image_pdfimage_print

Critics of Living Pterosaurs Investigations

silhouette page of 34 images of bats, birds, and pterosaurs, used by Guessman and Woetzel on their 2004 expedition on Umboi Island

By the modern-pterosaur cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb

Earlier in July of 2018, I noticed a long critical comment on the Youtube video “Ropen pterodactyl American eyewitness.” Before I reply to parts of that comment, let me make clear the following: I have no desire to imply any dishonesty or evil intention on his part, and he does not appear to have any such opinion of me. He included the following, near the end:

“Mr Whitcomb if you are reading this, this is not a hate comment on you. You may be a very good person and everyone is aloud [sic] to believe whatever they want, but because you have some very heavy bias and very questionable evidence to back up your claims on the existence of this creature. . .”

Here are three things related to the skeptic’s overall comment, which is too long to quote completely here:

  1. It had many errors, some obvious but others that could lead some readers away from the truth
  2. It was much too long to adequately address well on that Youtube page
  3. It was so likely to mislead people, in so many ways, that I deleted it from that Youtube page

I also felt, however, that those visiting this Youtube page should know what criticisms have been made against living-pterosaur investigations, so I added two comments related to what was deleted (not quoted here).

Problem #1 with the criticism

“The critic said, “. . .  bioluminecents [sic] has never been seen in anything other than marine animals.”

This may be the most obvious error. Many marine organisms are bioluminescent, of course, yet we have the firefly and the glow worm, which also have bioluminescence but are obviously not living in any ocean. The Youtube video does not cover any concepts about bioluminescence in modern pterosaurs, so perhaps this critic has read something else or saw something about it in one of the comments.

This careless statement about bioluminescence might suggests the critic may be careless or less informed in other ways, so let’s look into other declarations he has made, yet we should keep an open mind about his other words.

Problem #2 with the criticism

At the beginning, he made another statement related to bioluminescence: “glow in the dark pterosaur.” I’ll take that to mean he has seen something other than this Youtube video, perhaps one of my online writings or something by a critic of my work or of that of one of my associates. Unfortunately, he gives no details. Let’s look at the second problem:

“. . . all the eyewitnesses describe outdated and inaccurate reconstructions of pterosaurs.”

This appears to me to be a greatly flawed statement, with not even one eyewitness description given. Notice the following that he does mention:

  1. skinny and leathery
  2. pointed wing tips
  3. walk on two legs

I have examined hundreds of eyewitness reports over the past fifteen years, interviewing eyewitnesses from around the world and receiving first-hand accounts from five continents. Perhaps few persons, if any, have been given more first-hand reports of sightings of apparent pterosaurs than I have. I believe I’ve written more books on this subject than any other nonfiction author in history. I daresay no other scientist has written more scientific papers about this than I have, especially if you count the comments that I have made about others’ papers on this. The point is this: Of those hundreds of eyewitness reports, I doubt that even one of them has all three of the points made by this critic. Perhaps there may be one that has (my memory is not perfect), but where did the critic get those ideas? Did they just pop into his imagination or did he read some criticism that another person published online?

Some eyewitnesses describe a flying creature with a word or two that relates to “skinny,” but why should any modern pterosaur be fat? The critic gives no details on why he believes as he does.

Many sighting reports include the word “leathery” (or “leather”), although it’s probably well below 50% of the overall reports. What’s wrong with that word? I suspect the critic has been overly influenced by one or more other critics who have grossly misunderstood the implications of the word. I see not the slightest reason why eyewitnesses should not use the word “leathery” when they have seen an actual modern pterosaur.

Since the critic gives no details about why he makes such broad statements about eyewitness reports, I dismiss this part of his statement and move on.

Problem #3 with the criticism

” . . . the long tail of Rhamphorhynchus, and one eyewitness described it to be Sordes, and all of these pterosaurs were very famous.”

I’ll stick to the subject of modern sightings of flying creatures that may relate, in some way, to fossils of the Sordes pilosus, for that is a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur. Where in the world does this critic get the idea that this kind of pterosaur has been “very famous?” Mention “Sordes” to fifty persons you meet walking the streets of any town or city in the United States, and you’ll likely find that not even one of them knows that it refers to any flying creature, let alone to a pterosaur. Let’s look deeper.

To the best of my knowledge, the best-known reports of a possible living pterosaur that related to the shape of a Sordes are of the sightings by Jonah Jim and Jonathan Ragu, both of whom are natives of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea. Those two sightings were at different times and different places on that tropical island. From my experience interviewing natives of Umboi, neither of those two natives likely had any knowledge of the Sordes before they were shown dozens of silhouette images of birds, bats, and pterosaurs, in the year 2004. That was a few weeks after my expedition there, when two other Americans interviewed native eyewitnesses. Both natives independently chose the Sordes pilosus silhouette as being most like the shape of the “ropen” that they observed.

