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The Old Pterodactyl Photo

Ptp photo of an apparent pterosaur - enhanced

By Jonathan Whitcomb

I processed the Ptp image and cropped it to help people avoid distractions. Why did I alter the “Civil War flying-dinosaur photo”? I wanted to present it in a form that would most likely be closer to the original image than what we see in Ptp. The most important points, however, have not been altered: only those things that were most likely to have been altered many years ago (to make the photo appear older). Here is the result, “Ptp-R-3”:

Ptp photo of an apparent pterosaur - enhancedThe photograph of an apparent 19th-century pterosaur: “Ptp-R-3”

The soldiers in the photo

Recently I’ve been emphasizing the importance of that lefty of the far right: that one soldier who is left-handed. The other five men are right handed, and their handedness is shown by their pistol holsters.

Statistics tell us that American men living in the second half of the 19th century were not rare, but if six of them would be chosen at random then one of two things are very likely: one left-handed or none a lefty.

That means that the precise handedness shown in Ptp is too precise to be likely a coincidence, at least when observed in relation to other factors. It requires an explanation.

The most persuasive objection to the authenticity of Ptp, in recent years, has been the declaration that it was created for a TV episode of Freakylinks in the year 2000. That theory, however, has problems.

Controversial photograph of six Civil War soldiers next to the apparent body of a recently deceased giant pterodactyl or pterosaur, maybe a PteranodonPtp was apparently manipulated to appear to be old

The TV episode in question, “Coelacanth This!”, appears to have come from a script that included a conversation about an apparent photo that has apparent Union Civil War soldiers posing next to a gigantic pterosaur. For many persons, it would suggest that those men with rifles shot down the flying creature.

So what’s the problem? The belt buckles and pistol holsters show that those men were NOT photographed during the American Civil War. Keep in mind that the theory that has been most persuasive in dismissing Ptp has been that it was created for that TV episode which aired in the year 2000. So why does Ptp not show even one man who is dressed and equipped appropriately? Not one of these six men has an oval belt buckle and all six of them have pistol holsters.

Those two points about uniforms and equipment—that alone puts at least some doubt in the Freakylinks theory. But that one lefty, the man on the far right, shoots that theory dead out of the sky, at least when we look only at the men.

Remember that, according to the theory, the story in the episode called for a photo of a large pterodactyl and some Civil War soldiers. So how could things get messed up so badly (men NOT from Civil War), but the men are shown to have precisely the left-handed ratio that would be expected for men living in the second half of the 19th century?

Explanation of Ptp

This image is most likely to have come from an actual photograph that was recorded between about the year 1866 and 1880. When the producers (in the companies involved with that TV episode) realized that the image was indeed old enough to be in the public domain, then they decided to use that image rather than create an imitation of it. That’s probably what happened.

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Flying Dinosaur in “Civil War” Photo

. . . a new significance in an observation made by Tom Payne some time ago: One of those six apparent Civil War soldiers is left handed.

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Pterodactyl Sightings in North America

Youtube has more than 37 million channels, and the one with the most videos on sightings of modern pterosaurs appears to be Protect Animal Life. As of January 6, 2021, of the 113 videos on this channel, 111 of them were about these amazing featherless flying creatures.

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Two types of living pterodactyls

Her husband was raised in the Southern Highlands Province, without contact with Westerners for some time, and knows about the two kinds of modern pterosaurs.

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Modern pterosaurs

Sighting reports of pterosaurs make this a study in cryptozoology. . . . Large featherless flying creatures of the night—they’r e not bats; most of them are much too big.

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Pterodactyl sightings while driving

“In 2010 I saw a flying dinosaur. I was driving a car alone . . . 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]. . . .”

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Living pterosaurs

. . . become aware that at least three scientific papers have been published on the subject of modern pterosaurs. In addition, many nonfiction books have been written on these flying creatures . . .

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Sightings of dinosaur birds

. . . two weeks ago we moved into a new home in Kona [Big Island of Hawaii] about 2 miles south from our other home and my husband and son saw the Pterydactyl [pterosaur] fly over our house and circle around.

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Pterodactyl Attacks in British Columbia?

