‘Dinosaur’ Book for Children and Teens

living pterosaur nonfiction book - front cover
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By the living-pterosaur investigator Jonathan Whitcomb

The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is a nonfiction book, but it’s not technically about dinosaurs: It’s a short cryptozoology book about apparent living pterosaurs. Let’s begin with a list of some of the benefits available to young readers, for this is for kids and teenagers:

  • Simple to read yet stimulating for middle-grade children and teens
  • Explains the benefits of believing someone who has seen something
  • Gives interesting comparisons between accounts, allowing the reader to come to his or her own conclusion about each report
  • Explains the three major interpretations available for a sighting report, allowing the reader to choose one of them for each reported account
  • Gives the young reader many photos, sketches, and other images, making the book easier to dig into and understand

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first nonfiction book ever published (on this subject) which was written for children and teenagers. I know of a very few books written about living dinosaurs and living pterosaurs, but The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is different: only about apparent non-extinct pterosaurs that have been seen by people in the 20th and 21st centuries. By the way, the sightings reported in this book are generally of ropens: long-tailed featherless flying creatures unlike any scientifically-acknowledged bat.

Buy your own copy of this living-pterosaur book on Amazon or from some other online book seller, or buy one or more to give as gifts for Christmas or for birthdays. Here are a few details:

  • 56 printed pages (5½ by 8½ inches)
  • ISBN-13: 978-1727778847
  • Published Nov 8, 2018, by Createspace
  • $7.80 on Amazon (at least on Nov 16, 2018)

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living pterosaur nonfiction book - front cover

The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur

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New ‘dinosaur’ book for LDS and other faiths

My new nonfiction is for middle-grade children and many (but not all) teenagers: The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. This is a short cryptozoology book, not about religion but about eyewitness sightings of apparent living pterosaurs.

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“Flying Dinosaur” book for a ten-year-old reader

This post briefly mentions the book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur, but this is mainly about sightings of apparent pterosaurs, seen by children, in the following countries:

  • Sudan, Africa
  • Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
  • England
  • USA, Hawaii

The above locations for sightings are not in the book itself but are in the above-linked blog post.

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Ropen – a real living pterosaur

With many photos, this is an online map of what is probably the oldest modern-pterosaur site ever published: Pterosaurs Still Living.

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“Flying Dinosaur” book (pterosaurs)

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.

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Nonfiction books on living pterosaurs

This has brief book reviews: comparing two cryptozoology books about these astonishing featherless flying creatures. These two paperbacks  include much information about ropens.

These nonfiction books are Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition) and Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition).

Children who saw a Pterodactyl

modern-pterosaur sketch by the eyewitness
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Lately I’ve been writing more about children who have witnessed a modern pterosaur, although I have included sightings in which adults have been present. Indeed, for a number of weeks I’ve been writing a new nonfiction book for children: The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur.

In keeping with the setting of that book, let’s consider the six-year-old eyewitness Patty Carson. She was only about six when she saw the “dinosaur” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, around 1965.

Before getting into what that flying creature was, let’s discover what it was not. Remember Sherlock Holmes: Once the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.

It was not a pelican. Patty is sure that it was larger than a pelican, yet there’s more. That kind of bird does not have a long horn-like structure coming out the back of the head, an appendage looking bone-like. In addition, no pelican has a mouth filled with many small teeth. What’s more, that kind of bird does not have a long featherless tail that ends with a diamond-shaped structure. If Patty were mistaken about one or two of those four characteristics of her flying creature, we could still not reasonably dismiss the other two or three points that make it a non-pelican.

Could it have been a frigatebird? When that kind of bird is standing on the ground, which it almost never does, it would never be “as tall as a man.” In addition, no such bird has a long neck. If you can discount all that and insist that the girl hallucinated many small teeth, then you might also proclaim the following: The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was not from Japanese planes but from frigatebirds, with bird poop being misidentified as bombs.

What about teeth? If it wasn’t a bird, maybe it was a bat, for they have teeth. Look at the sketch Patty drew a few years ago. That is no bat head. And what bat has a long skinny tail that ends with a Rhamphorhynchoid-like flange? In addition, no bat known to Western science is as tall as a man when it stands on the ground.

