philosophy – Page 2 – The Bible and Modern Pterosaurs

September 19, 2013November 3, 2014

New Pterosaur Book on Ropens

front cover of the fourth edition of this nonfiction book

I hope that the third edition of my first book will be finished next month. [It was published in April of 2014, but the fourth edition was published October 31, 2014.] The revised title is Searching for Ropens and Finding God. Those last two words should solve a problem that came up with the first edition, when a few vocal readers railed against it because they were offended by any promotion of religious values; they wanted a book only about cryptozoology.

Much of this third edition with relate to cryptozoology, although the book is not quite in that genre. It’s also not a book about religion, although the values and beliefs of Christian explorers is explained. Is it a true-life adventure? Almost. It’s more like all of the above: cross-genre.

Here is part of the introduction, although it is subject to more editing and revising:

Introduction

Expect answers in this book: why my associates and I traveled to a remote tropical island to search for living pterosaurs and why so few professors have given us any hope that they still live. What about adventures, with danger, failure, and success? Yes, expect those, but I hope that readers will discover more than adventure—a purpose in life—as worthy a purpose as I have found, even if without “flying dinosaurs.” This is not an instruction manual for finding God, yet I suggest that the spiritual quest gives the highest reward.

After reading this book, if one person finds a reason to live and abandons thoughts of suicide, what a reward for all of us involved! This is not a textbook for preventing suicide, yet I suggest each of us can find ways to bring meaning into the lives of persons around us, motivating all of us to keep living and learning.

Is this a tool for promoting Biblical Creation and ridiculing evolution? Clear thinking we need, without fear, allowing us to discover both truth and error in whatever camp we find ourselves, entrenched or visiting, at the moment. I suggest we beware of simplistic labels. That said, expect explanations for why my associates and I have rejected extreme naturalism philosophy and Darwin’s unlimited common ancestry, what some call the General Theory of Evolution.

This is not propaganda for any human philosophy, yet I extoll the accomplishments of those Young Earth Creationists who have been my associates for many years. I suggest we allow ourselves to find literal truth in the Bible, regardless of whatever passages are mainly symbolic. For those who think that pill too bitter, at least avoid ridiculing those labeled “creationist.”

Some of you have read the first or second edition of Searching for Ropens, so the first paragraph of the first chapter, quoted below, will be no surprise. Additional paragraphs have been added, however, to better explain how event in my childhood may have related to the extraordinary opportunities that I received, and grabbed onto, in my older years:

Chapter One: Awakenings

It looked like a dead pterodactyl, not fossil bones but with skin, like it had died recently. Could those creatures, non-extinct, still fly? Although I never verified the authenticity of the photograph in the soon-forgotten book, the idea behind that image would be awakened four decades later, to plunge me into the most dramatic adventure of my life: exploring a remote tropical island, searching for giant living pterosaurs.

My first exposure to a remote tropical island with a giant reptile—when my younger sister Cindy and I were infants—came from Mommy reading Peter Pan. When I was four, the new sister was born, not to the name chosen by Cindy and me, “Captain Hook,” but to a name chosen by compromising parents: “Wendy.”

I came to regard the Peter Pan story a practical fiction, useful in more than just providing names for new babies. Each character had a role; the crocodile, however, at first puzzled me. In time, it resolved into both good and bad: useful to Peter Pan as true enemy to Hook but dangerous when out of place. Perhaps that was the seed of my understanding that a general principal can be complex, both true and false, useful sometimes but false when out of place, even dangerous.

The existence of life I credited to God, from childhood respecting the Bible as nonfiction. When I was ten, my father, psychologist for the San Bernardino School District in California, showed me the largest collection of bird eggs in the Western United States, in the museum in our own little town of Bloomington. The variety of eggs and birds, all dead, fascinated me; but non-birds becoming birds discomforted me, for each form of life appeared to have a role in its own basic form.

