By Jonathan Whitcomb of Animal Discovery

A particular modern pterosaur has now been tied to chicken loses in both central Utah and in Nevada. Earlier in October of 2021 I gave it the name “Draper Ropen”, and it was last seen in a rural neighborhood of Nevada on October 2, 2021. It has also been killing barn cats in that same farming community. Most Americans would call this kind of flying creature “pterodactyl”, although it was called “dragon” in earlier human history.

A remote desert area of Nevada (not necessarily the area where the “Draper Ropen” was observed)

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In the Words of the Eyewitness in Nevada

From an email sent to Jonathan Whitcomb:

By happenstance I found you after something amazing tonight. . . . Approximately 9:20 pm Saturday, 02 October, 2021 (tonight), I experienced something unusual (even unusual for this rural area in . . . Nevada).

While . . . in the garage, I heard something very heavy land on the tin roof . . . It landed softly, and after the roof rafters creaked, then I heard claws scratch the roof . . . Over the past few weeks, many of my neighbor’s barn cats disappeared. . . . Something at night has been eating her cats. Every few nights I hear a cat screaming its last breath trying to fend off something, which kills it very quickly. Marks of struggle are seen, but no footprints [animal tracks].

At first, I thought it might be coyotes or a ranch dog loose at night. But, when I realized I haven’t heard or seen coyotes for quite a while now (very unusual). And when she asked me to look around for tracks, I found no coyote tracks or dog tracks, or tracks of any kind. Only tracks of her barn cat tracks and some chickadee and quail tracks. . . .

Synchronous with the one neighbor’s cats disappearing (only at night), my neighbor to the south has been losing chickens (also, something killing them only at night) His chickens aren’t eaten but squished with no tracks nearby the dead chicken or near the fenced chicken run to reveal the predator. Very unusual, because the only thing that could do this must fly… but, nothing is known to fly in this area big enough to do this (not even eagles and great horned owls are big enough to crush a chicken . . .

Eyewitness Account Continued: The Encounter

Tonight, when this heavy, big “bird” creature landed on the garage roof, the neighbor’s dogs (to the north) went ballistic with frenzied barking that they make only when afraid. Quickly, I turned off the lights. And, quietly, and very carefully I opened the door and went outside. . . .

The garage’s roofline measures 26 ft wide. This creature’s wingspan spread wider by about 2 feet on each side and its wingtip flapped within about 4 feet of my head as I opened the door. . . . moment). I saw the silhouette clearly, because it blacked out the stars. The wingtip didn’t look like feathers, but it looked very much like a gigantic bat’s wing. From almost immediately underneath (at the closest point during its takeoff, it had a long narrow tail longer than its head to base of tail length.

In the Words of Jonathan Whitcomb, executive director of Animal Discovery

I soon received two more emails from this eyewitness in Nevada and was struck by the similar accounts from people in Draper, Utah. There a teenager heard a cat screech in the neighbor’s back yard but the screech was suddenly cut off, as if a predator had quickly killed the cat.

I also remembered another person that I had spoken with (face-to-face) in Draper: a man who used to have chickens next to his house. He lives just two doors away from the backyard where a cat was heard to screech before it was cut off. Those chickens in central Utah were also killed and in the same way: not eaten or carried away but squished as if something or someone heavy had stepped on them.

If all that were not enough, the ropen seen in Draper (in 2018) was nearly 30 feet in wingspan, and the one seen by the man at night in Nevada on October 2, 2021—that ropen had a wingspan of 30 feet, which estimate was made by taking the width of the garage roof (26 feet) and adding two feet for each side of that roof, where the wings went further than the ends of the roof. It seems reasonable to me that this ropen grew at least a little during those three years in which it traveled from central Utah to Nevada.

The Draper Ropen may be related to the American Hammerhead ropen that was seen in eastern Cuba in the mid-20th century; perhaps it is the same species. This flying creature may live in many areas of North America.

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Draper ropen in Nevada and Utah

How do I know that a ropen with a thirty-foot wingspan, now hunting house cats and killing chickens in Nevada, is the same animal seen in Draper, Utah, a few years ago? The one in Utah was about that size, or a bit smaller, and was there hunting house cats and killing chickens.

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Apparent ropen seen in Grantsville, Utah

Three boys were playing at night on a playground in the farming community of Grantsville, Utah, around the fall of 2001, when they were shocked at the appearance of a large glowing creature that flew overhead.

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Resources on Modern Pterosaurs

The following are blogs devoted primarily to the subject of extant (still living) pterosaurs, commonly called by non-scientists “pterodactyls,” and a few examples of posts published on those blogs.