Could it have been a little girl’s nightmare? Memory can play tricks on us, over a long period of time, but look at the sketch drawn by the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn. He drew this just minutes after his sighting in 1971, at that same area of Cuba: Guantanamo Bay:

ropen sketches by Eskin Kuhn and by Patty Carson

Flying creatures seen by Kuhn (left) and Carson (right)

Verification

Of course children sometimes make mistakes, even sometimes imagining things that are not there or that differ greatly from what they imagined, but when an adult sees something very similar, and at about the same place, we need to admit the obvious, no matter how improbable it appears: Both Patty and Eskin saw something like what many Western scientists have assumed became extinct many millions of years ago.

Although the ropen of mid-twentieth century Cuba is unlike any well-known fossil of a pterosaur, it is much more like a pterosaur than it is like any known bird or bat.

Aside

By the way, those apparent ropens are not confined to Cuba. I have received many reports of such flying creatures in the United States, and they are very similar. If they’re not all the same species, they surely are closely related.

By the independent investigative journalist Jonathan D. Whitcomb

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Child saw a pterosaur

. . . nobody forces any adult to disbelieve any story of a child. Several things have led me to believe that Aaron Tullock, as a child, saw a living pterosaur, regardless of American indoctrinations into universal extinctions . . .

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Three children saw a live pterosaur in Pennsylvania

Near Pottstown, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia, three children observed an apparent pterosaur flying overhead. I received an email from their father last week, on what he learned by questioning them.

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The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur

This will be a short nonfiction book for children eight to twelve years old or thereabouts; I hope that it will be finished and on sale before the first of December (2018) . . .

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Important Ropen Sightings

Here is a list of sightings of these long-tailed modern pterosaurs, although this is only a partial list of the more important encounters, by eyewitness name, or by place if the eyewitness is anonymous . . .

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An American saw a Ropen During World War II

Around mid-1944, on the eastern edge of the island of New Guinea, after the Japanese military had left that area of the southwest Pacific, two American soldiers obtained permission to hike into the jungle interior west of Finschhafen. While in a jungle clearing that was about a hundred feet across, they witnessed a huge flying creature take off into the air. That sighting in clear daylight, with no obstruction to the view of those two men, has in recent years become known, among at least some cryptozoologists, as an important report among many accounts of encounters with living pterosaurs in the 20th century.

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Modern Pterosaurs in England

My sighting took place just after 2 PM on Valentine’s day of the same year in an area called “The Silkin Way”. It’s a local nature reserve and a lot of people visit it to bike, fish and walk their dogs. [Telford Town Park, Shropshire, England] . . .

A creature with a wingspan of about 4-6 feet and a mottled greyish brown colouration flew directly overhead and onwards towards a field where several horses are kept.

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Gigantic Featherless Flying Creature

Before getting into this eyewitness account, keep in mind that I have received hundreds of reports, over the past 15 years, of encounters with apparent pterosaurs, some of which have been close and clear sightings. The flying creature seen in New Jersey in 2016 was very close to the lady who had stopped her car at a stop sign, but she concentrated on what was right in front of her face. She saw and remembers mostly that face and those wings.

New Cryptozoology Book

just east of Griffith Park in Los Angeles
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By living-pterosaur author Jonathan Whitcomb

Upcoming ebook “Live Pterosaurs in America” (fourth edition)

The following quotations are from a preliminary version of this book’s interior. The final publication may differ, at least in a few details. This will be the fourth edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, to be published first in ebook format. (The third edition, only in print format, was published in 2011.)

Chapter 2: Sightings of Pterosaurs in California

Long before getting this report early in 2018, I had concluded that at least some modern pterosaurs in the United States navigate by following stream beds or storm channels. This is more obvious in some of the many reports from Southern California, not that a flying creature always needs to be directly over such a structure on the ground, in order to use it for navigation.

Chapter 4: More-Recent Reports

I can only describe . . . a dragon or flying dinosaur. . . . I saw this large dark colored flying animal. At first I thought it was a vulture. However, I notice that it had pointed wings and a long tail that was skinny and had a pointed shape at the end of it like a triangle or something . . .

