Dragon Hunting in Southern California
Long Beach resident hunts for modern pterosaurs
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Jonathan Whitcomb
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For Immediate Release
LONG BEACH, Calif/KSN/Mar 9, 2013 ---
On Sunday, March 3, 2013, a driver reported “three dragons flying over
the 5-North freeway between Griffith Park and Glendale.” She sent an
email, that evening, to the cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb, of
Long Beach, describing the “dragons” that had flown over her car at 6:10
a.m.: “Their tails had triangular points.”
Some persons might wonder if the woman could drive safely and ask if
she had been high on something. Whitcomb asked her how high the
creatures were flying above the I-5 and wondered if they had long necks.
Rather than imagine that the woman had fallen asleep at the wheel, he
wondered whether three birds had just woken up or three nocturnal
pterosaurs had been up all night. Over the past nine years, Whitcomb
has written three nonfiction books on similar sightings: reports of live
“pterodactyls” or “dinosaur birds” or “dragons.” The scientific word he
prefers is “pterosaur.” He gets reports from around the world.
After three days of questioning the eyewitness by emails, he spoke with
her by phone, on the evening of March 6, verifying as best he could that
it was not a hoax. Her last email before the phone conversation seems
to have quashed misidentified birds.
The woman had examined 34 silhouette sketches of birds, bats, and
pterosaurs, choosing #13. She did not know, at the time, that she had
chosen the sketch of “Sordes Pilosus,” an image based on the features and
form of a species of long-tailed (Rhamphorhynchoid) pterosaur.
The three creatures she reported observing resembled what most
biologists believe became extinct before short-tailed pterosaurs are said
to have dominated the skies (the “pterodactyls” depicted in movies and
on television). The woman chose what was supposed to have become
extinct before those creatures, long before 65 million years ago.
A recent survey of biology professors in four American universities,
however, shows at least some scientists are beginning to have at least
some doubt about the extinction of all species of pterosaurs. Of those
professors responding to the questionnaire, the probability attached to
a species of living pterosaur varied from 0% to 5%, averaging 1.5%.
Whitcomb has analyzed 128 sighting reports, the ones he considers the
more credible accounts, concluding hoaxes could not have played a
significant role, as a whole. About 75% of those reports have been from
sightings in the United States, a dominance Whitcomb ascribes to easy
internet access for Americans and online news dominated by English.
Sighting locations include Oregon, Washington state, Idaho, Montana,
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York state, Maine, Rhode Island,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
and California. About 14% of sightings in the USA are in California.
For seven months, Whitcomb has used a game camera, near Long Beach,
hoping to get a photo of a live pterosaur where a sighting occurred in
June of 2012. After examining over 10,000 photos, however, he had not
yet seen any creature more exotic than song birds and possums. Yet he
continues to hope for a photo of what most Americans assume is extinct,
and he continues to interview eyewitnesses of “dragons.”
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KSN News Release
Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, will
take you on a journey across the USA, with
astonishing eyewitness encounters with
flying creatures unlike any birds or bats
known to science: modern pterosaurs
Sketch drawn by the Patty Carson, one of
many eyewitnesses interviewed by the
cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb
(this sighting was in Cuba in 1965)
Jonathan Whitcomb, of Long Beach, CA,
has written three nonfiction books and one
scientific paper on eyewitness accounts of
modern living pterosaurs. One book is on
the encounters reported in the USA: Live
Pterosaurs in America (now in 3rd edition)
Out of many silhouettes of pterosaurs, birds,
and bats, the eyewitness chose this image:
Sordes Pilosus, a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur
that most paleontologists believe lived in
the late Jurassic, ~140 million years ago