Set aside any independent reports that I, Jonathan Whitcomb, may have personally received from eyewitnesses; we have two authors whose books either imply or describe apparent modern pterosaurs (AKA “pterodactyls”) in British Columbia, and those two nonfiction books include reports relating to possible attacks on humans:

  • Missing 411 Western United States & Canada – by David Paulides
  • Bird From Hell (second edition) – by Gerald McIsaac

Be aware that I have so far found nothing in the book by Paulides (missing persons) that gives any hint that he knew about living-pterosaur investigations when he wrote it. As of December 17, 2014, I have read through half of his book. The “pterodactyl” interpretation is my own, so please don’t hold that author responsible for this unorthodox view of missing persons on Vancouver Island (or anywhere else people disappear). The authors who have written from this perspective are me and Mr. McIsaac.

Since the Bird From Hell book mentions a lack of feathers and that eyewitnesses describe a tail that is six feet long, I believe that this is a species of ropen.

Two missing toddlers on Vancouver Island

These two children were only two years old when they were tragically lost, on Vancouver Island, to what seems to have been the same kind mystery. One little body was found three-and-a-half miles away and the other, four miles away; both of those distances were too far to be reasonably ascribed to toddler wandering.

To learn the details of these and many other cases of missing persons, refer to the book Missing 411 – Western United States & Canada. The critical point is how these two disappearances of children in western British Columbia relate to other cases in the western United States: When the body or living victim is found, the discovery is often too many miles away from the location where the person became missing and often too much higher in elevation.

Two-year-old Yehudi Prior and his father were four miles north of Wild Duck Lake, on September 23, 1974, when the toddler disappeared. The body was found six days later, “near Hope Creek in the next valley north of Wild Duck Valley . . . a fantastic long distance . . . It seemed impossible that he could go that far.”

Two-year-old Lynn Marie Hollier left the family cabin on July 24, 1986, at Horne Lake (also on Vancouver Island), just west of Spider Lake Provincial Park and Horne Lake  Caves Provincial Park. Tracking dogs were not successful. Twenty-six days after the toddler became missing, two hunters found the child’s body under a fallen log, over three miles from the family cabin. The mother later responded to the suggestion that her two-year-old had walked that far uphill: “There’s no way . . . It just doesn’t seem possible.”

Take the above two cases in context. Many similar missing-persons tragedies involve the later discovery of scattered bones or no evidence of what happened. This leads to the distinct possibility that an animal predator is involved. Yet when a body is found intact or a victim is found alive, odd assortments of clothing are missing, including one or both shoes. We now have an explanation, but it is shocking.

More research is needed, but the overall evidence seems to be pointing at a flying predator and one that is larger than any extant bird known to western science. It seems that the body of Lynn Hollier was found because the child was under that fallen log, where the flying creature could not locate what it had dropped.

That is why tracking dogs are so often unsuccessful: The victim had been carried away through the air, not dragged over the ground.

How does a flying predator drop a human prey? It’s when clothing or a shoe or two is mainly what is gripped by the animal: The person falls out of the clothing that is then left in the claws of the creature. That is why clothing is found maybe hundreds of feet away from an intact body or living victim or the clothing is never found, for the animal soon realizes what happened yet cannot find the human to eat it. The body of a missing person, or a living victim, is often found in thick bushes where the predator could not find what had been dropped.

I hope that knowing details about such tragedies can help us avoid other similar tragedies in the future. My condolences to the family members who could not have been expected to have known about these normally-nocturnal flying creatures and the dangers a few of them may pose on rare occasions. These apparent modern pterosaurs seem to be mostly fish-eaters or they often hunt bats or birds.

“Bird From Hell” of Northern British Columbia

It’s known as the “Devil Bird” by elders of the First Nation people in the area where the author Gerald McIsaac has lived for many years. He believes, as I Jonathan Whitcomb believe, that this is a species of pterosaur. To quote from McIsaac’s book Bird From Hell (second edition):

The public is well aware of [some] predators . . . but they are not aware of the pterodactyl [as a living animal]. That is the reason so many people are killed by this animal [in British Columbia].

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Women may be Attacked in British Columbia

One of the girls in the village was recently attacked by a pterodactyl. She had a campfire burning in her backyard  and was attacked in the darkness. . . . She called me up, very upset, as people are laughing at her.

Deadly Pterosaurs

Not all human encounters with live pterosaurs are a pleasant surprise. On rare occasions, a ropen, or kor, or indava . . . will attack somebody, and the results are sometimes tragic . . .

Pterodactyl Attacks in Yosemite

These weird disappearances are not confined to Yosemite, nor even to the United States. Several factors do seem to tie together cases that are separated by long distances and sometimes separated by decades. To understand what may be happening in Yosemite National Park, we need to see in a broader sense. Look to Canada and to Mexico.

