By Jonathan D. Whitcomb
I’ve written much about the Ptp image over a number of years. For now, consider some objections that critics have made and some of the problems with those skeptical remarks.
The complete image Ptp
- A television episode
One online page has made a big show, declaring or strongly implying that Ptp is from the Freakylinks TV episode “Coelacanth This!”, which aired in the year 2000. We’ll cover that objection first.
The complete image of Ptp, shown above, is NOT in that TV episode of Freakylinks. The point? Nobody could have taken the complete Ptp image from that show, to later display on a web page, so where did Ptp come from (in its completeness)? NOT from that TV episode.
By the way, I have not been able to find any web page by Haxan Films or Freakylinks or E=MC2-Digital that has Ptp; it seems to be shown in four places in one of their TV episodes but without showing the bottom of the image.
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2) Canoe cut in half
At least two skeptics have declared that the wings of the apparent “pterodactyl” came from a canoe that was cut in half. A brief glance might give you that impression, but look closer.
If it was originally a canoe, then why was it constructed? If you put such a canoe into a still pond of water, it might hold a 10-pound bag of flour but not a great deal more than that. Any average adult human who tried to climb into it would cause it to immediately sink, and even if it was placed on the land, only a child would be able to fit into such a narrow canoe.
There’s more but for those reasons alone the canoe hypothesis has been sunk, so let’s move on.
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3) The image has been manipulated to make it look old
Ptp probably has been tampered with in several ways, but that does not explain the original image. Who are those men and what is that apparent pterosaur? Consider it without some of those distracting apparent alterations:
With some of the apparent alterations removed
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4) Soldier on far left has missing fingers
He probably was holding the rifle by the ramrod, which seems to have been on the other side of the rifle, away from the camera view.
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5) Out of place uniforms and equipment
Those are not Civil War soldiers: Look at the rectangular belt buckles and pistol holsters. That is an excellent point, but it does not discredit Ptp as evidence for a modern pterosaur living in the 19th century. It only discredits a label placed onto it: “Civil War”.
uncommon for a common Civil War soldier
The uniforms and equipment of these six men suggest they were photographed within a few years or so of the end of the American Civil War. In other words, the photo was probably taken between 1866 and 1880, when such belt buckles and pistol holsters were more common.
In fact, this discredits one of the objections (#1): Why would that TV episode of Freakylinks have apparent soldiers like this in an apparently old photo? That episode was created with a story that included the idea that an old photo showed men who lived DURING the Civil War.
If the TV producers hired actors to portray Civil War soldiers, or rented uniforms and equipment for actors, why do we see men (in Ptp) who seem so unlike Civil War reenactors? Why does each man have the body build (neither thin nor heavyset) like an American soldier living between 1866 and 1880? Why do they appear to have natural individual differences yet have some similarities in beard styles and ways of holding their rifles? And why do they NOT have the uniforms and equipment of Civil War soldiers? After all, that appears to have been what was required for the TV episode, if the producers had decided to hire actors to be photographed for a fake pterodactyl photo.
Most likely, before finishing the creation of that episode, in the year 2000, the producers discovered that Ptp was in public domain, allowing them to use it (because that image was so old).
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6) Devilishly deceitful halo?
One skeptic declared that one of the soldier-images has a halo close to the top of the head (suggesting digital cut-and-paste). In reality, it is just one or more tree branches behind that man.
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7) No shadow under the boot?
One critic said that there is no shadow under the boot of the man in front of the apparent pterosaur. In reality THERE IS A SHADOW. Look closely and you will see that the shadow under that boot is exactly where it should be. It is a small shadow because one edge of the boot is in contact with the beak of that flying creature.
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Conclusion
Much more could be said, especially in pointing out positive evidences for the authenticity of the original image that was the source of what we now call “Ptp”, but I have written much about such evidences elsewhere. Some links to other relevant web pages are below:
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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.
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According to the cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb, of Murray, Utah, people keep reporting pterosaurs in California, not fossil discoveries but non-extinct “pterodactyls” flying overhead.
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There’s been wide skepticism about authenticity of the picture, but as explained below, the photograph is real, although the object/creature seen in it is not known well.
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Genuine Photo of a Pterodactyl
Although digital manipulation is highly likely to have been made on the original photo, in recent decades, we now have evidences that the “monster” in Ptp may have been a real animal.
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Modern pterodactyls in press releases
The following are but a few of the news releases [about these shocking flying creatures]
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An answer to a critic of the Ptp pterodactyl photo
NOBODY can get the entire image of Ptp from the episode Coelacanth This!, yet on the internet you can find complete images of Ptp, although the smaller cropped images are much more common.
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Small simple organisms, even in vast numbers, will never evolve into large complex organisms. It just goes contrary to natural selection.
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Carbon-14-dated dinosaurs lived much more recently
It almost looks like the Jurassic World is really upon us, not in a science fiction film but in carbon-14 dating of dinosaur bones that were supposed to be many millions of years old. The fossils sampled turned out to be much younger than most scientists had imagined.
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Pterodactyls or Modern Flying Dinosaurs
. . . the possibility that people who report seeing living pterosaurs have actually seen that kind of flying creature.
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