pterosaur – Page 3 – Cerritos Families

January 5, 2015

Two-Year-Old Children Missing

A kind of unidentified flying creature has been suggested as the cause of a portion of the missing children cases, for two-year-olds who disappear in or near wilderness areas of the United States and Canada, in which no common explanation appears to make sense. These cases are not necessarily related to the ropen of Papua New Guinea, although indirect circumstantial evidence leaves the door wide open to that possibility.

The idea comes from one interpretation of some of the cases examined in the nonfiction book Missing 411 Western United States & Canada, by the investigative journalist David Paulides. I, Jonathan Whitcomb, suggest this hypothesis, not Mr. Paulides, and I take responsibility for this unidentified-flying-creature interpretation.

Two-year-olds who disappear

This pertains only to a narrow range of cases in which a small child goes missing in or near a wilderness area in North America. In the book by Paulides, 219 cases have an age for the missing person, and 21 of those are of two-year-olds. That seems to me to be a large portion—10%—for such a narrow age range, for ages of the victims go up to over seventy years old, and every age of childhood is represented.

The following show how many slightly-older children are included in the book.

Three years old – 3.7%
Four years old – 2.7%
Five years old – 3.2%
Six years old – 1.8%

Take the 219 cases in context: The book by Paulides is a compilation and analysis of the strangest cases, those in which there is no obvious sign of abduction by a human, or attack from a common predator like a bear or mountain lion, or wandering off and getting lost.

Two-year-olds are not yet old enough to put up much resistance should this most unusual kind of attacker find them. Older children can better avoid a flying predator by running faster and ducking. An older child may also be avoided by a predator, for that potential victim may be too large to carry away. This is part of the reason that so many two-year-olds go missing compared with other ages of victims.

Scratches found on two-year-olds

For those children who were found (including cases in which a body was recovered) and in which a flying predator may have been involved, six reports including observations of scratches. Five of those six involved either many scratches (four) or three deep scratches (one). Only one of those six involved very limited scratches.

Success or failure of tracking dogs

Of the six cases in which dog tracking success was indicated (for two-year-olds), two had complete success, one had limited success, and in three cases the dogs totally failed. This is one evidence for the general concept that these children did not simply wander off on their own.

Found many miles away

Perhaps the strongest indicators of strangeness is in how far away small children are found from when they went missing. For two-year-olds, the average distance is 7.2 miles. In addition, some of these children (or their bodies) are found higher in elevation, sometimes much higher. Two-year-olds just cannot hike many miles over mountain ridges and across cold mountain streams and all that through very rough terrain in a short period of time.

The obvious explanation, in a sense, is that those toddlers were carried over all those obstacles through the air, although that leaves open the big question: What kind of flying creature is carrying away children in or near wilderness areas of North America?

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Missing Persons and Unidentified Flying Creatures

This pertains especially to North American, in particular to Canada and the contiguous 48 states of the USA, but it may be relevant to other areas of the planet. Please be aware that the following model is my own concept, not from the book by Mr. Paulides. . . .

Strange Cases of Missing Children

Paul Nation, in his expedition in 2006, learned that the indavas once terrorized villagers on the mainland, carrying off pigs and even children. In other parts of the mainland, large flying creatures were reported to have even carried away full-grown men, in particular near villages around the cities of Lae and Finschhafen.

Garrett Bardsley Foundation

Who could ask more from any organization, for the more-conventional reasons a child could go missing in or near a wilderness area? More volunteers, better-qualified and arriving at the location quicker—those make it more likely that a lost child may be found faster. I applaud the efforts of all those who have become involved in this noble effort to find missing persons.

Missing Children Found in Caves

Before getting into the missing-persons cases of Mike McDonald in Arizona and Timothy Farmer in Australia, consider other reports that tie caves to ropens (or other modern pterosaurs).

December 22, 2014

Credibility of Modern Pterosaurs

How can intelligent people believe that pterosaurs, those “primitive” flying creatures called pterodactyls, might still be flying over our heads? How can anyone believe in something so incredible? A terse rejecting of all the possibilities of a modern species of “flying dinosaur,” however, is answered thus: How do you explain all the eyewitness testimonies?

Cryptozoology and Science

The following is taken from the short nonfiction e-book Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, by me, Jonathan D. Whitcomb.

Common persons in the southwest Pacific have seen something big flying overhead, something uncommon, unlike any bird or bat.