New nonfiction book, fourth edition: Searching for Ropens and Finding God

Mount Bel, northeast of Gomlongon Village on Umboi Island (image by J. Whitcomb)

Cryptozoology Book

Third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, by Jonathan David Whitcomb

May 4, 2013May 20, 2014

Revising a Cryptozoology Book

I’m revising my first book, Searching for Ropens, and expect it will be published before Christmas. [Actually, it was published April 18, 2014, after major additions and editing.] The third edition will differ from the second in two significant ways:

It will have new pterosaur sighting reports and insights, and more about the explorers themselves, including Garth Guessman, David Woetzel, and Paul Nation (and, of course, me: Jonathan Whitcomb). It will also have more details about other expeditions: Destination Truth and the Monsterquest-episode expedition with Guessman.
The genre will still be a mixture of spiritual-religious and cryptozoology-adventure, in that order, but this will be made clear in the promotions; I have no desire to offend any cryptozoologist who would dislike reading about religious beliefs.

The title will also be revised: Searching for Ropens and Finding God.

Anything I would quote from the new edition may be revised before publication, so I now quote from the second edition:

Acknowledgements (previous edition)

A key to successfully exploring a sparsely populated wilderness is, ironically, people-skills. My father and mother inspired others, lifting self-esteem; following their examples, I’ve tried inspiring others, though I’ve usually been the one encouraged or inspired. In particular, the pioneering investigations of Jim Blume, Carl Baugh, and Paul Nation illuminated the path for my own investigation in Papua New Guinea; the 2004 follow-through of Garth Guessman, David Woetzel, and Jacob Kepas filled in the gaps of previous expeditions, amplifying and supplementing the successes of those of us preceding them; the generosity of Alex Aguila made possible the 2006 expedition of Paul Nation, whose exploring of a remote area verified the location of many of the creatures (and he brought back the first visual images to the United States; the veracity of the images and testimonies were proven through the work of two physicists: Clifford Paiva and Harold Slusher); the eyewitness testimonies of natives, Australians, and an American veteran, contributed priceless evidence; the love of my wife and three daughters strengthened me to leave the comforts of home; the prayers of family, friends, and other Americans were answered when I found Luke Kenda, who became my interpreter, bodyguard, and counselor. By the grace of the Father of us all, Luke and I were welcomed like brothers by those we met on Umboi Island, and by accepting the friendship of humble Christians in remote villages, we were sheltered, fed, and led to those who made this book possible: the eyewitnesses. Thank you; tenku tru.

Lake Pung, Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea (where seven native boys had seen the giant ropen around 1994) – photo courtesy of Garth Guessman, one of those on the second expedition of 2004

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Pterosaur Extinction (or not)

In Searching for Ropens, I wrote, “Since no researcher in Europe [when fossils were first being discovered] had any knowledge of living creatures similar to the fossils, it was assumed that they were all extinct. The key word is ‘assumed.’. . if only 1% of the population of Western Europe, in the late 18th Century, had . . . [seen] living pterosaurs, the universal-pterosaur-extinction notion would never have gotten started.”

Cryptozoology Book

Eskin Kuhn was a U.S. Marine, in 1971, when he witnessed two large pterosaurs flying over the navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has maintained his testimony for decades: He saw, in clear daylight, two featherless long-tailed flying creatures with very prominent head crests.

Civil War Soldiers and a Monster Photo

To begin, I do not present Photo #1 as overwhelming evidence for the existence of a huge modern living pterosaur that has a head suggesting a Pteranodon; I interview eyewitnesses, and some of them report sighting details that have convinced me that huge pterosaurs (rare and nocturnal as they may be) live in this modern world of ours.

April 15, 2013April 27, 2013

More Religion than Investigation?

