Living Pterosaurs in the United States?

In recent years, two reality television series (rather paranormal: Destination Truth and Monsterquest) have included living-pterosaur investigation in Papua New Guinea. But flying creatures described like the long-tailed ropen---they are hardly restricted to remote tropical wildernesses. Many Americans have reported apparent pterosaurs in many states: California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas, Washington State, and other states. Since the two ropen expeditions of 2004, in Papua New Guinea, many reports have drawn our attention to our own country.

How easy for us who live in cities to forget: Most of the United States is uninhabited or sparsely inhabited by people. Rare nocturnal flying creatures that live in caves and hunt bats---they can often avoid human detection. And when somebody, in the United States, sees something like a bat, but that something is bigger than a bat, what can be done? Report a pterodactyl to the police? Report a pterodactyl to the newspaper? Report a pterodactyl to a university biology professor? An eyewitnesses can wait for the story to break, searching the newspaper for something about the creature; but there is no newspaper story. Why? The answer becomes obvious when the eyewitness considers why she herself did not report anything to that newspaper. Who wants to be labeled "crazy?"

Have you ever read a critic's ridicule of the living-pterosaur investigations? It may be something like, "If pterosaurs were still living, they would be obvious; why do we not see them?" A critic may say, "Where are the newspaper headlines?" Sometimes a critic might mention the word "crazy" in regard to those who believe in the eyewitnesses, the cryptozoologists. Regarding the eyewitnesses, when "foolishness" or "insanity" is unmentioned, it is often implied. How destructive is that approach to objective reasoning! It resembles dirty politics more than scientific discussion.

I suggest that we examine the eyewitness accounts of apparent pterosaurs in the United States and compare them with other accounts from around the world. This extraordinary phenomenon deserves an objective examination.

See also Live Pterosaurs in America, the cryptozoology book

See also a book review and comments on Hunting Marfa Lights

See also 1400 American Eyewitnesses of Pterosaurs

See also the unusual "Radar Criticism" of Live Pterosaurs