By investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb (nonfiction author)

Introduction

The ten-year anniversary is approaching for the publication of my scientific paper “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific,” so here is an introduction to that peer-reviewed article, with links to images of some of the pages. It was published in Volume 45 of the Creation Research Society Quarterly (issue: Winter of 2009), beginning on page 200 of that issue.

I also include here a few details about some of my cryptozoology books, for the scientific paper is only 13 pages long, and my books have much more information. In addition, the books are more-recently published and contain more-recent sighting reports.

Page 1 of the scientific paper on living pterosaurs

The Abstract refers to standard models of evolution regarding asserted extinctions of all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. It also refers to the Flood of Genesis and to the young-earth view that allows for the possibility that some of the pterosaurs survived extinction. It also mentions that some descriptions suggest a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur lives in Papua New Guinea and that expeditions were made on Umboi Island.

Page 2 of “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific”

A body of indirect evidence has accumulated that suggests that extant pterosaurs exist in the southwest Pacific area. This paper will present and evaluate that evidence and address some the skepticism of the possibility of extant pterosaurs, . . . this skepticism tends to rest on an evolutionary worldview.

Page 3 of the scientific paper (but page in the journal is “202”)

This includes evidence gathered from the two expeditions on Umboi Island in 2004 (Whitcomb and Guessman and Woetzel). It also briefly mentions the expedition of 1994, in which Carl Baugh, Jim Blume, and Paul Nation participated. This page also briefly answers the suggestion that the animal called ropen is not a pterosaur but a bat.

Page 4 of the scientific paper by Whitcomb

This is mostly two tables about what was learned in six expeditions in Papua New Guinea in the following years: 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2007. Here are some examples of what was learned about the ropen, according to natives:

• “ropen never glows longer than 5-6 seconds at a time”
• “the ropen may be similar to a Sordes pilosus (but ropen is large)”
• “tail length is 7 m [23 feet]; mouth ‘like a crocodile’ . . .”
• “has a long tail with a ‘diamond’ . . . Lake Pung”
• grave robbery in the village of Gomlongon (Umboi Island)
• “large empty clam shells . . . the ropen eats clams”

Page 5 of “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific”

The following are some examples from Table II:

• Finschhafen — 1944 — Giant, long beak & tail, head appen.”
• Umboi — 1972 — “Gov’t official sees light fly near Lab Lab”
• Bougainville — 1971 — “Long beak, long tail, head appendage”
• Umboi — “upright, it holds onto a tree trunk”

Page 6 of the scientific paper

This has the continuation of Table II and all of Table III. Here are a few examples from this page, restricted to flying lights on Umboi Island:

• Umboi — 2003 — “it flew from beach to [the mountain] Bel”
• Umboi — 2003 — “light flew down to reef, as if fishing”
• Umboi — 2004 — “creature glowing as it flew”
• Tawa Village — 2006 —  “two lights on a ridge (videotaped)”
• Tawa area — 2006 — “winged creature sleeping on a cliff”

Books on Modern Pterosaurs

The preceding references to images of pages of that scientific paper can be used in finding the other pages, up to the final one: page thirteen.

I recommend my book Searching for Ropens and Finding God, which is the longest nonfiction print publication on living pterosaurs. For young readers, especially those between eight and fourteen years old, I recommend my shorter book: The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur.

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Scientific paper on living pterosaurs

Eyewitness sightings in “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific,” include the sighting by Duane Hodgkinson, the World War II veteran. This excerpt is from Volume 45, Number 3, of the Creation Research Society Quarterly (Winter issue, 2009).

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Nonfiction cryptozoology books

Six books that have at least some content related to sightings of apparent living pterosaurs—that’s what this blog post covers.

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Scientific papers about modern pterosaurs

Two peer-reviewed articles are covered here, one by David Woetzel and the other by Jonathan Whitcomb:

• “The Fiery Flying Serpent”
• “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific”

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Non-fiction books on living pterosaurs

Two paperback books are closely compared:

• Searching for Ropens and Finding God (4th edition)
• Live Pterosaurs in America (3rd edition)

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Modern pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea

Around 1965, some of the natives in this general area of New Britain got access to a gun and shot a pterosaur. They then cooked it in three large pots, feeding the village. This event was told to [Milt Marcy] and [Peter Beach] by two of the older natives, Fraggie and Hulio, who were boys at the time of the feast. Apparently, however, Marcy and Beach stayed in a different village than the one in which Fraggie and Hulio remembered enjoying that home-cooked meal.