Book Review on Amazon

On April 12, 2013, a skeptic of pterosaur sightings posted a brief review on Amazon, dismissing my recently published book Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. At first, the review appeared to me a mistake or a dishonest attack, for my book examines many sightings of apparent pterosaurs and emphasizes four critical encounters, four pillars of cryptozoological credibility in my opinion, not just “two” reports; I thought perhaps “WS” referred to a different book, not mine. After looking more closely, I noticed the adjective “intriguing:” The critic wrote, “The book really consists of one or two intriguing reports.” But the other adjective, “really,” can mislead people into thinking my book examines no more than two eyewitness sightings, which is far from the truth.

Perhaps WS gave my book two stars instead of one because the reviewer found one or two of the reports intriguing; WS doesn’t say. But I’ll address some of the criticisms.

I was also struck by the title of the book review, “more religion than investigation,” for I had carefully avoided including any preaching while writing Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea (LPAPNG). This is a cryptozoology book that exhorts open-minded examination of eyewitness evidence, nothing like a book on religion. Part of one page refers to the non-religious accomplishments of a few Biblical creationist explorers, their interviews with natives in Papua New Guinea, but that hardly changes the genre of the book: “cryptozoology.”

False “Racism” Statement

I have done a word scanning of this book. The words completely absent include:

racism
race
aboriginal

Nobody will find any of those words in the book, for they’re absent.

The reviewer wrote the following:

He describes science . . . and even equates it with racism . . .

At first, the comment on racism lead me to suspect the person writing this review had not read my book but some other publication instead, or had read more than one author and had become confused. Never in my life have I written anything that even hinted at the idea that science “equates” “with racism.” I then scanned the book for the word “native” and found nothing supporting the critic’s words, but I found two statements almost relevant:

The natives were not trying to deceive us into believing in a fictional creature, contrary to what some American critics later proclaimed. [from the chapter “Another Expedition on Umboi Island”]

Was WS thinking that accusing natives of dishonesty is racism? I can see that possibility. But why would the critic believe that “some American critics” equates with “science?”

WS says that I complain “that scientists no longer believe in human honesty.” Where did I say that? Searching again in the book, scanning it for “lie,” (equivalent to “deceive” and related to “honesty”), I found the following in the first chapter:

On that point, I have found many rejections of eyewitness testimonies to be far from objective and far from mild-mannered. One skeptic, a non-scientist, built a whole web site to ridicule the concept of modern dinosaurs and pterosaurs, putting the words “stupid” and “lies” into the URL address of the site. [from the first chapter, “How can pterosaurs be alive?”]

Did WS overlook “non” and equate “non-scientist” with “science?” Many readers, including myself, have made that kind of reading mistake, especially when we are expecting a particular point of view in what we’re reading. Was the critic simply careless in reading only portions of the book? WS gives no material explanation and gives no example for his conclusions. Why? The more merciful explanation that I see is that WS was careless; I will not assume the worst.

My Conclusion

I sometimes write about pterosaurs and religion, but this book, Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, has almost no religious content at all except for a few sentences about expeditions of creationist cryptozoologists who interviewed native eyewitnesses in Papua New Guinea. This is a cryptozoology book, notwithstanding WS makes no mention of that fact.

I think I know what WS meant when, in the middle of the brief review, that critic wrote, “Maybe someone will give this subject a serious treatment at some point, but this isn’t it.” I suspect WS means that the book is not a “serious treatment” and perhaps the “subject” was eyewitness accounts of apparent pterosaurs. The critic gives no details or explanation. I respond, “Maybe someone will write a more precise review, based on the actual contents of the book, but this review isn’t it.”

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nonfiction cryptozoology book in electronic format - living pterosaurs

Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea

Preface

You will here find reports of encounters with apparent living pterosaurs, including many accounts never before published in any book. Other sighting reports are condensed from the print book “Searching for Ropens.” The ebook you are now examining is neither exhaustive nor rudimentary, but it explains most of what most Australians, and others, need to know about what might, on rare occasions, fly over their heads at night.