The fourth edition of SFRFG mentions this encounter in Raleigh, North Carolina, and says, “The many hundreds of comments on this encounter, some positive but mostly negative, deserve attention, yet not here.” It’s time to dive into some of those details. . . .

The [apparent living pterosaur] seen flying over the I-540 in Raleigh, in March of 2013, appeared to have a wingspan of five to six feet, much smaller than the one in Idaho. It had small things in the middle of the wings that could have been claws, according to the eyewitness, who reported the sighting on a musician’s forum within hours of the encounter. . . .

Let’s now pause to take all this in context. This forum discussion began in March of 2013 (The Gear Page—still online early in June of 2018), when the great majority of Americans had little or no comprehension of any reports of pterosaur sightings in North America. Not until January of 2018, apparently, did newspapers like The News and Observer or the news outlet Charlotte Stories report sightings of apparent “flying dinosaurs” in North Carolina and specifically in Raleigh. That’s when some of the media in that area responded to my press release. In other words, many of those who commented on The Gear Page forum knew little or nothing about pterosaurs except what they had been exposed to all of their lives: universal extinctions.

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just east of Griffith Park in Los Angeles

“Los Angeles River, near location of sighting of May 13, 2013 . . .”

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New cryptozoology book

“I found this book very interesting. . . . The problem with science is that we think we know it all and that is far from reality. This book shows courage to continue the search. If you have an interest in cryptozoology you should read this.” [reader comment from Dale, who lives in Pennsylvania]

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Nonfiction cryptozoology book

Searching for Ropens and Finding God – fourth edition

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Live Pterosaurs in America (cryptozoology book)

Some of the publications listed are these:

  • Bird From Hell
  • Mysteries of the Unexplained
  • Live Pterosaurs in America
  • Searching for Ropens and Finding God

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Cryptozoology book by Whitcomb

On the verge of the most astonishing discovery in the history of biology . . . “Live Pterosaurs in America”

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Modern pterosaurs in North America

Two sightings of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs in eastern Cuba in the mid-20th century, one by Patty Carson and one by Eskin Kuhn

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Living pterosaurs (or pterodactyls) in California

Sightings included in CA:

  • Fremont
  • Anaheim

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Non-extinct pterosaurs in North Carolina

Where do these flying creatures appear? They have been reported in Raleigh, Durham, Asheville, Wilmington, and in other areas of N.C., as well as in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and in many other states

 

Living-Pterosaur Sightings While Driving

pterosaur in South Carolina, sketch by eyewitness Susan Wooten
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By living-pterosaur investigator Jonathan Whitcomb

I’ve learned some things, over the past fifteen years, about how people happen to see featherless flying creatures that appear to be living pterosaurs. It’s almost always while one or more eyewitnesses are outside. For Americans, that can mean driving.

Car Accidents Related to Pterosaur Sightings

The other day, I was doing an online search and found the following report (which I’ve condensed and slightly edited for clear English):

“In 2010 I saw a flying dinosaur. I was driving a car alone, on my way to pick up my sister. Anyway, I’m driving behind a man who is driving a mini-van . . . I see the man looking out of his window which made me look up. . . . and there was a huge flying bird-like animal above us. I looked back at the road and witnessed the man swerve off the road and flip his van into [a field next to the road]. I know he was afraid of what he saw, just like I was. I was stunned from the entire experience . . .

“This was not one of those [larger birds that may live around the area]. It was huge and the only thing I can compare it to is a dinosaur. . . . It was in upstate New York and no one believes me.” [Comment made, around February of 2017, on an online post: “Dinosaur Sightings: Are Dinosaurs Still Alive Today in Africa?”]

Other “Pterodactyl” Encounters While Driving

One of the best known living-pterosaur (LP) sightings by a car driver was in South Carolina. Susan Wooten was following her friend, who was driving ahead on a major country highway, when the huge flying creature passed right in front of her car.

Early in 2013, a musician reported a close encounter with a “pterodactyl” that flew in front of his car while he was driving on a highway in Raleigh, North Carolina, at sundown. Unlike many sightings, this was was not reported to me (Jonathan Whitcomb) but to fellow members of a musicians’ forum. In addition, the flying creature was only seven or eight feet off the ground.