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Scientific paper on non-extinct pterodactyls (& a sighting in Spain)

Let’s examine an individual sighting report and its credibility: an account of an apparent living pterosaur in Spain. (I’ve already written much about the overall honesty-credibility of the reports, so we’ll here concentrate on this individual account.)

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Cryptozoology book on pterosaurs

“Since the time of Darwin, many scientists have assumed that some general types of animals became extinct long ago. One of the assumptions is that all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs died off before any humans existed.” [from Jonathan Whitcomb]

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By the nonfiction author Jonathan David Whitcomb

Introduction

The third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America is mainly a nonfiction cryptozoology book, with the vast majority of its sightings in the United States. Its first edition was almost the first book I had written about living pterosaurs, and at that time I wrote in a cross-genre of cryptozoology and Christian nonfiction. With that said, the third edition (LPA-3) is almost entirely in the nonfiction-cryptozoology genre, but with two pages entirely about religion and a few other pages with some remarks relevant to religion.

Where did this come from, this need for me to explain all this? One Amazon Customer Reviewer, Terry Betts, wrote a comment on my book on May 17, 2018, and gave his remarks the title “A look at a real Cryptid or a dissertation on Creationism?” I submit that almost all readers of Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, will find that it is nothing remotely like a dissertation on creationism, if they are ever exposed to that title written by Terry Betts.

What reader would be happy with this book?

Theoretically, looking on the other side of it, the following two kinds of reader might be unhappy with it:

1. An atheist who is unhappy with Christians
2. A Biblical creationist who wants to read books only about the Bible

What I have found over the years, however, points to only the first kind of reader being offended, at least from what I get from Amazon customer reviews. Almost anyone other than an atheist appears to have no major problem with Live Pterosaurs in America.

The great majority of readers seem to be very happy with LPA-3. As of November 20, 2018, of the 17 Amazon Customer Reviews, 76% gave it five stars, 6% four stars, 6% three stars, and 12% one star. For a controversial book, it ranks very highly in that way on Amazon.

What religious elements are actually in the book?

They’re actually quite limited. Consider the following.

After setting aside 15 pages of index, Live Pterosaurs in America (3rd edition) has 138 pages of print. The Appendix has 30 pages, divided into nine short sub-sections, two pages of which are the subsection titled “Philosophy at the Foundation.” In other words, we have 108 pages of text before the Appendix begins and two pages of that Appendix relate to religious matters.

Is this really a religious book, as Terry Betts appears to have at least hinted at? I looked into several words in my book; I’d like to share what I learned from searching on a pdf copy of LPA-3.

• Bible
• Creationism
• Creationist
• Christian
• God

The word ‘Bible’ appears eight times, but only three of those are in the main body of the book, before the Appendix. The word ‘God’ also appears only three times outside the Appendix, and in that case all of those three were in quotations from eyewitnesses, not in any statement by me.

The word ‘creationism’ appears only once outside the Appendix; it is found seven times in the Appendix. ‘Creationist’ appears eighteen time, but not once is it seen outside the Appendix. The word ‘Christian’ appears only twice in the entire book: both times in the Appendix.

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Back cover of this nonfiction cryptozoology book

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Conclusion

Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, is obviously nothing remotely like a “dissertation on creationism.” Another skeptic and critic once declared that I had tried to hide my creationist ties. That is also incorrect, according to word searching of a pdf copy of this book, as the above demonstrates.

The truth is simple: Belief in the Bible has been important to me and to many of my associates in living-pterosaur investigations, yet the great majority of my publications have been either entirely in the realm of cryptozoology or have been with a limited mixing in of some elements of Christian religion.

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Live Pterosaurs in America

Many modern pterosaurs are much larger than any bat, many with long tails, many with head crests. What about news headlines? How did these creatures avoid media attention? Get the answers from years of work by American cryptozoologists.

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Hot Spots for Pterosaur Sightings

• Shropshire, England
• Cuba (mid-20th century)
• Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea
• Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
• Mansfield, Ohio, USA
• Los Angeles, California, USA
• Draper, Utah

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New “dinosaur” book for children

I wrote the nonfiction book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur for several purposes. As a gift giver for a child or teenager, you need to know what this does and does not do and what benefits it can give to the young reader. I recommend it for readers between about the ages of eight and fourteen; for some ten-year-olds (and eleven and twelve) it will be exceptionally delightful: easy to understand yet stimulating.

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Book about “flying dinosaurs”

My boss and I suddenly saw . . . a flying object that was strange. . . . we knew it was quite far away, but it was as big as a regular bird would appear up close. It was gliding, with an occasional slow, smooth flap. We were talking about it, but, as it approached, words ceased, and amazement took over.

