Live Dragons

Of course we use the word "pterosaur," for it's more scientific sounding than "dragon." But with the assumption that many sightings, in modern times, of apparent living pterosaurs, add up to the present existence of at least one species of pterosaur, some "dragon" stories in earlier human history were from sightings of pterosaurs. I believe some dragons of history were pterosaurs.

A Live Dragon

Patty Carson was only a child when she and her brother saw the “dinosaur” at the U. S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, in 1965. But the children froze as they watched the flying creature that was only thirty feet away. Patty had the time to gain a clear memory of details. But the two children were not alone as eyewitnesses of a pterosaur in Cuba. [Eskin Kuhn and others also saw this kind of flying creature at Guantanamo Bay.]

Sightings of Apparent Pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea

Before the ship arrived on Umboi (Siassi), Luke and I met an old sailor who knew something about what we were seeking. "You want to catch Wawanar?" he asked. I assured him that we only wanted to get a "photo" of the flying animal. The old man told us that the dragon Wawanar is said to own the land and the sea; nobody can catch Wawanar.

I was not surprised that a native of Papua New Guinea would use the label "dragon," for that large flying creature of the night was famous for its mysterious glow and its giant size. I was also not surprised that natives of Pilio Island (the old sailor's original home) have their own name for the creature. But I had not expected to hear a story about it before the ship arrived at Umboi Island. 

Can Flamingos be Misidentified?

Is it possible for somebody to see a flying flamingo and misidentify it for a pterosaur? If the eyewitness had never before seen a flamingo, yes it could be misidentified as such, especially if the person was concentrating on the feet of that bird, for it may resemble a Rhamphorhynchoid (long-tailed pterosaur) tail vane. For somebody who had seen a flamingo, however, such a misidentification is unlikely.

But the Gitmo pterosaur seen by the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn, in 1971, and by Patty Carson, in 1965, is nothing like any flamingo. Their encounters, both of which were at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, deserve attention.

While Kuhn was observing the two pterosaurs, he concentrated on details, so that he could sketch them accurately (he is a talented artist), including "the bony vertebrae of the back that were clearly defined." Other details that he told me include the following:

. . . the bony crest at the back of the head that had a scythe-like shape instead of a pick-like shape; the long strands of hair in a tuft at the end of the tail (a brush.., not flesh covered as the rest)... and that detail has become muted by the many copies of the drawing . . .

In Kuhn's sketch, the length of the head dwarfs the length of the neck. In a flamingo, the opposite is true, and to a greater degree: A flamingo's neck makes the head look extremely short. That alone makes this case for the Gitmo Pterosaur.

Now to the sighting by Patty Carson. She told me, "The skin was a leathery, brownish reddish color. It had little teeth, a LOT of them." She examined the sketch drawn by Kuhn and told me that it was of the same creature that she had seen, even though she offered some minor-adjustment suggestions ("the proportions of the head are very good, and the body and the hind legs are exactly as I remember."). Obviously Patty Carson did not see a flamingo with leathery skin and teeth.

The point? We must not let flamingo legs and feet distract us from the obvious differences between those feathered birds and the featherless Gitmo Pterosaur.

Searching for Dragons Book

The third edition of Searching for Ropens I will retitle "Searching for Dragons," but the changes and additions will be much deeper than just the title. It will be in true cryptozoology genre, with little reference to religion. It will also have more eyewitness sighting reports. I hope that it will be published before Christmas, but it could be early in 2012.

From the Acknowledgements:

How could I have dared travel to Papua New Guinea alone, to search for living pterosaurs in a remote jungle, without detailed guidance from Paul Nation, who instructed me where to go on Umboi Island, whom to meet, what to say, what village to avoid, and what gifts to give to particular islanders? He made my expedition possible.

How could Paul Nation have dared to return to Papua New Guinea so many times, without support from a number of friends and family members? The dangers could not hold him back, although he contracted serious infection twice, on two of his four expeditions.

Live Pterosaurs in Washington

No, I don't mean vulture-politicians in Washington, D.C., but the strange flying creatures, often reported as featherless, in the state of Washington.

Reports of Live Pterosaurs in the State of Washington
Daylight Sighting Around 1987, in a Rural Area

“I was 15 yrs old [when] I saw two ropens together sitting on a fence. I was riding my bike home from a friend’s house around 5 pm in [a town in southwest Washington state]. I lived in the country with my parents . . . 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? . . ."

Bat-Winged Creature Seen by Family in Washington State

In the first email, the witness reported: 

We live in the Pacific Northwest on many acres of mostly tree covered land with a creek.  We have seen and heard a strange nocturnal, bat-like creature.  This thing is huge, light grey, skin with no fur, feathers or scales.  It silently swoops down at you with giant bat wings.  It makes a sound like a jungle monkey or bird, thus we refer to it as the monkey bird. . . .

There were two of them together and they seemed fearless of me when they swooped down at me more than once and returned way up to the top of the highest trees.  I couldn’t get a look at the faces or eyes, mainly the huge grey bat-wings approximately 4′ span .are what I could see.  They seem to show up every summer always after dusk anytime through the night.  Locals don’t seem to know about them. . . .

The witness reported back:

Thank you for checking with your colleague.  Are the owl wings shaped like bat wings?  Do they cling to the sides of the trees?  Do they make a sound like “Hooooowhahhhhhh, aaahooooowahhhh!  with the wah like the rolling of your tongue?   Also the skin on the chest and wings was grey, mottled with some brownish color like a Mexican hairless dogs skin, and it had like visible blood veins kind of like protruding on the skin area.

Live Pterosaurs in New Mexico

Considering the rather low human population of the state of New Mexico, a respectable number of pterosaur sightings have been reported, and a television news show included at least one of those sightings.