Even more shocking was the ropen sighting near the University of California at Irvine, in 2007, for that modern pterosaur was gigantic: 30 feet long. The man who was driving has had to be anonymous because of his professional position (either a medical doctor, attorney, or police officer—I will not even reveal which of those three it is).

A pond in the wildlife sanctuary near the sighting area (2007)

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Many Living Pterosaur Sightings in the United States

A great number of the encounters with “pterodactyls” have been in these states:

  • California
  • Georgia
  • Texas
  • North Carolina
  • Virginia
  • Hawaii
  • Ohio
  • Utah

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Un pterosaurio en Cuba

¿Alguna vez viste un pterosaurio? Muchas personas han visto estas criaturas voladoras. (Por Jonathan Whitcomb, un experto en pterosaurios vivos)

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Pterosaur sighting while driving in Raleigh, North Carolina

I was driving along on I-540 in Raleigh at sundown tonight . . . All of a sudden I see the HUGE bird looking thing fly across the overpass I was on, maybe 20-25 feet in front of my car . . .

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The Bible and Modern Pterosaurs

The primary foundation for belief in scriptures, and belief in the literal ark of Noah, is in faith. That does not mean blind faith, believing without any reason to believe, but it can mean taking one or two steps onto the path ahead, even when the light does not yet quite reach that far.

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Living pterosaurs or misidentified birds?

I know of three cases in which a person has seen a frigatebird [a large bird of tropical areas], or a photo or video of that kind of oceanic bird, and thought it was a living pterosaur (or at least he put forward the idea that it was a non-extinct pterosaur). Take that in context: Over the past thirteen years, I’ve looked at hundreds of eyewitness sighting reports of possible living pterosaurs. [The many credible reports of apparent pterosaurs are not misidentified birds but actual pterosaurs, in at least the great majority of cases.]

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Books for LDS readers (living pterosaurs)

Rather than begin by listing my four cryptozoology books, let’s look at what you would like as a reader or at the needs and interests of the reader for which you would give a book as a gift.

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Pterosaur sighting while driving

The sighting by Wooten was at about 3:00 p.m. between Greenville and Florence, South Carolina. The visibility was clear. She was following a friend who was driving in a car ahead (the second woman did not notice anything, for the apparent pterosaur had flown behind that second car).

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Pterosaur sighting in California

Ten years ago this summer (2007), the young cryptozoologist Scott T. Norman had a sighting of an apparent Pteranodon in Central California. I will not allow his encounter to evaporate from the memory of cryptozoology enthusiasts.

Another Living Pterosaur in North Carolina

students and others walk in front of the Duke Chapel
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By the living-pterosaur author Jonathan D. Whitcomb

In December of 2017, I received the following email from Dane Simmons (I’ve slightly edited it for English):

Subject: pterodactyl sighting, 1993, Durham, NC

Hello, I just wanted to contact you to let you know, me and two of my friends saw one at different times in NC, Durham. I was alone driving my car, and looked out my sunroof to see what I think was a pterodactyl. It was [300] to 500 ft up, but looked like a hawk at 50 ft up, (size) . . . huge bat-like wings, two feet in the back, and long pointed beak and back of head. It was so big I could easily make out the features. At that height I estimate wingspan was like 10 to 15 feet.

Also [at another time] two of my friends were fishing at the river, and one [such flying creature]  flew down the river. They said it was huge, 10 to 15 ft wingspan … my sighting has haunted me ever since. I KNOW WHAT I SAW. Most of my friends laughed at me, and it wasn’t until 20 yr later that I mentioned it to the friend [who then said] his sighting . . . was about 3 miles from mine. I have been looking up for many years hoping to see another one. Let me know if you would like any more info. . . .

Later Dane added the following:

It was huge . . . The other two friends that saw the one by the river I hadn’t spoken to for over 10 years or more, and there was no mention of our sightings to each other, I have never talked about it to the 2nd . . . friend, since we never speak . . .