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Some call them pterodactyls or flying dinosaurs

The non-fiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America

By nonfiction-cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb

This cryptozoology book, for readers from eight to fourteen years old is titled The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. I make it clear, on the back cover and inside the book, that this is about living pterosaurs, which are not literally dinosaurs. It should be published by about the middle of November (2018).

This is not just the true-life adventure of a child who sees a flying creature: It explains how Patty Carson was disbelieved at first but gradually came to be believed, and it’s about a number of eyewitnesses, children, teenagers, and adults, who have seen these extraordinary animals.

Table of Contents inside this cryptozoology book

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Quoting part of the Introduction

This is more than a story of one little girl who saw a modern pterosaur. It’s about many persons who have seen these flying creatures: adults, teenagers, and children.

Several persons suggested that “flying dinosaur” would be a poor choice of words in the title. Pterosaurs are not, after all, dinosaurs. But when little Patty Carson ran home to tell her family what she had seen, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1965, she probably said something like, “I saw a flying dinosaur.”

Quoting from the last chapter: Conclusion

The first discovered pterosaur fossil examined by a Western scientist was in 1784, when Benjamin Franklin was still alive. Other fossils were discovered, yet none of the scientists were able to connect those remains of pterosaurs with any living animal. It looked like those pterosaur fossils must have come from animals that had become extinct.

Yet we can look closer. We now know about many kinds of animals now living. Some of them, however, were not known to any Western scientist in the year 1800. Let’s consider some of those animals, just a sampling . . .

Nonfiction for middle-grade and early-teen readers

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The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur

This blog post, from October 19, 2018, is titled “New Book on Child (and Adult) Eyewitnesses of Living Pterosaurs.”

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Nonfiction book for children and teens

As with most of my nonfiction books, this one [The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur] shows readers evidence, albeit mostly cryptozoological, for recent “dinosaurs” or pterosaurs.

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Recent Dragons or Pterosaurs

What a wonderful world we live in, a planet that provides for so many forms of life! For many human cultures and in many periods of history, people have had no difficulty in believing in flying dragons [modern pterosaurs].

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Book on cryptozoology (this nonfiction is on living pterosaurs)

Searching for Ropens and Finding God

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Kids who see a pterodactyl

Sometimes the eyewitness of an apparent modern pterosaur was a child at the time of the sighting—Patty Carson saw one in Cuba around 1965.

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Books on modern pterosaurs

This has a number of nonfiction books, including Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition) and Live Pterosaurs in America (3rd ed.).

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Children who see living pterosaurs

Declaration on apparent modern pterosaurs

Update:

I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have completely withdrawn my support for the concept that the Ptp image (also known with titles like “pterodactyl photo” and “Civil War Pteranodon photo”) is a genuine photograph recorded during the American Civil War. It now appears that part of an episode of Walking With Dinosaurs has a wing, on an animated pterosaur, that is extremely close to the left wing in Ptp.

I apologize. I should have waited for some evidence of provenance before jumping into looking for evidence for the authenticity of this image. I take full responsibility for my blunder.

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Original Post

I want to be objective about this photo that appears to have come from around the time of the American Civil War, and it looks like it has a dead Pteranodon on the ground. If I’ve missed something important, please contact me. [Update: As of early November, 2018, I have stopped supporting Ptp.]

The official name for the photograph is Ptp, but it’s also known as the “Civil War pterodactyl photo.” A rumor includes a reference to Vicksburg, Mississippi, a city I once lived in, and a word for the animal: “monster.”

Don’t confuse it with the Haxan Films fake photo, which was contrived to look like Ptp but is a manipulated image from about the year 2000. Even just a casual glance at the two photos, side-by-side, reveals those are completely different in origin, meaning that one of them was not manipulated to create the other. They are related, however, for the Haxan hoax was made with Ptp as its model, and that has caused confusion, for people don’t always get the opportunity to see the two photos together. Many persons probably assume there’s only one photo, if they know anything about it.

The original Civil War pterosaur photo

People seem to remember Ptp from one or more books, from around the 1950’s or 1960’s, perhaps the 1970’s. At any rate, it seems to have existed from before Photoshop existed. Tom Payne, something of an expert on canoes, told me that he remembers this photo from before the existence of Photoshop. He also told me that the apparent wings of the animal are not halves of a canoe.