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. I hope that you already understand that we are more than a by-product of culture: Our existence transcends the boundaries of the human cultural assumptions that have shaped our beliefs.

Now is the time for us to listen carefully, to think clearly, and to act accordingly rather than simply react when a cultural belief is contradicted: now, not after the official scientific discovery of modern living pterosaurs.

Addendum:

After WS communicated with me about our differing points of view, he agreed to change the title of his review to “More scientific approach would have been more effective.” More recently, I noticed that I had neglected to include the word “cryptozoology” in the Amazon “Book Description.” I have now submitted additional words to make the genre clear. (I’m as human as anyone else.)

Readers have come forward, soon after the publication of this negative review, offering support for my book. A notable comment comes from the prolific author Michael Newton, who wrote one of the most respected nonfiction books of cryptozoology ever published, Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology: A Global Guide to Hidden Animals and Their Pursuers. Here is what he says about my newest book:

“Jonathan Whitcomb’s Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea adds important new information to his previous works on this subject. Disputes over theology aside, ‘young earth’ creationists remain the primary dedicated field researchers pursuing reports of these most intriguing cryptids.”

Michael Newton Author of 78 nonfiction books, including many on cryptozoology

www.michaelnewton.homestead.com

February 1, 2013February 1, 2018

Pterosaur Sightings and Religion

On occasion I receive a dismissive remark from a skeptic of our research of pterosaur sightings, something like, “How can a living pterosaur prove that the earth is 6,000 years old?” I do not speak for my associates but for my own position regarding the relationship between modern pterosaurs and the Bible, and my position strongly supports a few points of Young Earth Creation but not all points. I suggest looking a little deeper, especially deeper than dismissive critics have done.

Evolutionary Boundary

Soon after the turn of this century, I spent about half a year testing Darwin’s General Theory of Evolution through mathematical simulations. My intention was not to manufacture a direct refutation of the “molecules-to-man” kind of evolution but to force one small step of such an evolutionary process, so that it might be shown the plausibility of many steps (a microbe evolving into a human would indeed require many steps). I was surprised at the result: Even in the ideal mathematical environment, with an initial population of ten to the twenty-nine power, Darwin’s Common Ancestry idea is impossible: Natural Selection itself prevents that kind of evolution from even beginning to get a foothold.

Pterosaur Sighting Investigation Begins

Within three years of beginning my mathematical experiment, I started to investigate reports of dinosaur and pterosaur sightings. Paul Nation (of Granbury, Texas) got me focused, in 2003, on eyewitness reports of possible pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea, and I have passionately pursued reports of those featherless flying creatures until the present.

Evolution and Pterosaurs

During the past eight years, I have written three nonfiction books about sightings of modern pterosaurs, with generally only limited references to the General Theory of Evolution (GTE). In particular, Live Pterosaurs in America (in three editions) and Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea make almost no mention of evolution or religion, pterosaur sightings themselves taking up much of the content. So how does GTE relate to the concept of extant pterosaurs? It’s a bit complicated, but we can look into one aspect, to some extent.

Without evidence for ancient life forms different from present life forms, what do we have? Without fossils of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, Darwin probably would never have thought about the possibility of universal common ancestry. Without any evidence for old-life different from present-day life, how easy it would be to connect Darwin’s ideas with fairy tales! In other words, if each basic type of organism is descended only from basically similar ancestors, Darwin’s concept of common ancestry is an obvious fiction, hardly different from any other fairy tale.

Living Fossils

I know that critics sometimes bring up the Coelacanth, a “living fossil,” as one of the exceptions. They assume that the modern existence of that “ancient” fish offered no evidence at all against the General Theory of Evolution and that the discovery of a living pterosaur would also have no influence against it. But how many exceptions can we discover before the truth becomes obvious? After the discovery of many extant dinosaur and pterosaur species (or discoveries that they have lived within the past few thousand years), it would be obvious that they are not exceptions: Organisms living within the past few thousands years are basically in the same forms as those we know from fossils. In other words, there would be no need to imagine small simple organisms evolving into large complex ones.