Giant Pterosaur in New Mexico

“I live in central N.M.. Fourteen years ago, in [Socorro], N.M., me and a close friend . . . were hiking during the midday . . . and something blocked the sun . . . We both looked up to see . . . a large flying animal.

“It had a 20-30 foot wingspan and was about the same length long. It had a long tail with [a] seeming spike at the end. Its head was very pterodactyl shape with a fluted back pointy head. It glided at about 700 feet . . . and [it landed] somewhere on the southern expanse of Magdalena Mountains.”

Another Eyewitness of Pterosaur in New Mexico

A report attributed to the cryptozoologist Phillip O'Donnell (whether or not he interviewed this eyewitness) involves a pterosaur in New Mexico:

"Ron Monteleone was driving near Maxwell, New Mexico, early one morning in June of 1972 . . . Suddenly he saw a twenty-five to thirty-foot pteranodon-like creature fly out a ravine.”

That "pterdanodon," if the sighting is genuine, may be the same type of pterosaur seen by an eyewitness in a Southern California desert.

Pterosaur in the Anza Borrago State Park, California

"We were sitting in the late afternoon shade of a ridge . . . enjoying the solitude and peace and quiet of the desert when it passed over. . . . It was soaring along the side of a plateau not far from us. . . . I remember saying ‘. . . that looks just like a Taradactyl!’ . . . it had to have been [a] lot larger than an eagle, maybe three times larger. . . . the face . . . seemed to be narrow and mostly beak. . . . It did not have a tail. But it did have a nub where a tail would be."

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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.


Buy your own copy of the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America.
A nonfiction cryptozoology book





Pterosaur in Australia

In the summer of 2010, I received an email from a lady in Australia. After doing some online research, Kathy was surprised at how many eyewitnesses had seen what she had seen: a giant pterosaur.

Mount Coolum National Park is north of Brisbane, Queensland (east coast of Australia).

We saw it at Mt Coolum Sunshine Coast . . . I was [driving] towards the ocean . . . . We heard . . . the swoosh noise. (It is a modern car; the windows were up, so that is a loud sound) . . . [we saw] a black shape coming from the trees; the next thing we saw was one wing over the windscreen. It crossed our path . . . I couldn't see the road for a moment, just wing covering the entire windscreen. The body was over the car and it's other wing, over the back . . . we could not see the body . . . [only] the wing: bat like leather, veins and leather stretched over a bone structure. That was dinosaur era.

This thing was bigger than us in every way. I was happy to have my 13 year old daughter home safely, I can tell you.!!! When we told my brother the story, we both moved our arms the same. We saw it flap it's wing once: swoosh . . . I have looked around Mt Coolum for it's home. I believe that is where its home is . . . It was heading from Coolum to the Mountain, like bats do at night. It was around 8.30 at night when we saw it.

This encounter may have been with a flying creature similar to the one seen in Perth, Australia, in 1997, even though the sightings were on opposite sides of the continent. Both apparent pterosaurs were huge, large enough to be considered potentially dangerous to humans. Neither the Perth flying creature nor the Queensland flying creature could reasonably be construed to have been any bird or bat classified by modern Western science.

Giant Pterosaurs in Australia (East Coast: Queensland)

During his farm chores, between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., he [a boy of about twelve years old] forgot something and had to backtrack. . . . he saw a large creature with wings . . . on the roof of the shed, just above the door where he had recently been standing.

. . . the boy had a brief view of the body and wings of the creature. It was larger than an average man six feet tall, with wings that folded to the side and back, reminiscent of bat wings.

Dragons or Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaurs

Many citizens in developed nations of Europe and North America would assume that traditional beliefs in universal extinction are valid for all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs; but the eyewitnesses know better.

Response to Dale Drinnon

In a post by Dale Drinnon, I was glad to see specific details in critical reports of apparent pterosaurs (Frontiers of Zoology, March 3, 2011, post), but I was a little surprised at how he emphasized an idea about how a modern pterosaur should not appear. In "Ropens, Pterosaurian Sightings And Manta Rays," Drinnon said, "There is a problem in all of these sightings . . . in that the body conformation is NOT what you would expect of a giant Pterosaur." I suggest that insistence on strict conformity with his precise expections are unreasonable. (See the Ropens site on a giant pterosaur.)

Don't confuse two sources of knowledge. The limited knowledge we have of pterosaurs from fossils is not at all the same knowledge that we have from eyewitness reports of modern pterosaurs. If he were more precise, he might say something like this: "Fossils of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs are small, in general, compared with fossils of Pterodactyloid pterosaurs." Of course. Who would disagree with that? But Drinnon has come up with an idea that if pterosaurs were still living, we would expect them to be either non-giants or non-Rhamphorhynchoids, not giant Rhamphoryhynchoids, and that sightings must conform to our expectations. He does not tell us how he arrived at that conclusion, only that "you would not expect" eyewitness reports to be as they are. (See a site about "extinction" and pterosaur fossils)

A serious problem becomes obvious when we consider what he has done with that idea. He uses it to cast doubt on all eyewitness reports that involve a large or giant long-tailed pterosaur or apparent pterosaur. But what would happen to science if all observations were judged by what we had previously expected, and all data involving the unexpected were immediately dismissed? That might appear to be potentially good news for college students at the poverty level, for science textbooks would never again need to be revised, for all scientific knowledge would be declared completed, with no new discoveries allowed.

Modern pterosaurs need not be precisely like what we have so far discovered in fossils. Many species may have lived without leaving any fossils. Many more may have left fossils that we have not yet discovered. Why should those species be exactly like those that have left fossils that we have already discovered? I see no reason for Dale Drinnon to be so dogmatic about what a modern pterosaur might be like.