An American eyewitness might think “dinosaur bird” after seeing an apparent living pterosaur (eyewitnesses from some countries might think of a word more like “dragon”), but what is usually meant? “Pterosaur” is difficult to spell, as is “pterodactyl,” but the general impression, for those who report to me their sightings, is something bringing to mind “primitive” or “prehistoric.” Most daylight sightings are of apparently featherless flying creatures with very long tails. I have encountered “dinosaur bird” several times, at least.
Let’s consider some reports that involve names other than “pterosaur.”
Dinosaur Bird and Marfa Lights (and South Carolina Pterosaur)
I don’t know that any eyewitness of any Marfa Light has used the expression “dinosaur bird,” but a newspaper article in the Houston Chronicle used the word “dinosaur” several times (I believe inappropriately). See Marfa Lights up in the Houston Chronicle
Note: The young eyewitness in Sudan did not use the word “kongamato.”
I once interviewed, by email, a young man who had been startled one night, in his village in Sudan, Africa, by an apparent pterosaur. . . . It was the first time that I had a direct communication with an African eyewitness of a pterosaur-like cryptid on that continent, although I had previously had an indirect connection through a man in Liberia. The point? Pterosaurs may be living in many parts of Africa . . .
The rarity of reports of eyewitnesses is from the ridicule that many of them face after telling people what they saw; it is not generally from insanity or dishonesty. In developed countries, the extinction of all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs has been dogmatically taught to us from early childhood. This indoctrination, in the United States, makes it difficult for eyewitnesses to talk.
We who have searched for it in Papua New Guinea call this creature by the name known on Umboi Island: “ropen.” With hundreds of cultures and languages in P.N.G., a real living creature should have different names among different cultures. This is the case, with other names for large nocturnal flying creatures being duwas, kundua, seklobali (or seklo-bali), indava, and wawanar. But all these names might refer to only one or two species.
The Kor of Northern Papua New Guinea
R.K., of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, reports that the glowing nocturnal flying creature of those northern islands is called “kor.” Descriptions strongly suggest that they are at least similar to the ropen of Umboi Island, perhaps the same species: glowing with various colors, a long tail, “skin all over it,” and a few creatures growing to a large size. A few American investigators (some of them exploring in some areas of Papua New Guinea) are convinced that these are living pterosaurs.