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American Hammerhead Ropen

Jonathan Whitcomb, author of nonfiction cryptozoology books, has suggested that flying creatures reported in Raleigh, North Carolina, over several years, may be related to what Americans in other states have reported to him over the past fourteen years.

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Ropen Sightings

“Hi, Jonathan [Whitcomb]. Thank you so much for writing back to me … I do appreciate it. I live in a small town in northeast Georgia, called Winder . . .”

This eyewitness described to Whitcomb the large “pterodactyl” she observed fly in front of her car one morning in a rural area of Georgia.

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Pterodactyl sightings

Two video trailers feature overviews of “Pterodactyl Caught on Camera – Part 2” and “Giant Pterodactyl in California” two out of over 100 videos on modern pterosaurs on this Youtube channel “Protect Animal Life”.

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Ropen in Utah

Over the past 18 years, I’ve seen a number of questions related to the possibility that people who report seeing living pterosaurs have actually seen that kind of flying creature.

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Searching for ropens

The largest nonfiction book on pterodactyl sightings world wide, Searching for Ropens and Finding God is the #1 reference book on these shocking flying creatures and contains fascinating eyewitness accounts and adventures.

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Report a pterodactyl encounter or sighting

contact form to get into email communication

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Giant bat-like flying creature

To me, more weird than unidentified bat-like creatures in the United States is the idea that “the evolution of feathers could have taken place in a species that was the ancestor of pterosaurs and dinosaurs.” I don’t believe that . . .

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By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

I’m writing a nonfiction book for children, which should be in print in November of 2018: The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. [Addendum: This cryptozoology book was published on Nov 8th] It covers far more than just the true story of Patty Carson. It compares her sighting to the one by the US Marine Eskin Kuhn, who encountered two “pterodactyls” at that same area in Cuba but six years later.

Two Important Sightings at Guantanamo Bay

One critic might dismiss the report by Patty Carson, saying it was just the imagination of a small girl. But why would that US Marine see two flying creatures that were so similar to the one seen by that child? Keep in mind that both reports come from Guantanamo Bay, and the sightings were only six years apart.

A critic might dismiss the sketch by Patty Carson, saying it was drawn decades after the event. But look at the sketch by Eskin Kuhn: It was drawn within minutes of his sighting of two large pterosaurs that he originally called “pterodactyls.” Compare those two drawing and notice important similarities:

Drawn by Eskin Kuhn (left) and by Patty Carson (right)

A critic might dismiss Kuhn’s sighting as just a misidentification of two birds flying together. But be aware that Patty saw many small teeth in the beak of the flying creature she saw. Birds do not have teeth.

A critic might dismiss the US Marines sighting, for those two things were flying by him, leaving him limited opportunity to look closely. But Patty Carson was staring at that flying creature for some time, as it stood there for some time. She had ample opportunity to examine details in its appearance.

Why did Kuhn not report seeing any teeth in the two “pterodactyls” he saw? They were flying with their mouths shut. Why did Carson not report any hair on the tail flange of the flying creature she saw? Kuhn noticed that hair. The girl probably paid less attention to the end of the tail, or perhaps the tail was moving a bit too much to notice that detail. She did see the tail clearly enough to see that the tail end had a flange that she described as “diamond” shaped.

Why do not more people report seeing these living pterosaurs, if they exist? I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have received hundreds of eyewitness reports, over the past 15 years, reports from five continents. From examining those accounts and comparing them to each other, I have concluded the following: The total number of persons now living, worldwide, who have had some kind of encounter with a living pterosaur—those persons number at least in the range of between 7 million and 128 million, although we need to keep in mind that this estimate includes encounters that were brief and many were at night, when few, if any, details could have been seen.

Check out the book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur, available soon on Amazon and other online retail book sellers. Give a copy as a gift to a child.

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The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur

What a wonderful world we live in, a world filled with an astonishing variety of life! If all those varied forms known to Western science are not enough, we now have worldwide confirmations, from many eyewitnesses, that a long-tailed pterosaur species is still living among us . . .

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Pterodactyl Sighting

How big are modern pterosaurs? Choose almost any wingspan; we’ve got it. Here are the eyewitness estimates for wingspan, in feet, from smallest to largest . . .

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I saw a Flying Dinosaur

Although it’s more common, in the United States, for an eyewitness of an apparent living pterosaur to use the word pterodactyl, I sometimes come across the phrase “flying dinosaur.”

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The girl who saw a modern pterosaur

[what a girl saw in Texas] . . .  I was about 11-12 yrs old I went outside around late morning . . . In the open backyard next door was what looked like a 9 or 10 ft tall man . . . then the man turned and I realized that this man didn’t have a face like a man . . .

