Cuba – Live Pterosaurs in America

May 23, 2011May 23, 2011

Cuba Pterosaurs, cont

Eskin Kuhn, the U.S. Marine who observed two long-tailed pterosaurs in Cuba, in 1971, has recently added some additional comments about his encounter.

Cuba Pterosaur Report

I really tried to “cram” my study at that time [his 1971 sighting of two pterosaurs in Cuba], focusing on details as well as taking in the overall form and motion of the pair in flight. I tried to memorize the details that would enable me to commit them to paper in a sketch so as to accurately define the creature. . . . the long strands of hair in a tuft at the end of the tail (a brush, not flesh covered as the rest), and that detail has become muted by the many copies of the drawing, the original newsprint type coarse paper

. . . this morning I turned the corner at the base of my property and headed up the hill and saw a relatively familiar sight . . . a Great Blue Heron in flight. . . . The Heron in flight would make many a person wishing to see a pterosaur think they had. It’s great wings, short body, long heavy beak and crooked neck, prow-like chest and very long legs trailing behind with curved toes resembling a tail . . . it puts you in mind of such creatures as pterosaurs . . . unless you have actually seen pterosaurs. Then the differences are dramatic.

Two Pterosaur Sightings in Cuba

We were walking through [a] scrub area, and suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. . . . right in front of us about thirty feet away. . . . I looked at his [Eskin Kuhn’s] drawing, and if I had to make any changes I would make the tail maybe six inches shorter and the wings maybe 10% longer, maybe even 15%, but the proportions of the head are very good, and the body and the hind legs are exactly as I remember.

Modern Pterosaur in Cuba

An eyewitness of a long-tailed featherless flying creature has recently come forward: Patty Carson of Southern California. She witnessed the “Gitmo Pterosaur” when she was a child, on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in 1965. Jonathan Whitcomb, the cryptozoologist who interviewed her, believes the flying creature is related to the kongamato of Africa.

All this brings up the question about pterosaur extinction: “Why are these flying creatures not extinct but still flying around?” In reality, dinosaurs and pterosaurs have been assumed to be extinct, in all of their numerous species. This has been repeatedly taught without explanation, as an assumption portrayed as if scientific fact. No dinosaur or pterosaur has been proven to be extinct, let alone all species of a particular type.

Flying Dinosaurs

Of course the correct word is “pterosaur,” not “flying dinosaur.” Some cryptozoologists believe the “Gitmo Pterosaur” of Cuba is related to the kongamato of Africa and the ropen of Papua New Guinea.

From 1994 through 2009, about nine Americans have intermittently (and usually two or three at a time) visited remote islands of Papua New Guinea, searching for flying creatures: a living pterosaur. On Umboi Island, it’s called “ropen,” but it’s also known as “duwas,” and “seklo-bali.” Most of the evidence they have gathered is native eyewitness testimony.

May 5, 2011August 24, 2011

Pterosaurs at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Gitmo Pterosaur

A new sighting report has just emerged, although the sighting itself was in about 1965. I have recently interviewed Patty Carson by emails and by a long phone conversation, and I am convinced that she is telling the truth about a large flying creature that was neither bird nor bat: a live pterosaur. By the time I had talked with her on the phone, she had seen Eskin Kuhn’s sketch and told me that many details were much like what she had seen.

To appreciate the significance of the Carson sighting at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba (also called “Gitmo”), we need to know something about the Kuhn sighting at that same military station, about six years later.

Cuban Pterosaurs Seen by Eskin Kuhn (1971 Sighting)

The base is located on the shore of Guantánamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba. [Wikipedia]

“It was a beautiful, clear summer day . . . I was looking in the direction of the ocean when I saw an incredible sight. . . . two pterosaurs . . . flying together . . . perhaps 100 feet [high], very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them. The structure and the texture of the wings appeared to be very similar to that of bats”

Eskin Kuhn's sketch of pterosaur that fly over a military base in Cuba — Sketch by Eskin Kuhn: 1971, in Cuba

Kuhn Pterosaur Sighting

This is a very brief overview of the 1971 sighting at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a detailed response to a critic who thoughtlessly dismissed the U. S. Marine’s account.

