When a Child Sees a Flying Dinosaur

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By the nonfiction cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb

[revised on April 19, 2018 and November 10, 2018]

[The nonfiction book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur was published on November 8, 2018, for middle-grade children and teenagers. This is very relevant to this post.]

Why should only adults see apparent living pterosaurs? In fact, some of the eyewitnesses of modern “pterodactyls” are children and why not? Outside is where people need to be, if they are to have any reasonable chance of observing a living pterosaur. How often is a child seen to spend much time outdoors! Those who care about the truth about reports of apparent living pterosaurs will not be so concerned about the age of an eyewitness. This is a good opportunity to list some of the sightings in which a child was an eyewitness, although kids are sometimes in the company of an adult when a “flying dinosaur” is observed.

By the way, the word ropen is now often used when a long-tailed modern pterosaur is observed.

Sudan, Africa

The boy was taking a tray of food from one mud hut to another one night, in 1988, when he was startled to see a strange winged creature on the roof of one of the huts. As an adult, any year later, he reported the encounter to me, Jonathan Whitcomb. I found his testimony to be credible.

Gitmo, Cuba, “Dinosaur”

Patty Carson was only a small child, when she and her brother saw a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur in clear daylight, at the Guantanamo Bay military station in eastern Cuba, around 1965. Note that in 1971, a U.S. Marine, Eskin C. Kuhn, also saw two very similar creatures in clear daylight. He used the word “pterodactyl.” Both Carson and Kuhn, fortunately, are talented artists and have sketched what they observed. It seems these two persons observed the same species of ropen.

 

sketch of the two pterosaurs observed by Eskin Kuhn in Cuba

Sketch by eyewitness Eskin Kuhn

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sketch, by eyewitness, of the Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur of eastern Cuba

Sketch by eyewitness Patty Carson (sighting about 1965, Cuba)

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Why should an objective person care whether or not an eyewitness is a child?

“Dragon” in England (ten-year-old child)

“I just wanted to tell someone about my sighting of a flying creature whilst in my childhood. . . .

“It was either 1987 or 88, when my mother used to work an evening shift at our local superstore . . . I was too young to be left at home (aged 10 then). The sky was clear and I was watching the stars when something caught my eye. It was a glowing object which seemed to open up to what I thought looked like a dragon. I was too shocked to tell my father . . . and I never told anyone about this until I met [my husband].”

The strange phrase “dinosaur bird” or “flying dinosaur” may easily throw off an adult who hears an excited child try to explain what was encountered, but the young age of an eyewitness does not in itself invalidate a sighting report. Let’s now consider sightings involving more than one generation of a human family.

Sightings in Hawaii

A woman and her nephew saw what appeared to be a pterosaur on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2008, although this one was not extremely large: about three to four feet in wingspan. The wings appeared featherless and the coloring was “fleshy.” It was only about 80 feet over their heads, and they could see a “diamond” shape at tail end.

Several other members of a different family had three sightings of apparent pterosaurs on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2012, and they gave a wingspan estimate of five to six feet.

On that same island but in 2013, three eyewitnesses encountered an apparent pterosaur that had an estimated wingspan of ten feet. The three persons who observed it were an eleven-year-old boy and his two parents.

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cover of the paperback book "The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur"

Nonfiction cryptozoology book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur

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Pterosaur Flying in Texas

. . . only eight years old when he encountered what could only be called a “pterosaur,” in northeastern Texas, in 1995.

Ropen Declaration (living pterosaurs)

This update mainly contains those sightings reported to me (Jonathan Whitcomb) since the middle of 2014, although some of the early significant reports are included.

California Child Care Backyard

These photos were recorded in May of 2012, after spring cleaning in preparation for the summer play times