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:
It is the black side’s turn to move; what would you do?
.
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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.
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.
Elephant trap
Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaur in South Carolina
The strange creature flew gracefully over the highway, right in front of the car . . .