That’s when I fell out of the canoe conjecture. For years, perhaps decades, I had a feeling that those wings looked like some kind of canoe. In 2013, I looked deeper, testing to see if the canoe idea would hold water. I found it difficult to keep my balance in that kind of apparent boat, for no canoe in North America seemed like what I saw in that photo. The canoe expert Tom Payne, early in 2017, knocked me completely out of that boat idea.

Then I saw the astonishing conclusion: If this is not a photo of men standing around a model “pterodacyl,” what else could this be than a Civil War pterosaur photo? That’s when I phoned my friend in California, the physicist Cliff Paiva. He confirmed to me his findings: This is a genuine image with a real animal.

Paiva suggested I write a small book on our evidences of authenticity in the photo. I then wrote Modern Pterosaurs. I really have tried to be objective, but the skeptical criticisms of Ptp have completely failed to explain away this photo. Whether a monster or a pterosaur, the animal is real.

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Copyright 2017, 2018 Jonathan D. Whitcomb

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Civil War photos

National archives

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Dinosaur and Pterosaur Extinction

Extant, not extinct

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New book about modern pterosaurs

This is not the nonfiction Modern Pterosaurs but the new nonfiction The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur.

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Modern Pterosaurs [printing has been suspended]

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This post had a major revision on December 7, 2018

The photograph, or apparent photo, which played a major role in the nonfiction cryptozoology book Modern Pterosaurs I no longer support. That’s why I stopped the printing of that book. I still maintain, however, that at least the great majority of sighting reports that I have received over the past 15 years—those are valid cryptozoological evidences for extant pterosaurs. This post now covers the other nonfiction books that I have written and published over the years, and why they are not, for the most part, in the genre of Biblical creationism.

The Living-Pterosaurs Books now Supported by Whitcomb

• Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition)
• Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition)
• Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea (This is a free online book, not available in print.)
• The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur (for older kids and teens)

I wrote and published the above four nonfiction books to help readers come to know the truth about these wonderful flying creatures. I believe in allowing people to believe what they will concerning Bible interpretations regarding how long life has existed on this planet. I also believe that we will all, at some time in the future, come to a united knowledge and a common understanding regarding the origin of life on this planet. With that said, I feel that knowledge of modern pterosaurs will help us prepare for the time when we’ll received a greater knowledge about life origins.

In Conclusion

At least up until the end of 2018, none of my books that are still in print are, for the most part, in the genre of Biblical creation-science, although SFRFG (4th edition) and LPA (3rd edition) have some references to the Bible regarding belief in modern living pterosaurs. Nevertheless, each of my living-pterosaur books that are now in print are primarily in the genre of cryptozoology.

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Copyright 2018 Jonathan D. Whitcomb (“Modern Pterosaurs Creationist Books?”)

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New cryptozoology book on modern pterosaurs

My newest nonfiction book, The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur, was published in November of 2018 and is available on Amazon and other online book retailers. It differs from the other nonfiction cryptozoology books I’ve written. . . . [This one is for children and teenagers.]

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Religious Bias and the Ropen

I was asked about the possibility of religious bias in the thinking of those who believe the eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs. I replied that bias is not restricted to those who are religious. Why should Christians be singled out for potential bias? Any person of any philosophy may well be biased about particular ideas.

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Civil War Pteranodon Photograph

On January 14, 2017, the physicist Clifford Paiva, of California, and I (Jonathan Whitcomb) jointly agreed that the image of an apparent pterosaur in this photograph is in fact a valid recording of a modern pterosaur.

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The Flood of Genesis, dinosaurs, and pterosaurs

The combination of a head crest and a Rhamphorhynchoid tail is uncommon in pterosaur fossils (but not totally absent from all types); yet that combination is common in eyewitness reports in the past 100 years. For some reason, long-tailed ropens (like Rhamphorhynchoids but sometimes much larger than fossils) may account for more than 60% of all modern pterosaurs, perhaps much more.

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Old Civil War Pteranodon Photograph

If you had asked me about this old photograph, of an apparent pterosaur, 25 years ago, I would have said that it’s probably a hoax. How much I have learned in recent years!

The following nonfiction cryptozoology books were found, on Amazon, to each have at least one chapter on large flying creatures that have appeared to eyewitnesses in modern times. These paperbacks are ranked according to Amazon popularity, with smaller numbers indicating more sales recently. (As in golf, authors want the lowest number-rankings possible on Amazon.)

Rankings and price offers were noted on April 15, 2015, between 7:20 a.m. and 7:38 a.m., U.S. Mountain time. Keep in mind that many millions of books are sold on Amazon, so a ranking of a million means that a book is selling better than most books.