I was telling [first friend] about how in first grade the teacher asked us to pick a letter, and draw a picture of something with that letter, so I picked N and drew a knife, not knowing that knife started with a K. I was telling him how I was so embarrassed . . . and we started naming screwed up words and I said like pterodactyl. This was when his story came out.

They were at the Eno River, and it flew by them so close . . . they could feel the wind from its wings. They were shaken up and immediately quit fishing and drove to the beach. Later that day, they even told people there what happened . . . and were not believed . . .

I replied:

Thank you very much, Dane.

In Western countries, including in the USA, the word “pterodactyl” is used by most people in a general sense: those featherless flying creatures that are  unlike bats and which are associated with the “dinosaur age.” The correct word  for all of those flying creatures together is “pterosaur.” . . .

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students and others walk in front of the Duke Chapel

Duke Chapel, Durham, North Carolina

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Youtube video on sightings in North Carolina:

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Living Pterosaur in North Carolina

I saw a Pterodactyl up close tonight. Not joking. I was driving along on I-540 in Raleigh [North Carolina] at sundown . . .

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A living pterosaur has been seen by 50,000+ Americans

It seems that between 50,000 and 4,000,000 Americans have seen an obvious pterosaur at some time in their human lifespans. It certainly cannot be much below that minimum or much above that maximum.

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Sightings in USA: in North Carolina and in South Carolina

One of the first detailed pterosaur sighting reports that I received from a state of the USA was the encounter by Susan Wooten in South Carolina. It seems to have been a large ropen.

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Living pterosaurs in Virginia and North Carolina

This also has sightings in New Jersey, South Carolina, Rhode Island, California, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, although the reports on this page are brief, like introductions.

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Living Pterosaurs in North America

By Jonathan Whitcomb, author of Live Pterosaurs in America

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Large flying creatures with no feathers

“In my searches I have been trying to find someone who might be interested in helping me to verify the existence of an animal I have seen twice in the last few weeks, on my way to work”[words of Sandra Paradise of Winder, Georgia]

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Ropen sighting in Ohio

Last month I got an email from a man who lives in Gahanna, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. He and his teenaged son were driving near their home at 6:45 p.m. on December 19, 2016, when a large creature flew over their car.

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Featherless flying creatures in the USA

Why do I use the word pterodactyl in some of my writings? It’s not from adhering to the scientific definition of pterodactyl but from a common word used by eyewitnesses.

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Ropen Sighting in Ohio in Late 2016

modern-pterosaur sketch by the eyewitness
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By the modern-pterosaur expert Jonathan Whitcomb

Last month I got an email from a man who lives in Gahanna, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. He and his teenaged son were driving near their home at 6:45 p.m. on December 19, 2016, when a large creature flew over their car, giving them a quick but close view. It had a wingspan greater than the width of their car.

I communicated with the man, whom I will call John, through several emails, and on January 6, 2017, I interviewed him by phone. I believe they saw an American Ropen, although my associates and I still don’t have enough information on the North American sightings to say much about species for this kind of modern pterosaur in this part of the world. John told me the following about what his son told him about the tail:

. . . the creature whipped it around…he said it had sharp projections on the tip…but it was moving so fast he said he just got a glimpse of it . . .

During my phone conversation with John, he told me that his son saw some kind of structure at the end of the tail. That strongly suggests to me that they saw a ropen.

Before ending our telephone interview, we decided that he should be anonymous. “John” has a number of college degrees related to biology and works in a profession in which he could be the subject of ridicule if his sighting was made public with his name and place of employment. (I know these details myself, however.)

But the main point is this: They saw a flying creature that was far bigger than any bat, very unlike any bird, and appearing to be a pterosaur.

John told me, in one of his emails:

. . . it is still so vivid in our memory…you could see the bumps of its skin and the claws on its feet. we stopped but of course it vanished.

He also said,

. . . now that we have seen this we are so much more believers in that there are many things out there most people have never seen and will never see but they are there.

He told me, in our phone interview, that this area of Ohio has many limestone caves and his neighborhood has many kinds of wildlife.

Other Pterosaur Sightings in Ohio

This ropen-sighting area, in a suburb of Columbus, is just over 100 miles from Antwerp, Ohio, where two sightings were reported a few years ago, encounters over or near a bridge on the Maumee River in the summer of 2003 and a year earlier.