Modern Pterosaur Verified in Cuba (1965 Sighting)

Patty was only about six years old when she and her younger brother were walking home on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. I’ll let Patty’s words tell much of this account.

“We were walking from the boat yards toward home, but still closer to the boat yards, to where it was sandy underfoot, sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall . . . There were some stagnant pools here and there, a few inches deep . . . and suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting.

“[It was] about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound . . .”

The teeth were small but clearly visible, as the creature’s mouth was not quite closed. About those teeth, Patty said that there were “a LOT of them.”

They [the two children] ran home and told the grownups that they had seen a dinosaur that had flown away. They “started to tell me it was a pelican or frigate bird. NO WAY! It was as tall as a man when it stood up on it haunches.”

In our phone conversation, Patty explained to me that . . . the wings were like bat wings, in a way, but not at all transparent. She is sure of the structure at the end of the tail (what I call a “vane” or “flange”) and estimates the “diamond” was about five inches long and about three inches wide.

Patty Carson Sighting (1965)

This pterosaur sighting of 1965 was reported to Patty’s family within minutes of the frightening encounter. It was made public, however, in early May of 2011, having been previously disbelieved by family members who heard the girl’s account but who had no knowledge of the Kuhn sighting of two pterosaurs at that same military base, which sighting was in 1971.

No misidentification caused Patty Carson to only believe that she had seen a flying “dinosaur.” That was a sighting at close range in daylight, and the very large creature had a long tail with a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur tail vane, eliminating any bat; it had no feathers but it did have many teeth, eliminating any bird.

Patty Carson is a Registered Nurse, with clear memory and with nothing to gain from any hoax involving a living pterosaur that she had seen in her childhood. In phone conversations, she has high credibility, with very little possibility of any hoax.

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From the second edition of the cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America:

“I grabbed the binoculars and looked for myself. What I saw was large and very much alive. Its hue was close to the hue of the desert sand but more the color of rust. Its skin, I say skin because there were no feathers, . . . looked like dull leather sort of dusty looking. . . . The back of the head was pointed.

“When we started making comparisons, we knew it had to have been [a] lot larger than an eagle, maybe three times larger.”

November 8, 2010November 25, 2010

LPA (Second Edition) Nearing Publication

The publication of the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America is approaching, with final editing within the next two weeks or so. It may take several more weeks, however, to become visible on Amazon, with direct sales from the publisher coming first. [Amazon page actually showed up on Nov 23, 2010.]

Two Pterosaurs in Cuba

This new edition of the book will include several pages (in the appendix) on Eskin Kuhn’s 1971 sighting in Cuba. Although this was outside the contiguous forty-eight states, it was included because of its proximity. This extraordinary sighting deserves a partial quotation:

How rare the ropen pair, in daylight, daring sortie in the air! Notwithstanding rarity, two long-tailed intruders flew over the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, mesmerizing the marine Eskin Kuhn. . .

[Words of Mr. Kuhn] ” . . . I saw two pterosaurs (or pterodactyls . . . what’s in a name?) flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet, very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them. . . . they were flying and not merely gliding . . . The rate of their [wing flaps] was more like that of crows, perhaps a little slower, but very graceful.”

Two Pterosaurs In Washington State

Also newly included in the second edition of the book is the sighting report about two large long-tailed pterosaurs seen in daylight in rural Washington state. The two creatures may have been involved in courtship, as one of them was hopping off and onto a fence while the other one watched. The teenaged eyewitness of the creatures was riding his bike when he saw them; he nearly fell off.

Purpose of the Book

An unforseen purpose for this cryptozoology book has come to light, soon after the publication of this second edition. It may be used as part of a remedy for mild teenager malaise. In fact, one pre-teen in Florida, became so excited with living pterosaur investigations, that he started his own interviewing investigation, becoming a child cryptozoologist. One of the sighting reports in the book came from this child’s interview with an eyewitness of a strange flying creature in St. Louis, Missouri.

