor has a telescope and they’d been watching the sky when they saw it. My sister and I dismissed it, although I couldn’t think of anything he could have seen and mistook for a ‘dinosaur bird.’ My father later told me that he’d done some research and learned that they were called ‘ropen.’ . . .” [page 31 of Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition]
Live Pterosaurs in America – Third Edition November 21, 2011
Posted by Jonathan David Whitcomb in Cuba, United States of America.Tags: book
add a comment
The expanded third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America is now available on Amazon. Most of the expansion has been the addition of a critical sighting by Patty Carson, a report that supports Eskin Kuhn’s account of a long-tailed pterosaur at Guantanamo Bay in the mid-twentieth century. Here is an excerpt of this eyewitness report (from the appendix of the book):
“I was only a child when I saw it . . . around six years old. . . . We were walking from the boat yards toward home . . . There were some stagnant pools here and there, a few inches deep, in the area. . . . Suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. The head and upper part of its body, about a third of the wings at the joint (tips still held down) showed.
” . . . in front of us about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound, in a big hurry, more of a scramble, and flew to its left and disappeared behind trees and terrain . . . The skin was a leathery, brownish reddish color. It had little [small] teeth, a LOT of them. The eye was smallish and dark . . .
“We went home and I was ALL excited to tell my family I had seen a dinosaur, but they all poo poo’d me and started to tell me it was a pelican or frigate bird. NO WAY! It was as tall as a man when it stood up on its haunches. It was close. It froze for a few seconds so I got a good look. . . .”
From the blog Modern Pterosaurs: (from the title page of the book)
How are sightings in the United States related to those in the southwest Pacific? How do some apparent nocturnal pterosaurs pertain to bats, and how are bats irrelevant? How could modern living pterosaurs have escaped scientific notice? These mysteries have slept in the dark, beyond the knowledge of almost all Americans, even beyond our wildest dreams (although the reality of some pterosaurs is a living nightmare to some bats). These mysteries have slept . . . until now.
Live Pterosaurs in America and Standard-Model Paleontology
This book was not intended to tear down generations of work in paleontology nor to ridicule the intelligence of paleontologists. It give more of a hint of axiomatic conflict, generations of conflict between standard models in Western society (namely Neo-Darwism and strict naturalism), but little is said about it outside the appendix, the conflict between “creationism and Dawinism.”
Pterosaur Extinction Revisited October 29, 2011
Posted by Jonathan David Whitcomb in Criticism.Tags: extinctions
12 comments
Dr. Peter Wellnhofer, in his book The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs (Salamander Books, 1991) on page eleven mentions that fossilization is an exception to the general rule about what happens to organisms after death; he also mentions that this rarity of fossilization is particularly relevant to pterosaurs, for their bodies were light and fragile. I believe that this concept is generally accepted among paleontologists.
Life, not extinction, is what fossils mostly reveal
In my post of July 17, 2010, I mentioned a blog post (on Science Blogs) by the paleontologist Darren Naish, who has a special interest in pterosaurs. He said, “The fossil record convincingly demonstrates that pterosaurs became extinct . . . [by] 65 million years ago.” But he gives no line of reasoning for that declaration. In The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs, Wellnhofer makes it clear that pterosaur extinction was not an event but a long process. I believe that Naish needs to make a choice here: Accept Wellnhofer’s proposition about gradual extinction of pterosaurs or give some line of reasoning for a quick extinction of many species of pterosaurs.
I suggest we all try to use clear thinking about this idea of universal extinction, this assumption that all species of pterosaurs became extinct. Somewhere, somebody (I believe it was Naish or Glen Kuban, or someone commenting on one of their blog posts) said, “If a group of organisms are absent from the fossil record for tens of millions of years, and if there is no evidence indicating their survival across or beyond that time, they should be assumed to be extinct.” That reasoning is faulty, for too many obvious exceptions shoot it down.
Kuban has admitted the possibility of extant pterosaurs but greatly doubts it. Both Naish and Kuban have fought vigorously to extinguish any hope for living pterosaurs in modern times. But where is the reasoning for universal extinction of all species of pterosaurs?
Both Naish and Kuban seem to have been oblivious to the obvious conclusion that Wellnhofer unwittingly allowed. If only a tiny portion of pterosaur remains have been discovered as fossils, how many species may have existed of which we are unaware! Since we have no fossil evidence for the life of many species of pterosaurs, how can we come to any conclusion about any extinction of even one of those undiscovered species? Protecting the reputation of standard paleontology should not be the primary objective of paleontologists: The first priority should be to know the truth.
**********
For a few brief statements about pterosaur extinction (or lack thereof), see Questions and Answers.
Flying Fox fruit bat September 19, 2011
Posted by Jonathan David Whitcomb in Criticism, Papua New Guinea.Tags: bats
1 comment so far
A common but careless explanation for reports of live pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea is Flying Fox fruit bat misidentification. Why careless? Some critics just imagine a general sighting; they do not examine any particular sighting. How is this important? Consider the report by Duane Hodgkinson: Part of his description included a long tail on a featherless winged creature, a flying creature with a tail “at least” 10-15 feet long. That was no fruit bat.
Fallacy of the Flying Fox Explanation
. . . Reports of “pterodactyls” in New Guinea . . . were dismissed with the explanation that people were just observing Flying Foxes. In the early 21st Century, a web page by Glen Kuban was dedicated to repudiating the idea that pterosaurs ever lived in human times; he suggested at least some of the sightings were of fruit bats.
The fruit bat known as “Flying Fox” is quite large for a bat; some species have wingspans as great as five feet. To visitors from America and Europe, these dog-faced bats are striking.
Bat Misidentification Rather Than Pterosaur?
Don’t be mislead by old tales about bat-misidentification. Scientists and professionals in various fields are eyewitnesses of large pterosaurs, very much non-extinct pterosaurs: cryptids obviously not bats.
The Flying Fox fruit bat in captivity—it still sleeps in the daylight hours, for this kind of bat is a creature of the night: nocturnal. Some were shown in the second Indiana Jones movie.
