Uncategorized – Page 3 – The Bible and Modern Pterosaurs

June 10, 2011June 10, 2011

Near Collision with an Airplane

Late in 2008, I received a phone call from a man in England: a plane pilot who had a surprising near collision with a flying creature whose appearance suggested a pterosaur.

In June of 2008, two very experienced pilots were at the controls of a light twin-engined plane, flying over the sea southeast of Bali, Indonesia. While the copilot was looking at a chart, the pilot noticed what he assumed was another plane, heading in the opposite direction, threatening a direct collision. The pilot put the plane into a dive, but the other “flyer” also dove, forcing the pilot to veer away, with a bank to the left. This startled the copilot (who was on the right side), who caught a glimpse of the flying creature as it passed by the right window. Both men were sure, at that time, that it was a creature and not another plane that had nearly hit them, for in passing them it made one slow flap of its wings.

The pilot called it “dark-coloured,” and the copilot called it “quite grey,” making it unlikely to have been an Australian Pelican, which is mostly white. In addition, that pelican has very distinctive contrasts between the white and black, making it almost impossible to mistake for a grey flying creature. Although the Australian Pelican is common in this part of the world, what startled these two men was something uncommon.

Both pilot and copilot noticed something suggesting an elbow on the flying creature’s wing. It may seem that this would correspond with the wing of a pelican, but its barely perceptable when compared with the bend on the wing of a Frigate Bird. Nevertheless, the Frigate bird is eliminated by the clear statement of the copilot: “It had low aspect ratio wings (unlike the traditional maritime soarer).” The soaring Frigate bird has a high aspect ratio for the wings, as do the albatrosses. The pelican, however has a rather moderate wing aspect ratio, not low.

Perhaps most telling against the idea of a pelican misidentification is the pilot’s description of the flight of the creature just before the plane banked to the left: “At that moment, its wings took one enormous, slow, articulated flap.” Those who have carefully observed the flights of pelicans should know that this large bird has two main flight modes: steady wings (soaring or gliding) and many wing beats of moderate quickness. When they dive into the water, pelicans fold up their wings, something nobody could reasonably mistake for a flap; when they land, pelicans might flap only once, just before landing. But the flying creature that nearly collided with the airplane off the coast of Indonesia was 6500 feet high: neither diving into water nor landing.

Giant Pterosaur Between Australia and Indonesia

They were mostly done with flying from Australia to Indonesia, being at 6500 feet altitude and over the sea, when the pilot saw something coming straight at him, on a collision course. He thought it must have been another plane, somehow at the wrong altitude for that heading. He put his plane into a dive . . . The approaching flyer also dived, so the pilot banked to the left, saving them all from disaster.

Both men said the same word at the same time: “pterodactyl.”

Giant Pterosaur in Queensland, Australia

We heard it coming . . . the swoosh noise. . . . we saw was a black shape coming from the trees; the next thing we saw was one wing over the windscreen [windshield]. It crossed [in front of the car]. I couldn’t see the road for a moment, just wing covering the entire windscreen. The body was over the car and its other wing [was] over the back [of the car]. We could not see the body . . . [only] the wing. [The wing was] bat like leather [with] veins and leather stretched over a bone structure.

May 28, 2011May 28, 2011

Giant Pterosaur in Queensland, Australia

At about 8:30 one night, Kathy was driving towards the ocean, about sixty miles north of Brisbane, Australia, accompanied by her thirteen-year-old daughter, when they were shocked at the giant pterosaur that flew in front of the windshield.

We saw it at Mt Coolum Sunshine Coast of Australia, one hill away from Centenary Heights Rd. . . . We heard it coming . . . the swoosh noise. . . . All we saw was a black shape coming from the trees; the next thing we saw was one wing over the windscreen [windshield]. It crossed [in front of the car]. I couldn’t see the road for a moment, just wing covering the entire windscreen. The body was over the car and its other wing [was] over the back [of the car]. We could not see the body . . . [only] the wing. [The wing was] bat like leather [with] veins and leather stretched over a bone structure. That was dinosaur era.

Was I meant to see this (that kind of feeling)? This thing was bigger than us in every way. We saw it flap its wings once. *swoosh . . . a prehistoric winged creature. I have looked around Mt Coolum for its home. I believe that is where it’s home is. It felt so surreal. I felt it was going home to the Mt. It was heading from Coolum to the Mountain.

I have spoken to one friend who lives at the base of Mt Coolum and she said it would explain the strange swooshing sounds she hears often. She . . . believes in the unknown. It certainly makes you question a lot of things.

Nocturnal Pterosaur of Redcliffe, Australia

In the second edition of my book Searching for Ropens, pages 37-38, a farm boy’s encounter is described. This was around Redcliffe, Queensland, only about forty-four miles south of the Mt. Coolum area where the lady saw the giant pterosaur fly in front of her car.

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. When he looked back at where he had been, at the door of a shed, he saw a large creature with wings. It was on the roof of the shed, just above the door where he had recently been standing.

Although terrified, 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. The boy ran to his house for help, but his parents saw nothing; by the time they had responded, the creature was gone.

Pterosaurs in New Zealand

One or more species of pterosaur may live in New Zealand. Even though it is more than a thousand miles from Australia, where many eyewitnesses have seen apparent modern pterosaurs, those creatures would have little difficulty crossing that distance, over a number of centuries.

