Extinct or not extinct, that is the question about pterosaurs
Are all species of pterosaurs extinct, or have a few survived? That question is tackled in the third edition of
the nonfiction cryptozoology book by the American Jonathan David Whitcomb: Live Pterosaurs in America
Contact: KSN News Release
Jonathan Whitcomb
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Murray, UT 84123 Press Room on Live Pterosaurs
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PDF of this KSN Press Release
Web Page: Live Pterosaurs in America
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For Immediate Release
LONG BEACH, Calif/KSN/Nov 26, 2011 --- How rarely do we read anything about
dinosaurs or pterosaurs without reference to extinction millions of years
ago! But a controversial idea promoted by the American cryptozoologist
Jonathan Whitcomb has caught the attention of the Houston Chronicle, a
Smithsonian magazine blog, and a well-known paleontologist in England.
Not everybody embraces living pterosaurs.
In the third edition of his nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America,
Whitcomb suggests the non-extinction of at least two species of the flying
creature many people call “pterodactyl.” He admits having no body of a
living or recently-deceased pterosaur but refers to the body of evidence
from dozens of eyewitnesses of flying creatures different from any bird or
bat. The limitations of eyewitness testimony, however, confine the modern
pterosaur to cryptozoology, outside of standard zoology.
As a forensic videographer in Southern California, Whitcomb had
acquired skills that helped him interview native eyewitnesses in Papua
New Guinea, in 2004, as he videotaped them in their villages on Umboi
Island. He returned to the United States convinced that the nocturnal
flying creature the natives call “ropen” is a Rhamphorhynchoid (long-tailed)
pterosaur. After reading about his experiences, some Americans gave him
a bigger surprise: reports of similar flying creatures within many of the
forty-eight contiguous states of America.
Adding to the controversy, Whitcomb maintains that at least some of the
apparent pterosaurs in both Papua New Guinea and North America have
intrinsic bioluminescence. He supports the opinions of his cryptozoology
associates who believe that legends of fire-breathing flying dragons
originated from ancient eyewitness sightings of large glowing pterosaurs.
The well-known British paleontologist Darren Naish, in his late-2007 blog
post “Pterosaurs alive in, like, the modern day,” responded to old reports,
shooting down apparent pterosaurs. But Whitcomb wrote, in his book
and on blog posts, that none of the detailed accounts listed by Naish are
critical sightings, that he ignored all details about the sighting reports
published by twenty-first-century investigators, and that he included only
what would discredit the possibility of modern living pterosaurs.
The freelance science writer Brian Switek, in the 2010 Smithsonian blog
post “Don’t Get Strung Along by the ‘Ropen’ Myth,” used the word
“hucksters” and other descriptions for twentieth-century explorers who
searched for modern dinosaurs. But according to Whitcomb, like Naish he
ignored all details about the twenty-first-century interviews of the many
eyewitnesses, and included only what would discredit the possibility of
modern living pterosaurs.
The largest daily newspaper in Texas, the Houston Chronicle, in December
of 2010, published an article by Claudia Feldman: “What’s going on in
Marfa?” (Whitcomb’s press release “Unmasking a Flying Predator in
Texas” caught Feldman’s attention, giving her the idea to write about the
mysterious flying lights of southwest Texas.) But much of her article was
about the work of the retired aerospace engineer James Bunnell, who has
studied the lights for many years. Bunnell did not take seriously
Whitcomb’s conjecture about bioluminescent flying predators, but after
years of investigating Marfa Lights admits, “Here is a real scientific puzzle
that still exists in this modern day and age, and nobody has solved it yet.”
Whitcomb believes that the official discovery of living pterosaurs may be
years away, but that the eyewitnesses will someday be proven correct.
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KSN News Release
Jonathan Whitcomb on Umboi Island,
Papua New Guinea, in late 2004
Third edition of the non-fiction
cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs
in America, by Jonathan Whitcomb
Sketch by Patty Carson: what she
observed in southeastern Cuba
Sketch by U. S. Marine Eskin Kuhn:
what he observed in S.E. Cuba
Both Carson and Kuhn were
interviewed by Whitcomb