Yet another pterosaur sighting was much closer to the late-2016 encounter in Gahanna, Ohio: only 4.5 miles away, near the corner of Westerville Road and Denune Avenue, in the northern part of Columbus. What a proximity! That was in the winter of early 2014, probably just before sunrise.

After finding this report on my computer, I wrote the following email to John:

Hi, _______

Thank you very much for the talk we had by phone yesterday. This morning, I was looking through my records of sightings in Ohio and found that I had forgotten about an important report, very relevant:

A lady and her daughter were at a bus stop early in the morning, in the winter of early 2014, when they saw a large “pteradactyl” fly right by them, at about the same height above the ground as the one you saw last month. Here’s the thrilling part:

This was at Westerville Road and Denune Avenue, less than five miles from where you had your sighting. This appears to me to be about 4.5 miles southwest of your location.

This means we need to support local investigations in your area, for this is too much for coincidence. Even if it’s only one ropen in that general area, it deserves immediate attention. I’ll be writing about this [including publishing blog posts], and looking for help, within the next few days.

Jonathan

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Ropen page on Wikipedia deleted

. . . the ropen continues to survive skeptical attacks, despite declarations about extinctions. The most obvious extinction, however, is that of a page on Wikipedia.

Pterosaur sighting in Ohio

. . . a number of eyewitnesses have reported apparent live pterosaurs in Ohio, regardless of the apparent lack of newspaper headlines. Probably unknown to many news media reporters and editors, sighting in neighboring states may be of the same species . . .

Modern Pterosaur in Papua New Guinea

After only a few minutes of their arrival, however, the giant ropen, flew just over the surface of Lake Pung. All seven boys ran home in terror, for that ropen had a mouth “like a crocodile” and a tail that one of the eyewitnesses estimated to be “sefan meetuh” long (about 22 feet).

Ohio Pterosaur Sightings

Three separate encounters in Ohio:

  • Kenton (2010)
  • Mount Vernon (2005)
  • Antwerp (2002 and 2003)

Antwerp, Ohio, actually had two sightings, in consecutive summers.

Modern Pterosaurs and Missing Children

The tragedy of strange missing-persons cases—that compels me to write about my interpretation of the more mysterious aspects of these disappearances, especially because so many of these lost individuals are children.

Living Pterosaurs

The ropen is described in ways that actually lead to two words: “dragon” and “pterosaur,” depending on culture and taste. But notice the word noticeably absent: “extinct.” Many people are convinced that they are alive because they have seen them flying over their heads.

Ropen – a Modern Pterosaur

. . . ropens continue to  fly overhead, continuing to shock humans  who had assumed that all pterosaurs had  become extinct millions of years ago.

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A Few Sightings of Pterosaurs Reported in 2016

modern-pterosaur sketch by the eyewitness
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Be aware that an eyewitness may use one or more of a number of words for the flying creature that was observed:

  • Dragon
  • Flying dinosaur
  • Pterodactyl
  • Dinosaur bird
  • Featherless flying creature

The point is that these are featherless flying creatures and are generally larger than most birds, many of them also having long tails.

This is just a small sampling of pterosaur sightings that were reported to me in 2016.

Pterosaur Sighting in Missouri in 1985

I’ve never told anyone of this except three family members . . .

[In] St. Louis Mo. . . . I was ten years old at a family BBQ with my dad…it was before dusk and still enough light in the sky that it was still blue . . . we heard this horrific screech from right above the trees in the surrounding yard. I looked up and saw something AMAZING ! It was a real live Pterosaur!

Huge …. The size of a small airplane! Wings like a bat but never flapped, just glided in circles. The head had a long crest . . . Long beak with razor like white teeth, greenish yellow eyes, long tail with a tuff like shape at the end but NOT FUR OR FEATHERS. leather type skin. It was I guess 50 ft above our back yard party . . .

Mass panic broke out as adults dropped their beers and burgers and grabbed their kids and ran inside. I was NEVER once afraid although my dad . . . lost all composure and swooped me up and ran inside the house . . .