My American associates and I have explored remote jungles in Papua New Guinea, searching for living pterosaurs and interviewing native eyewitnesses. Most expeditions were led by one or two Americans, with one or two native interpreters. Did we fail or succeed? It depends on who interprets our investigations: skeptics who point out the lack of an official scientific discovery or open-minded cryptozoologists who recognize progress and hope it will continue.

Cryptozoology is not a branch of science, at least not in the usual sense; but it can motivate zoologists to conduct field investigations, at least in theory it can motivate them. It is the “study of hidden animals,” and usually relies less on direct scientific examination and more on eyewitness testimony; nevertheless, we can use scientific reasoning and methods within the boundaries of cryptozoology.

The American missionary Thomas Savage, in the 1800’s in Africa, obtained some bones of what we now call a “Western Gorilla,” which prepared for its eventual scientific acknowledgement. Whatever led that missionary to obtain those bones can be called “cryptozoological,” especially if he had been following eyewitness accounts.

The following is taken from the introduction in my larger book, Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition):

Although I encountered no dragon during my brief stay on Umboi Island in 2004, eyewitnesses I did encounter, objective witnesses of the reality of the ropen, with no superstitious native traditions tainting testimonies, almost without exception. Islanders of Umboi see the ropen and report what they saw; why should they doubt their own senses? And why should we doubt natives? Human experience lives at the foundation of all human societies and at the foundation of science; why single out experiences of those of another society as unreliable? Defending traditions of our own culture may be the worst excuse for rejecting experiences of natives who have long been labeled “primitive.”

To elaborate on the foundation of science being human experience, what do most Americans and other Westerners mean by “scientific?” Some non-scientists use that word as if it referred to some huge collection of statements of fact. Some of them use scientific to dismiss any and all eyewitness accounts of anything that may suggest an extant pterosaur. In reality, Western science was born with eyes that could see and a mind that could reason on what it perceived. Galileo and other early European scientists worked on understanding what they experienced, including what they saw with their eyes. Imagination is important, but the greatest scientists accepted human experience as the great validator of what they imagined.

Dr. Donald Prothero the Paleontologist

A few weeks ago, an American paleontologist, Donald Prothero, wrote a blog post, “Fake Pterosaurs and Sock Puppets,” in which the word fossil was absent. Please note, paleontologists are experts in fossils; it’s hard to find a dictionary definition of paleontology without noticing the word fossil. That was a strange omission.

“Fake Pterosaurs and Sock Puppets” was that professor’s opinion about my integrity, in particular my honesty, for he used the word deception regarding my online publications. That smells of bulverism, if not outright libel. I suggest that the bad motivations on my part were only in his imagination and in what was imagined by a few previous writers that had influenced him.

Outside the comments at the bottom of Prothero’s post, the word eyewitness is absent. That was a strange omission, for I am a cryptozoologist, an investigator who specializes in eyewitness testimonies. Why did he neglect getting into any details about his specialty and about my specialty?

Dr. Prothero may be a highly acclaimed paleontologist in the United States, or perhaps around the world, in his areas of expertise with fossils. But he seems to have completely failed to research what was outside his area of education and scientific credentials: the narrow branch of cryptozoology involving reports of apparent living pterosaurs.

Credibility of Eyewitness Testimony

The statistics from 128 of the more-credible reports, compiled at the end of 2012, prove that no significant number of hoaxes could have been involved. Prothero says nothing about that in his post about me. He does not even hint that any analysis was ever done on any eyewitness reports.

Detailed study shows certain critical descriptions in reports from around the world, reports that I have received over the past eleven years from four continents. Prothero gives not even a hint that I have ever received any reports directly from eyewitnesses. He was concentrating on making it appear like the subject of modern pterosaurs is not worth thinking about because it is all “fake,” and practically all of the publications are from me, and I am not to be trusted because I acted improperly in the use of “sock puppets.”

I suggest that the truth is better known and understood by following the evidence, not by following dead-end trails of bulverism.

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American paleontologist “attacks” living pterosaurs

Readers of a recent post by Dr. Donald Prothero may think that I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have single-handedly deceived ignorant people into believing that pterosaurs are still alive. The paleontologist seems upset that my web pages dominate Google searches.

Clear Thinking and Donald Prothero

. . . using the word deception three times regarding me, Jonathan Whitcomb. . . . C. S. Lewis gave us “bulverism,” lamenting the decline of human reasoning. He defined the word in the mid-twentieth century: “The modern method is to assume without discussion that he [someone whose opinion you dislike] is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.” How much better to talk about the subject at hand!