I don’t refer to the purpose of those atheists who feel a need for an origin-explanation devoid of God; I refer to objective scientific investigation. But in the real world of human thought, most adults are attracted to some kind of origin philosophy, regardless of whether that frame of mind links to labels like “science” or “religion,” “evolution” or “God.”

To be truly objective regarding a discovery of an animal previously thought extinct for millions of years—that means admitting there is one less animal that existed only in the distant past. The Coelacanth alone is one living evidence against the General Theory or Evolution, regardless of how many scientists have ignored that fact and have clung to Darwin’s origin philosophy.

So is the Universe 6,000 Years old?

I believe in miracles recorded in the Bible. I know that God can do things that are beyond our present comprehension. But why believe that the creation mentioned early in the book of Genesis refers to the creation of galaxies that were beyond the vision and comprehension of those who have, for many centuries, read those verses of scripture (before telescopes)? How much more reasonable for God to inspire Moses to write a brief summary of those creative events related to this earth! And why would God create the universe in six 24-hour periods of time, when his work with human societies has taken, sometimes, centuries?

Regardless of the age of the earth as a globe of matter, life on this planet, especially those more intelligent forms like humans, need not have ancestors that lived millions of years ago on this earth. Adam and Eve were actual persons who lived thousands of years ago, regardless of the assumptions of those who assume that the account in Genesis could not have happened. But that’s a deep subject, far beyond the significance of sightings of living pterosaurs.

Pterosaur Sightings in the United States

With clear sky and a still-full moon, the landscape was brightly lit [sighting in Ohio]. A creature swooped down—an obvious “pterodactyl”—gliding gracefully over the hood of her car. She watched it fly into some dense underbrush of trees.

Scientific Evidence for Living Pterosaurs

. . . no hoaxes played any significant role in the sighting reports. Any major hoax involvement would have caused at least one obvious peak in wingspan estimates.

One LDS Perspective on Evolution

“Before you can ask is Darwinian Theory correct or not, you have to ask the preliminary question, ‘Is it clear enough so that it could be correct?’ . . .” (quoting David Berlinski)

December 28, 2012

Obvious Impossibility

For this, the 100th post on this blog, we’ll take a different perspective on the non-extinction of pterosaurs.

The “Gold Coin Game” of Chess

In a European chess tournament in 1912, the American master Frank Marshall won a short game against the Russian master Stefan Levitsky. Marshall would later receive the honorary title of being one of the five original grandmasters of the early twentieth century, so winning a game against a lower-ranked master would hardly have been news. But the last move of the game made chess history, for Marshall put his queen, the most valuable fighting piece, in danger in three ways.

For those chess spectators with at least moderate forsight, it was obvious that any one of those three ways of capturing Marshall’s queen would lead to losing the game. But to chess beginners who don’t look deeply, it seems like the obviously worst possible move he could have made.

Shallow Thinking Makes it “Impossible”

For skeptics who want an easy way out of deep thinking, I offer three ways to dismiss my declarations about modern pterosaurs:

Giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs living in the southwest Pacific
Pterodactyloid pterosaurs flying regularly in daylight in the interior of New Britain Island
Living pterosaurs flying regularly in the United States of America, sometimes in daylight

For skeptics who would just want to dismiss me (thereby avoiding my declarations), I offer these:

I have no college degree in biology and no credentials in paleontology.
I have never seen (at least up until December 12, 2012) what I declare is alive.
I am associated with explorers and researchers who are Young Earth Creationists.

Skeptics who would only consider some or all of the above, and dismiss eyewitness reports as obviously impossible—those persons are caught in the quagmire of their own shallow thinking; But for those who think more deeply, truth emerges.