“The bird that bit Catherine” involves a child who was reading while sitting on a fence. “She became aware of a little creature sitting next to her,” but gave it little attention at first. She thought it to be just a small green bird with a long tail. When it became noisy, she tried to shoo it away, whereupon the creature bit her finger, spread its leathery wings, and flew away. She then realized how unusual it was and ran to tell her father that she had seen a “dinosaur.”

April 8, 2011April 12, 2011

Science and Marfa Lights

From the dragons of my last post (on The Bible and Modern Pterosaurs), I turn to the science of Marfa Lights, with reference to “Analyzing Data for a Marfa Lights Interpretation,” from the blog Modern Pterosaur. The latter post may be difficult for some readers to understand (the language is more protracted than overly technical), so I’ll summarize it.

In the book Hunting Marfa Lights, by James Bunnell, pages 270-279 contain a table with dozens of ML (mystery light) sightings with much information on dates, times, and weather conditions. The recent excitement on some blogs comes from a recent enlightenment centered on the dates July 14-15, 2006 (Texas time), in particular on the times that those mystery lights first appear each night: Thirty-eight and thirty-seven minutes after sunset respectively. This now seems extremely significant.

We need context here. On a typical night when one or more of Bunnell’s cameras picks up mystery lights, the start time for their appearance usually differs greatly from the start time of the previous night in which there was an appearance. Consecutive nights of appearances are a critical exception, but let’s keep to the general case for the moment. For example, on August 11, 2006, the first appearance (“start” time) of an ML was three hours and forty-three minutes after sunset; the next appearance recorded was on October 19, 2006, with start time of just fifteen minutes after sunset. That is a difference of three hours and twenty-eight minutes. The average difference in start times, when consecutive nights are eliminated, is two hours and thirty-six minutes. Regardless of what hypothesis one chooses, this divergance seems reasonable, for why should there be any close coorelation in start times, on apparently random nights of ML activity?

Consider the general case for groups of intelligent predators, the ones that use sophisticated group hunting techniques, then apply this to the present hypothesis involving Marfa Lights as possibly bioluminescent predators.

When a group of intelligent predators has a successful hunt, they may, on the next day (or the next night for nocturnal predators) repeat what was recently successful, assuming the hunting conditions are similar. Applying this to the hypothesis mentioned so often recently (a group of scientifically-unclassified nocturnal flying predators, having bioluminescent capability, hunting, on some nights, around southwest Texas), we would expect to find a few consecutive nights with ML activity and maybe even with a similar start time for the appearances. This has been found and published by James Bunnell, although he has not yet admitted the plausibility of my hypothesis, at least not to my knowledge.

Why are those start-times on July 14-15, 2006, extremely significant? If the night of July 14th was very successful for nocturnal hunters, they might have returned on the night of July 15th, even a minute earlier than the previous night, out of anticipation. A slight difference in the weather would not distract nocturnal predators on the second night. But what about some hypothesis of non-living energy forces or atmospheric energies? Would not a weather change from one night to another make a significant difference in when and how lights would appear? Of course. Well it so happens that Bunnell’s data for those nights of July 14th and July 15th does show a weather change, not enough to distract determined predators but easily enough to change how non-living energy forces might produce lights in the fields near Marfa, Texas.

On the second night, the temperature at start-time was 3.6 degrees cooler (F.), the dew point was higher, the wind speed was almost six mph faster, and the humidity was considerably higher. The wind direction and visibility were the same, but those other differences were enough to discount any reasonable prediction, using a non-living-energy-source hypothesis, that ML’s would appear at almost the same time two nights in succession. How different from the intelligent-predator hypothesis!

But what if that one pair of nights was a coincidence? Well it so happens that Bunnell’s data shows three other pairs of consecutive nights, and the differences, in minutes, in start times are as follows: 46, 19, and 11, far below the random difference of 156 minutes for nights that were not back-to-back. Averaging out the four critical differences, we get about 19 minutes, quite small compared with 156. For those interested, the particular date-pairs are Nov 24-25, 2000, May7-8, 2003, July 14-15, 2006, and July 15-16, 2006.

Also important, a three-day succession involved similar start times, in minutes after sunset: July 14-15-16, 2006: 38, 37, 48 (the first two were mentioned previously). On the third night was another minor change in weather, including a slight change in wind direction (July 16). The average difference in start times, for those two successions of nights with sightings recorded, is only six minutes. How small is that compared with the random 156-minute difference!

On a night when a lion pride hunts—maybe every night somewhere in Africa—the prey can be as big as an elephant; but let’s assume the prey is smaller and confined to a particular area for at least several nights . . . Would not a successful hunt, by hungry lions on a particular night, compel those lions to return to the same area the next night? If they had ever hunted successfully in the same area, two nights in succession, of course it would. But if a particular area gives no reward on one night, the lions could move quite some distance away on the next night, returning to the first area perhaps later in the year . . .

Texas Marfa Lights Mystery

Non-living energies do not make complex flying patterns like the ones seen around Marfa, Texas. But Marfa Lights fly like they’re directed by intelligence and the ropen of Papua New Guinea is an intelligent flying predator that also glows as it flies.