Review of a pterosaur book

So here I am, a very convinced “Evolutionist” who has written a great deal on Darwin, Chambers, Russel Wallace etc reading a book on Live Pterosaur sightings by an out loud and proud Creationist. And you know what? It really makes no difference to the case. So Whitcomb believes in living pterosaurs? The sceptics who attack his research are equally convinced they are extinct. It’s an issue it is rather hard to maintain a strict impartiality on.

Another book on living pterosaurs:

Fourth Edition of what could be called “The Bible of Modern Pterosaurs,” by Jonathan David Whitcomb, but the actual title is Searching for Ropens and Finding God

July 17, 2013

Flintstones Cartoons and Real Live Pterodactyls

Dale Drinnon, a cryptozoology researcher, sometimes comes up with an idea to discredit eyewitness reports of modern living pterosaurs, including the idea that people are observing Manta ray fish, or other kinds of rays, that jump out of the water. He has also suggested that sightings come from misidentified Hornbill birds. More recently, he has suggested that two sightings in Cuba, a few decades ago, may have come from misidentifications of a rare woodpecker; he suggests the eyewitnesses were influenced by Flintstones cartoons, or something similar, regarding their descriptions of what they had seen. I have found a number of problems with all those ideas.

But before we look at Flintstones cartoons, we need to take Mr. Drinnon’s conjecture in perspective. In his Frontiers of Zoology blog, on April 23, 2012, he published a post titled “Cuban Pterosaurs?,” which was about two eyewitness sightings of apparent pterosaurs in eastern Cuba.

Introduction to the “Gitmo Pterosaur”

It was about 1965, on the U.S. military installation in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when Patty Carson encountered the “dinosaur” that had teeth, a long horn-like head crest, and large wings. Perhaps the children had woken up the creature from a daylight sleep in the scrub vegetation; they had no idea it was hiding there until it stood up and stared at them. The creature had no feathers, but it did have a long tail ending in a “diamond shaped tip.” The children were relieved when the “dinosaur” flew away, for “it was as tall as a man when it stood up.” I interviewed Patty Carson extensively, beginning in the spring of 2011.

1965 "Gitmo Pterosaur" or "pterodactyl" or "dinosaur" seen by two children in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Sketch by the eyewitness Patty Carson

One clear day in 1971, also in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the United States Marine Eskin C. Kuhn was taking a break outside, by himself, when he observed two “pterodactyls” flying together, not far away from where he was standing. He reported they were flying “at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet [high].” He also said, “The Pterosaurs I saw had the short hind legs attached to the rearward-most part of the wing, and they had a long tail trailing behind with a tuft of hair at the end.” I gave Mr. Kuhn a surprise phone call on February 26, 2010, and our conversation confirmed to me his credibility.

Pterosaur-by-Kuhn-C2

Sketch by the eyewitness Eskin Kuhn

A major point of these two sketches is that they were both drawn by eyewitnesses who carefully watched large flying creatures in eastern Cuba, in 1965 and in 1971, so the similarities strongly suggest they were of the same kind of creature, quite possibly the same species. Both Carson and Kuhn stared at these flying creatures intently, taking into their memories the characteristics that they would later put onto paper in their sketches.

Flintstones Cartoon Hallucination?

When is the last time you took a walk in a park and had the following kind of experience? You see a crow flying overhead and your favorite television program causes you to hallucinate and think you saw a pterodactyl. You never had that experience? Why believe that anybody else had such an experience?

If it seems strange that one person would have a pterosaur-hallucination from watching television, what about two persons having the same hallucination from watching the same television program? How ridiculous!

I suggest that Mr. Drinnon has himself been caught up in a fantasy by believing that other persons are the victims of television-caused mental aberrations. When two persons saw the same thing, at the same general place, it’s because they saw something real. If television cartoons caused mass hallucinations, I think somebody would have found some evidence for that.

Woodpeckers, Flintstones, and Long-Tailed Pterosaurs

How far some skeptics will go to find a non-pterosaur explanation for pterosaur sightings! Featherless long-tailed flying creatures with long bony head crests are not misidentifications of woodpeckers . . .

News Release: Pterodactyl in Cuba

Retired forensic videographer Jonathan Whitcomb, of Long Beach, California, used to interview accident victims for attorney firms; now he interviews only eyewitnesses of apparent pterosaurs, what many Americans call “pterodactyls.”