Dragon Hunting in Southern California Long Beach resident hunts for modern pterosaurs Contact:                                                       KSN News Release Jonathan Whitcomb 5347 South New Hampton Drive Murray, Utah 84123                     Press Room on Live Pterosaurs PHONE: 801 590-9692 EMAIL Questions and Answers About Pterosaur Sightings  Blog: Live Pterosaur Twitter - Jonathan Whitcomb 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.” ### 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