Eyewitnesses of various cultural backgrounds have reported the same (or very similar) descriptions of long-tailed flying creatures in the southwest Pacific: Duane Hodgkinson (American), the Perth couple (Australian), Brian Hennessy (Australian), Gideon Koro (of Papua New Guinea), Jonah Jim (of Papua New Guinea), and others. No bird or bat known to science looks like the following:

No sign of feathers
Long tail, as long as 10-15 feet

If a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur species, however, had survived into the present day (regardless of when it had lived in the past), what would be so strange about that species including a few older individuals, creatures that continued to grow until they were huge?

Regarding short-tailed pterosaurs, what is really so strange about Pterodactyloids living deep in the interior of New Britain Island? Try explaining, to someone who has never seen or heard about any sea or ocean, a Blue Whale. You might never get beyond just trying to explain the idea of a sea, for it could be too unbelievable. We need Westerners who are willing to listen with an open mind to the overwhelming eyewitness evidence for living pterosaurs.

Details of the Chess Game

For anyone interested, here is the final move in the “gold coin game” of chess:

diagram of a chess game that was won by the master Frank J. Marshall

It is the black side’s turn to move; what would you do?

If you were playing the black side of this chess game, it might seem obvious that you were in trouble. The black queen is threatened by capture from one of the white rooks and one of the black rooks is threatened by capture from a white pawn. The solution for black may be found by a master but not likely by any chess player of lower ranking.

In this chess game, black's queen can be taken in three ways, each one disasterous

It seems, on the surface, that this could not possibly be the best move, for two white pawns can capture the black queen, and if neither of those would work well, then the white queen can capture the black queen.

Looking deeper, however, either pawn capturing the black queen would result in a checkmate in one or two moves; this is because the black knight would move down towards the white king. But if the white queen captures the black queen, the black knight will move to that same square and capture the white queen on the next move; and the move after that, the black knight will capture one of the white rooks, leaving the player on the black side with a decisive (in master competition) advantage in material.

The game was a real encounter between two chess masters. The legend that arose from the last move is that spectators showered the table with gold coins after comprehending that the move that seemed, on the surface, impossible to be correct was, in reality, a stroke of genius.

Chess Charms

Elephant trap

Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaur in South Carolina

The strange creature flew gracefully over the highway, right in front of the car . . .

November 2, 2012November 2, 2012

Manta Ray Comes Back to Surface

Eighteen months ago I wrote, on this blog, about the “Manta ray and Modern Pterosaur” conjecture. A few days ago, the Manta ray came back to the surface, again attempting to get into the air and to imitate a living pterosaur. Again that poor fish is shot down. We now concentrate on the recent blog post by Dale Drinnon.

I will not link to that post, for it can easily be found by a serious researcher and those who are less serious about diving into the truth may be led astray by the mistakes that are found therein. Now for details.

Sighting in the Philippines

Drinnon’s attention seems to have gotten caught up with my October 23, 2012, post on the blog Live Pterosaur (“Pterosaurs Across the Pacific”), probably because of its brief reference to a fisherman who reported something that he thought was the same or similar to what was observed by the principal eyewitness. Let’s examine critical details about the principle sighting.

We need to understand that my post of October 23rd had a brief excerpt of a sighting report in the Philippines. Drinnon apparently had no knowledge of critical details that could have been found only with serious online research.
Since my October post included a brief reference to a fisherman, Drinnon seems to have seen an opportunity to promote the Manta ray interpretation of pterosaur sightings; but all details about the fisherman are absent, so that’s of little relevance.
The critical sighting details (not in that post) included the following:

“I saw them clearly: the SHAPE, their BAT-LIKE WINGS, a LONG NECK and . . . I dunno if it is a horn behind their heads. They have a long beak. I even saw their claws between their wings. They don’t have any feathers; their body really looks like a bat. They seldom flap their wings, about every 3-4 sec.; thats why I knew it is not just a big bat. . . .”