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On tax day, this is the best-selling Amazon nonfiction on modern pterosaurs: Searching for Ropens and Finding God, fourth edition, by Jonathan David Whitcomb. It has been called “the Bible of modern pterosaurs.”

• Amazon rank: #102,171
• Published in 2014
• 360 pages
• $16.19

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The second best-ranked book is Thunderbirds – America’s Living Legends of Giant Birds, by Mark A. Hall. One thing sets this one apart from the others: the apparent general perspective that large flying creatures are giant birds. In fact, from what little I have read (using the Amazon “Look Inside” feature), the author appears to be hiding the identity of one flying creature, at least inadvertently. It was the one reported by Allison Jornlin about a man who witnessed something huge flying outside a window of the Elmbrook Memorial Hospital in Brookfield, Wisconsin. In that sighting, the witness could not make out any feathers and reported that it looked bat-like. Mr. Hall says nothing about that detail, at least in that part of his book about “giant birds.”

• Amazon rank: #112,461
• Published in 2004
• 208 pages
• $16.99

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The Amazon page for Missionaries and Monsters (nonfiction by William J. Gibbons) says, “Clues to undiscovered species have been left by missionaries and pastors throughout the world, and explorer Bill Gibbons is hot on their trail.”

• Amazon rank: #179,127
• Published in 2006
• 104 pages
• $9.95

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The cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, by Whitcomb, sometimes is the Amazon best-selling nonfiction in this narrow genre, but not on this particular day. It is not written primarily to convince readers that pterosaurs fly over the USA, but mostly documents eyewitness accounts. Unlike Searching for Ropens and Finding God, this is in pure cryptozoology genre.

• Amazon rank: #407,839
• Published in 2011
• 154 pages
• $10.92

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Big Bird, by Ken Gerhard, is subtitled “Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters.” This is mostly about the author’s personal experiences in tracking down eyewitnesses in Texas and what those witnesses told him about their encounters.

• Amazon Rank: #965,331
• Published in 2007
• 108 pages
• $11.51

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This is the third edition of Bird From Hell, by Gerald McIssac, of Canada. Not all of the book is about this particular cryptid that terrorizes local people in northern British Columbia. It also covers the hairy elephant, rubber-faced bear, dire wolf, and a lake monster.

• Amazon Rank: #2,792,324
• Published in 2012
• 184 pages
• $13.64

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Fiery Flying Serpent

Searching for  Ropens and Finding God is a nonfiction about pterosaurs  with long tails, apparently real animals that live in our modern  world.

Nonfiction Books That Mention Non-Extinct Pterosaurs

Not all books that include a sighting of an apparent living pterosaur are in the cryptozoology genre. Let’s begin with a translation of an ancient writing by the Jewish historian Josephus . . .

Sense of Truth

This nonfiction paperback should be published before the beginning of summer, 2015, and one chapter is devoted to the concept of modern living pterosaurs.

Religion and Science in the New Ropen Book

How much religion and science are found in the nonfiction Searching for Ropens and Finding God? It depends on what you’re looking for. If it’s quantities of Biblical quotes or complex scientific concepts that prove the Bible is true, this nonfiction would compete poorly with at least two books available on Amazon. But for true-life adventures of Christian explorers who live their faith by getting actively involved, Searching for Ropens and Finding God may be a step above any other book in the religion/science-and-religion genre.

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Cryptozoology/true-life adventure/spiritual quest – Searching for Ropens and Finding God – fourth edition, by Jonathan David Whitcomb, with 360 pages, handles a number of issues regarding worldwide sightings, including questions about misidentification potential. Indeed this nonfiction paperback deserves being called “the Bible of Modern Pterosaurs.”

Subtitled “The quest for discovering modern pterosaurs (‘flying dinosaurs’)”

From the Acknowledgements near the beginning of the book:

What more could we ask of the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn and the little girl Patty Carson, two eyewitnesses of “pterodactyls” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the middle of the twentieth century? They carefully observed those flying creatures and later drew detailed sketches that defy any misidentification conjecture that any skeptic might throw at them.

Special thanks to Paul Nation, Garth Guessman, and David Woetzel for research, advice, and the use of photographs and other images. Clifford A. Paiva, of BSM Associates, California City, CA, assisted by Harold S. Slusher, University of Texas at El Paso, Physics Department, wrote “Results of Investigations Concerning Pterosaur Sightings in Papua New Guinea.” We also acknowledge a report by the late Scott Norman, who encounter with an apparent pterosaur encouraged us to continue searching for large bioluminescent flying creatures in North America.

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