September 8, 2010April 2, 2012

Kuhn Pterosaur Sighting

The 1971 pterosaur sighting by the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn was not exactly in the United States; this was at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station on Cuba. But this is near the United States, and a number of Americans have seen similar creatures in a number of the forty-eight states. I have personally interviewed this eyewitness (2010) and I found him to be highly credible; this was no hoax. But because of certain comments by a recent critic, this sighting deserves attention here.

Consider two other sites with more information about this sighting of two pterosaurs in Cuba:

Overview of the sighting of two pterosaurs

While stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1971, Eskin Kuhn saw, in daylight, two pterosaurs flying about 100 feet above the ground. They were close enough for Kuhn to notice details, and, being talented in realistic drawing, he soon sketched what he had observed. That sketch has been around for many years, but it deserves a closer look, for other eyewitnesses have seen a similar creature.

More about the two pterosaurs in Cuba

“I saw two pterosaurs . . . flying together . . . perhaps 100 feet [high], very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them. The structure and the texture of the wings appeared to be very similar to that of bats: particularly in that the struts of the wings emanated from a ‘hand’ as fingers would . . .”

There have been, over the years, at least two online criticisms of this sighting report; let’s consider the more recent criticism of this sighting in Cuba, and examine the reasoning involved, for there are problems with the reasoning of this critic (as there are problems with the reasoning of the earlier critic; but that has already been addressed elsewhere).

One comment (by someone with the initials “S.H.”) was in response to a blog post titled “Frigate Birds Are Not Ropens.” It should be known that the comment was made before an important link was added to that post, a link to a site with many paragraphs about the sighting in Cuba, in fact in the words of the eyewitness himself: Eskin Kuhn. Since this comment resembles one or two others, by other critics, it now deserves a response.

S.H. said, “. . . you certaintly [certainly] can’t rule out mistaken identification.” Well, that is interesting, for the comment was made about the post “Frigate Birds Are Not Ropens,” which is about how much eyewitness descriptions of apparent pterosaurs differ from appearances of Frigate birds. If S. H. was thinking about some flying creature other than a Frigate bird, why did he not mention what he was thinking? I don’t mean to be mean to him, for he made the comment before there was any link, on that post, to any site or page with details about Eskin Kuhn’s sighting; but if S.H. was serious about digging to get to the truth about this report, why did he not look deeper or be more specific about possible “mistaken identification?”

S. H. also said that the sketch by Kuhn shows something that “combines features of two completely different sub-orders of Pterosaurs.” I believe he means a Pterodactyloid head crest and a Rhamphorhynchoid tail. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to note that the sketch seems to show a Rhamphorhynchoid with a head crest, for that tail is clearly not that of a Pterodactyloid, but a least a small number of Rhamphorhynchoids did have head crests (although those are few and the head crests in those fossils are small compared with many of those on Pterodactyloids).

But let’s consider what S. H. had in mind, for he also said, ” . . . it looks like a drawing made by somebody who only knew Pterosaurs from childrens books . . .” (he also mentions “dinosaur movies”, although he gives no detail about anything, giving no title of any book or movie). But these investigations of sighting reports have been going on for many years now, and the combination of long-tails and head-crests is common all over the world and in different decades. Indeed, many recent sighting reports, of apparent pterosaurs in the forty-eight contiguous states of the U.S., include this combination, and recent depictions of pterosaurs (as in one or two of the Jurassic Park movies and in other movies and television programs) show non-tail Pterodactyloids. The point? The overall picture of pterosaur sightings, of all time periods and in many countries, shows a preponderance of the combination of long tails and head crests; Eskin Kuhn’s sighting is just one of many similar sightings in North America, Africa, and in the Southwest Pacific.

I interviewed many natives on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, during my expedition there in 2004. As would be expected of eyewitnesses of actual flying creatures (in contrast to hoaxes), most of those natives had only brief distant sightings. But a few of those many eyewitnesses were fortunate (or unfortunate, from the perspective of those natives who feel that it is bad luck to see a ropen) to have seen the shape of the ropen. They describe a very long tail (“seven meters” for one ropen). Long-tailed pterosaurs are seen not just by the Westerners who have seen pictures of long-tailed “pterodactyls” in the 1960’s (or whenever); they are seen by natives in remote areas of the world, by natives who have never seen any picture of a pterosaur, by natives who know nothing about fossils of pterosaurs, by natives who have never been influenced by Western ideas about pterosaurs.