“Pterodactyl” on the Big Island of Hawaii on Aug. 20 2016

My military boyfriend and I were taking a regular swim in the warm ponds on Big Island. I looked in the sky and noticed a giant flying bat-like creature. I pointed it out and said it was a pterodactyl and he doubted me and thought I was kidding. He didn’t even want to look up. It was flying around for around 30 seconds and he finally looked up and his jaw dropped. . . .

We watched it for around 2 more minutes gliding around without moving it’s wings much . . . It had very unusual triangular shaped flesh leading up to it’s feet and a huge wingspan and was brown colored. . . . The time was around 5:20 pm Aug. 20, 2016.

Dragon-Like Creature Sighted in Iowa

. . . I saw a creature here in Iowa that looked a lot like your dinosaur.

. . . I am a Minister here in Iowa and I have for years been worked in homeless shelters and worked with people in addictions. In the early summer of 2014, I was working at a mission type program [called] Teen Challenge in Colfax Iowa.

. . . [In the afternoon] as I was driving him home I looked out my
drivers side window. And out over a corn field 1/4th mile out . . . I saw a large bat/bird like thing trying to fly. . . .

It would flap its wings, gaining some air and then try and glide. It was a very windy day and this creature kept gaining a little height and . . . was then pushed down [to] the ground by the wind. It was too heavy to fly. . . . I caught a glimpse of its body. It had a long lizard/snake like body with a long tail.

. . . I would guess it was 6 ft to 8 ft long with a 12 [foot] wing span. It’s face looked a lot like a Komodo dragon’s face. It was gray/black  . . . I don’t drink, I have never done drugs, [in] perfect health. I was shocked. . . .

[More recently] I have been working with a new client also from Colfax. He shared that he was from [that] town . . . . in the spring of 2014, at around dusk he had been driving friends into Colfax when . . . his daughter and one of his friends had started yelling at him to turn around. They had spotted a winged dinosaur that was trying to fly. He did not believe and kept driving. Every time he drove by that spot his daughter would bring it up. This was within a half mile of where I saw the creature.

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modern-pterosaur sketch by the eyewitnessThis sketch was drawn by the eyewitness (Gitmo, Cuba, ca. 1965)

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Pterosaur Sighting Reports in the USA

Keep in mind that these reports were received in 2016, meaning not all of them were of encounters with “pterodactyls” in this year. It’s always been common for some eyewitnesses to report sightings that they had in previous years, some encounters even being many years previous to the time of reporting to me.

Sightings of Pterosaurs in the United States

To illustrate how sightings of pterosaurs stretch across the United States, let’s look at excerpts from the cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America . . .

Pterosaur sightings in Missouri and in North Carolina

The man and his grandmother saw the large apparently smooth-skinned creature, on July 15, 2004, flying about a hundred feet above an Arby’s restuarant in St. Louis . . .

Pterosaur Sightings in Hawaii

. . . seen a Pterydactyl like creature on the Big Island. Twice actually in the last 2 months. My husband and son also saw one about two weeks ago. I have been doing all kinds of research to see who else has seen this because it seems quite crazy, but I am abosolutely positive in what I saw.

Book on Pterosaurs Sightings in Oklahoma, Missouri, etc.

This cryptozoology book also has sighting reports from Kansas, Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, Maine, Indiana, Florida, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, California, Michigan, Arkansas, and other states of the USA.

New – Pterosaur Sightings in the United States

Details are now available on ninety important sighting reports: apparent pterosaurs in the lower-48 states of the USA, with data compiled at the end of 2012.

Modern Pterosaur in Iowa

I noticed a post by a skeptic who wrote about the legend of the Van Meter creature of 1903, a reportedly winged monster that frightened citizens in a small town in Iowa.

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Pterosaur Sightings in Pennsylvania

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Near Pottstown, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia, three children observed an apparent pterosaur flying overhead. I received an email from their father last week, on what he learned by questioning them. The sighting was on Thursday, May 5, 2016, in the middle of the afternoon, and the oldest child of the three is eight. Here is part of that email.

Mr. Whitcomb . . .