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“Dinosaur birds” are still flying

We have been taught that giant flying creatures soared overhead long ago. We could call them “dinosaur birds,” but that would be technically incorrect: They were pterosaurs . . .

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The true story of Patty Carson and others

Patty Carson, of Southern California, said, “It did have a tail and it had a diamond shaped tip . . . The skin was a leathery, brownish reddish color. It had little teeth, a LOT of them.

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They are not extinct – “dinosaur birds”

Who could organize any expedition to search for living pterosaurs? Only an official discovery could awaken Western scientists so they could search for extant pterosaurs, but discovery normally comes after searching, not before. Looking back at this problem, from the time of Darwin until 1990 it appears to have been an almost hopeless atmosphere for a discovery. But a solution eventually appeared . . . from an unexpected source.

Por Jonathan Whitcomb, un experto en pterosaurios vivos

Gracias a Gladys Whitcomb por verificar la traducción

Introducción

¿Alguna vez viste un pterosaurio? Muchas personas han visto estas criaturas voladoras. Sobre todo vuelan de noche, y viven en muchos lugares del mundo. Algunos de esos lugares están en los siguientes países:

• Canadá
• Los Estados Unidos
• Méjico
• Cuba

Dos estadounidenses han visto un pterosaurio vivo en Cuba: Patty Carson y Eskin Kuhn.

Los niños vieron un animal extraño en 1965

Unos pocos niños vieron un pterosaurio vivo en la Bahía de Guantánamo, Cuba. La cabeza del “dinosaurio” surgió de la hierba alta. El animal miró a su alrededor y se fue volando. Patty Carson, en 1965, fue una de los niños que vieron volar al pterosaurio.

Aquí está parte de lo que ella informó muchos años después:

Estábamos caminando cerca de los astilleros, yendo a casa. Vivíamos al final de la calle, en la última casa, junto a la torre de radio. stábamos caminando . . . donde era arenoso . . . [había] vegetación de matorral escasa alrededor de cuatro pies de altura.

De repente se sentó, como si hubiera estado comiendo algo o descansando. [Su cabeza podría ser vista.] Era . . . a unos nueve metros de distancia. Todos nosotros [niños] no nos movimos durante unos cinco segundos, luego el animal se inclinó hacia la izquierda y se fue volando, con mucha prisa.

Tenía una cola y tenía un extremo en forma de diamante [de la cola]. La piel era coriácea, un color rojo marrón. Tenía dientes pequeños, MUCHOS de ellos.

Nos fuimos a casa y estaba emocionado de decirle a mi familia que había visto un dinosaurio. [No me creyeron] y comenzaron a decirme que era un pelícano o ave Fragata. [Pero estaba pensando] ¡NINGUNA MANERA! Era tan alto como un hombre cuando estaba parado. . . . Sabía que era un pterodáctilo.

En los últimos años, Patty dibujó un boceto del pterodáctilo:

El pterosaurio Patty Carson vio cuando era niña

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Un soldado vio dos pterodáctilos en 1971

Eskin Kuhn era un infante de marina de los Estados Unidos en la Bahía de Guantánamo, Cuba, cuando vio dos pterosaurios a plena luz del día. Unos minutos después de su avistamiento, dibujó un boceto de las dos criaturas voladoras.

Dos pterodáctilos en Cuba

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Comunicarse con Whitcomb

Gracias por su atención.

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Eyewitnesses of Living Pterosaurs

Evelyn Cheesman (1882-1969), as an educated British biologist, explored on islands in the southwest Pacific early in the 20th century. Thanks to the British cryptozoology researcher Richard Muirhead, we know about how some of Cheesman’s observations relate to reports of possible living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea.

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Pterosaur sighting in California

[In 2007]  the young cryptozoologist Scott T. Norman had a sighting of an apparent Pteranodon in Central California. . . . At least 8-10 feet in wingspan.

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Ark of the Bible and modern pterosaurs

Late on the night of January 16, 2018, (9:00-11:45 p.m. Pacific time) I, Jonathan Whitcomb, was interviewed by Dave Scott on Spaced Out Radio (online radio broadcasting from British Columbia, Canada).

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Pterodactyls in North Carolina (pterodáctilo)

This answers some of what is found in two newspaper articles published online, both of which reported, in mid-January of 2018, sightings of apparent living pterosaurs . . .

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Whitcomb y pterosaurios

En las palabras de Jonathan Whitcomb: . . . En 2004, viajé de los Estados Unidos a Papúa Nueva Guinea. Encontré a un intérprete en la ciudad de Lae. Mí y mi intérprete viajó, por buque, a la Isla de Umboi. . . .

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Photographie d’un ptérosaure moderne

Deux photos sont similaires. Un seul est une blague.