We need to remember that these details were apparently not read by Mr. Drinnon, so I don’t criticize him for being ignorant of them when he wrote his recent post. But in a response to my comment on his post, he revealed “The Philippines sighting in specific lends itself to the Manta ray hypothesis most readily.” In other words, to the best of his knowledge at the time he wrote his recent post, that sighting was the best example that appeared to fit a misidentification of a Manta ray fish jumping out of the water. Well, we all should now understand that the jumping fish conjecture, for this sighting, is ludicrous when we consider the following critical details:

Long neck, slow flapping, claws

Some sighting reports of apparent living pterosaurs include a description of a long neck. That alone destroys the Manta ray hypothesis for those sightings, including this encounter in the Philippines.

A slow flapping of wings over a period of time also shoots down the jumping fish, including this encounter with a flying creature that flapped its wings only once every three or four seconds or so.

In addition, claws associated with the wings tear apart Mr. Dinnon’s conjecture for this sighting.

In addition, the critical sighting (by the young man who sent me an email a few years ago) seems to have been two living pterosaurs flying over a city, NOT one creature jumping out of the sea.

Religion, Philosophy, and Science

Volumes can be written about origin philosophy as it relates to cryptozoology and Western teachings about the General Theory of Evolution. Drinnon writes little, if anything, on how this relates to reports of modern living pterosaurs (from what I have read of his writings) but too much confidence in standard-model dogmas and assumptions can cause people, even college graduates in science, to be led seriously astray.

Drinnon makes a revealing statement: “Once again, the last Pterosaurs around did not have tails and the biggest Pterosaurs did not have tails.” That seems to me overly simplistic, but it reveals his perspective. Apparently he believes that knowledge gained from paleontologists who examine pterosaur fossils can trump human experience with modern living creatures. If all paleontologists were omnipotent, knowing everything about every subject of science and about everything else, that perspective might be valid. But when consistant human experience contradicts a centuries-old scientific assumption, we need to be reminded of the truth: Humans are human, even highly educated paleontologists. We need to spend more time considering human experiences from around the world and we need to spend less time buried under a pile of dusty bones in a laboratory.

Seriously Astray

How many humans on this planet would see a large Manta ray fish jump out of the sea and become convinced that they had witnessed the flight of a living pterosaur? With all the billions of humans on this planet, countless millions have at least looked out onto a sea or ocean, at least on occasion; some have spent their lives in fishing on large bodies of water. So how many of them have come to believe in living pterosaurs (or dragons) because they had mistaken a fish jumping out of the water for a flying creature? Almost nobody, and among those few NONE of them would be living in modern times and have access to a computer and also send me an email reporting that they had seen a pterosaur flying OVER LAND.

I don’t know why Mr. Drinnon believes that many reports of modern living pterosaurs involve a flight over water or very near the sea. I suspect that reports that have some reference or implication of relevance to the sea attract his attention. The vaste majority of sighting reports that have been sent to me do not involve a flight over a sea or ocean, however. This fact appears to have been overlooked by Mr. Drinnon.

Flight Over the Sea

Let’s consider now an exception, apparent pterosaurs flying over a sea.

In 2009, on Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas cruise ship, a lady and her daughter witnessed two “flourescent birds” that looked like “flying dinosaurs.” They flew over the sea but could not have been jumping Manta rays, for they flew back and forth for fifteen minutes. That would be too much of a leap of fish. Even the largest and jumpingest Manta ray could not stay in the air for more than about two seconds.

Gitmo Pterosaur of Cuba - eyewitness and artist Patty Carson

“Gitmo Pterosaur” seen by Patty Carson in Cuba in 1965

Pterosaurs Look Unlike Manta Rays

Many details repudiate the Manta ray misidentification interpretation: head, head crest, neck, leg-like structures, feet-like structures, tail vane (Rhamphorhynchoid-like). . . . But now we get to more serious problems with the fish idea. . . .