Is the Ropen a “Stupid Fantasy?”

As this interview became publicized online, another biology professor, this one in Minnesota, became upset and wrote his own blog post, ridiculing the idea of modern pterosaurs. The content of the post by the skeptical professor, however, was weak.

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Eyewitness Reports NOT From Hoaxes

“‘Pterodactyls’ are more likely living creatures than hoaxes, according to three separate factors analyzed from eyewitness accounts across the U.S.: Hoaxes have been eliminated as a significant cause of reports.” (Press release in News Blaze and other online news-release pages) I wrote that press release after analyzing the overall eyewitness testimonies in my new nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America.

“More likely” understates the case, for no combination of hoaxes can explain the overall data.

Wingspan Estimates

Eyewitness estimates of wingspan “are [27% of them] within . . . 8-10 feet . . . far too small or too big for hoaxers.” Any American trying to pass off a hoax would likely choose standard-model fossil knowledge (Rhamphorhynchoid fossils are small) or ropen reports (mostly much larger than ten feet in wingspan). The peek of eight-to-ten feet is statistical evidence against a hoax or combination of hoaxes.

Details About Featherless Appearance

“Probably” featherless outnumbered “definitely” featherless by about two-to-one, so most eyewitnesses (or supposed eyewitnesses) admitted that they were not certain. This is what we would expect of honest persons who observed something in imperfect (typical) conditions. The point? Why would a hoaxer avoid being positive about featherlessness while trying to convince somebody of a living pterosaur? It is unlikely that even one hoaxer would have thought of that; hoaxers from across the United States, all thinking of that detail–that is unbelievable. So the eyewitnesses (at least as a whole) were telling the truth about what they saw. (Accuracy of interpretation is another subject.)

Long Tails

“The great majority of movie and television portrayals of pterosaurs are of short-tailed Pterodactyloids. In addition, textbooks declare that those were the more-recent pterosaurs.” About 80% of American eyewitness reports of apparent living pterosaurs–that is a lot of long tails, notwithstanding critics’ insinuations of tall tales. If Americans were constantly sending me hoaxes, however, they would be of short-tailed or no-tailed pterosaurs, for that is what is commonly portrayed in our society. That is the third nail in the coffin for the hoax hypothesis.

Refutation of the Pterosaur Hoax Idea (no hoaxes were involved)

Forget about the article in The Illustrated London News (1856) about workmen in a railway-line tunnel in France. It is commonly accepted that the “pterodactyl” that stumbled out of the stone was a hoax. . . . [but] Interviewing eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs, over the past five years, I know that a hoax (or a number of hoaxes) could not have produced the answers they have given me. While writing my book (“Live Pterosaurs in America,” . . .

Live Pterosaurs In America, nonfiction book

cover of third edition of the nonfiction cryptozoology book

Updated early in 2018:

Excerpts from the book’s title page:

Eyewitness Reports of Pterosaurs in the Contiguous United States

Reports of huge flying “pterodactyls” in American skies have floated around the internet for years; but before about 2005, details were scarce. When an eyewitness was named, the interviewer was often anonymous; even when an eyewitness was credible, and the account published in a newspaper, the story was ridiculed, discouraging others who had also seen strange flying creatures. . . .

How are sightings in the United States related to those in the southwest Pacific? How do some apparent nocturnal pterosaurs pertain to bats, and how are bats irrelevant? How could modern living pterosaurs have escaped scientific notice? These mysteries have slept in the dark, beyond the knowledge of almost all Americans, even beyond our wildest dreams (although the reality of some pterosaurs is a living nightmare to some bats). These mysteries have slept . . . until now.

From the third chapter of the book:

The longer we watched, the more spooked we became. It was as though a giant vampire bat (like Dracula-style) was there, but neither of us thought it really looked like a bat, either, even a big one. Also, all the bigger bats are fruit-eaters and not scary at all. This was frightening. I get little chills just writing about it now.

Excerpts from the book’s Appendix:

Philosophy at the foundation

Charles Darwin chose an extreme dedication to Naturalism philosophy; his Common-Ancestry ideas seem to make God unnecessary. He chose atheism, but most Americans reject the idea that life arose without any creative act of God.

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Live Pterosaurs In America (third edition, print) by Jonathan Whitcomb

Live Pterosaurs in America -third edition of the nonfiction book - covers

“The Truth About Pterosaurs” — They are not all extinct