By way of full disclosure: I have had a mild, amateur interest in cryptozoology in the past; so, I was familiar with you before today, although I have not yet read your book. My children are as interested in dinosaurs as any children their age. They flip through dinosaur books and such. I have mentioned to them before that some folks have claimed sightings of living pterosaurs, and that I am open to the possibility.

They have seen herons in the past, and know what they look like in flight. We have sometimes commented on the similar appearance. . . .

There is no doubt in my mind that they truly believe that they saw a pterosaur. That doesn’t mean that they did–but they truly believe that they did. . . . as I interacted with my kids about this, I grew to suspect that they may really have seen something unexpected. . . .

They emphasize repeatedly that the tail had a knob at the end.

I thought that perhaps, if this were a misidentification, the “tail” might actually be legs, and the “knob” the feet. BUT they insist that they saw short legs and feet BESIDE the tail. THAT is what I find most curious. . . .

I, Jonathan Whitcomb, concluded that those three children did indeed witness a ropen flying over their neighborhood. Their descriptions of the flying creature correlates with what other eyewitnesses report in various states of the USA.

Pottstown-Flood-01Pottstown Flood of 2006, photo by Richard Vetter (for the license, see bottom of post)

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It seems the ropen that flew over the Pottstown area of Pennsylvania may have had a wingspan of about twelve feet and a tail about six feet long. That proportion is similar to what others report: a two-to-one ration of wingspan to tail length, although we do have exceptions (which variations may be explained in various ways, including eyewitness error and encounters with more than one species).

Sighting of an Apparent Pterosaur in Philadalphia

Around the late 1990’s or so, two persons in Philadelphia witnessed a possible pterosaur. I got an email from one of them in 2005 and included the account in my book Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition).

[The sighting was at] approximately 5:00 A.M. [probably in the summer] The weird part is I live in Philly. [My friend] was dropping me off, and parked. . . . we saw something that made our jaws drop. . . . This thing didn’t seem to fly quickly. [Its] wingspan was huge. We’d figured at least 20 feet or so. It wasn’t flapping real hard like a sparrow or pigeon does. It almost seemed to sail. It came from the South, and appeared to be heading west [towards the Delaware River].

As God [is] my witness we saw this thing. . . . It had an anvil shaped head and somewhat of a long neck. . . . We do have a hawk in my neighborhood. So I know what the heck that looks like. This thing had to be at least twice the size of a hawk. Maybe three times. I’ve seen . . . vultures down by the Delaware River, and this thing in no way looked like that or a crane. No way. . . . I will go to my death remembering that, and so will my friend . . . It freaked us out so bad.

That creature flying over Philadelphia may not have been a ropen, for the report suggested it did not have a long tail, but it certainly appeared to be something other than any known bird or bat.

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Ropen or Pterosaur in New Mexico

An amateur astronomer, standing outside his New Mexico home, about 140 miles west of Lubbock, Texas, saw an apparent bioluminescent nocturnal pterosaur on September 1, 2014. It was gliding across the telescope’s field of view, which was at low magnification for finding the Andromeda Nebula. Michael Slack, of Roswell, New Mexico watched the flying creature both through the eyepiece and by direct observation.

Pterosaur Sighting in Pennsylvania

They guess that the body was “about as long as a lion.” They guess that the wingspan was “one and a half of our bathroom . . . maybe a little less.” Our bathroom is eight feet long. They guess that the tail was as long as “one and a half broomsticks.”

Pterosaur Sightings in New York, Maine, and Rhode Island

. . . my friend and I were canoeing [east of Buffalo, New York] in the creek accessed from my back yard, when we sighted a very strange creature that we had both thought to be a prehistoric bird. Immediately, I thought ‘pterodactyl.’ It was a greyish color with no apparent feathers. I remember the wing span and the head shape but I don’t recall the tail end.

Pterosaur Deception? NO!

Surely I could have created some fuzzy image, pasting it onto one of those 14,333 photographs that my game camera had recorded over a period of many months. That would have been easier than searching through those 14,333 photos, scanning them for any sign of a living pterosaur but finding none. Why did Prothero accuse me of deception?

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Creative Commons license for the use of the photograph: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ – some cropping of the bottom of the photo and a tiny portion around the other edges