S.H. seems to be suspicious of Kuhn’s sighting, but his reasoning is flawed. He also mentioned that Kuhn’s sketch has “none of the features that are less well known to the public, like hair.” But obvious hair is not universal with all species of pterosaur; who said it was? Why would two pterosaurs flying in Cuba in 1971 have to have obvious hair? Some sightings in Papua New Guinea do involve observations of hair, it is true, but not all those sightings. Most people have hair on their arms, but how often do we notice arm-hair on a person who is more than ten meters away? Very rarely, I believe (notwithstanding what my daughters would say). So how many sketches of humans include arm hair? It seems to me that S.H., with this hairless objection, is bending over backwards to try to discredit Eskin Kuhn’s sighting of two pterosaurs in Cuba in 1971.

The comment by S.H. was not approved on the post-page “Frigate Birds Are Not Ropens” for good reason. One of his sentences seems to imply that the person who drew the sketch had fabricated the story. I know that Eskin Kuhn has endured ridicule for his story; I will not allow any more blatant assaults on his character, not if I have any say about that.

I gave Eskin Kuhn a surprise phone call, early in 2010, giving him no time to prepare to my questions about his report of almost three decades earlier. I found his response perfectly harmonious with what would be expected of an honest person who had a real experience many years earlier. He said something like, “It was a long time ago.” To critics who insist on assuming that he was dishonest, I reply: The fault lies in the thinking of the critics.

I include here the original sketch by Eskin Kuhn, drawn soon after his extraordinary encounter on the Guantanamo military station in Cuba in 1971. (Kuhn has given me permission to use this sketch to promote the concept of modern living pterosaurs.)

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From the Amazon.com description of this cryptozoology book (Third Edition)

Encounter eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs in the United States. Live “pterodactyls?” In the United States? Many scientists have long assumed all pterosaurs died millions of years ago. Now take a whirlwind tour of many years of investigations in cryptozoology, and prepare for a shock: At least two species of pterosaurs have survived, uncommon, not so much rare as widely, thinly distributed.

From another post on the blog “Live Pterosaurs in America“ (Publication of second edition)

“Also newly included in the second edition of the book is the sighting report about two large long-tailed pterosaurs seen in daylight in rural Washington state.”

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August 30, 2010October 13, 2010

Frigate Birds Are Not Ropens

How unfortunate for living-pterosaur investigations that some recent web pages display photos of Frigate birds as if they were living pterosaurs! Those daylight-loving feathered soarers look hardly anything like ropens, or long-tailed modern pterosaurs. Let’s consider a photo of a Frigate bird, then compare it with the sketch by the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn (which he drew soon after his sighting in 1971 in Cuba). This deserves careful attention, please.

Notice the huge size of the ropen head. (I say “ropen” because that is the name becoming common in at least some English-speaking countries.) Notice the ropen’s head crest. Notice the depth of the wings (distance from cutting-edge to trailing-edge of wing). Notice the bone structure visible because of the lack of feathers. How little this creature resembles the common Frigate bird!

Addendum: The sighting of two pterosaurs, in Cuba in 1971, by the marine Eskin Kuhn, deserves a brief summary here. On a hot day, with clear visibility, at the Guantanamo Bay military station, he was looking out towards the sea. He saw two flying creatures–obvious pterosaurs–flying not far away. Being a gifted artist, he soon thereafter sketched what he has seen. He later wrote many details about that day and about what he had seen. He has maintained the truthfulness of his account, despite ridicule and disbelief from skeptics. The combination of long-tail and head-crest have been vindicated, for subsequent years of investigations and interviews, with eywitnesses from a number of countries around the world, verify this otherwise strange combination: a giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur with a head crest (“long” and “pointed” and words that might be used for some of the head crests observed).

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