In other words, I see no truth to the statement that the Sordes pilosus has ever been “famous.”

Problem #4 with the criticism

“One of the biggest problems is the long tail in the ropen. It would create a lot of drag while it is flying and waste a ton of energy.”

I’ve noticed many serious faults with the critical comment that was posted on the Youtube page. Since the above portion includes “one of the biggest problems,” I tackle it. “Waste a ton of energy” does not appear to be a scientific statement. How would such drag take place? How would this critic explain the many fossils that have been discovered of pterosaurs with long tails? The critic gives no details.

I suggest he try to be open minded and look at what eyewitness actually say and what scientists actually say, about these wonderful flying creatures.

###

.

Non-extinct pterosaurs

The following two eyewitness reports may have limited relevance to strange missing-persons cases in North America, yet the potential danger of attacks from related flying creatures makes them worthy of note.

.

Glowing pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea

A physicist, who examined video footage of two strange lights that explorers think are bioluminescent pterosaurs, declares that the glow is not from meteors, lanterns, campfires or an airplane.

.

Critics of living pterosaurs

“A short account of a particular incident”—that is one definition of “anecdote.” But the connotation includes more than “short,” for “anecdote” is the word more appropriate when an event is witnessed by only one or a few and the report is second hand at best. Regarding eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs, I have found that “anecdote” has been eliminated as a valid word for some of the reports.

.

Extinction Prevention

Today, one in eight of the world’s 10,000 bird species are threatened with extinction, of which more than 200 are categorised as Critically Endangered

.

Science and modern pterosaurs

A number of scientists have tried to know and understand Marfa Lights: observing, testing photographing, and theorizing. Interesting ideas have emerged; none but one, however, seems to come close to adequately explaining the apparent intellegence associated with those flying lights, the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas: a modern pterosaur.

.

Modern pterosaurs and Jonathan Whitcomb

Why would a young man in Sudan, Africa, who had recently gained his first access to a computer, send an email to the American Jonathan Whitcomb? . . .

.

Marfa Lights and flying creatures

The more I examine evidences gathered by a scientist, the more obvious it becomes to me: Many of the mysterious lights around Marfa, Texas, are the bioluminescent glow of flying predators, perhaps related to the nocturnal ropen of Papua New Guinea.

Glen Kuban’s “Living Pterosaurs”

nonfiction book about a photo of a 19th century pterosaur

By the modern-pterosaur expert Jonathan D. Whitcomb (published May 20, 2017)

We agree to disagree

Glen Kuban (GK) and I have a few things in common. We’ve both been writing about reports of apparent extant pterosaurs (or those who believe in them) for a long time, and we’ve written a lot. I started late in 2003; and GK, in 2004. We differ, however, in how we interpret those reports.

We acknowledge each other’s writings, having greatly disagreed on many points. We sometimes communicate, always in friendly terms, but our basic perspectives do not seem to change much over many years: He believes that no species of pterosaur has survived into the past few centuries; I believe that a number of species live today.

Nevertheless, we seem to agree to disagree without making any accusations of dishonesty and without any name calling. That’s a lot better than writings on other online publications, with other controversial subjects.

Even when we agree on something, we may choose to color the point of agreement differently. For example, we both see the 1856 Illustrated London News story as a hoax, yet I take it in a broader perspective. I see that fake newspaper article in the context of 19th century stories published in the USA, articles that may be more truthful, even as they report what appears to be the same thing: apparent “pterodactyls” that still fly.

.

Central California, newspaper article about two dragons in 1891

An 1891 newspaper article about two “pterodactyls” or “dragons” in Central California

.

Kuban’s “Living Pterosaurs” article (GKLP): criticisms against LP investigations

No web page ever published online, on the subject of reports of possible extant pterosaurs, is likely to be nearly as long as Glen Kuban’s Living Pterosaurs (“pterodactyls”). As best as I can tell, the version published on May 18, 2017, has over 27,000 words [but see the update at the bottom of the post you are now reading]. That’s longer than my latest printed book: Modern Pterosaurs. As far as I know, when he notices an error of fact on GKLP (or when I point one out to him), he makes a correction, at least sometimes. But the main problem I see in his long article is not that kind of error. I see signs that point to both confirmation bias and belief perseverance, and that combination seems to me to cause a multitude of foundational mistakes in GKLP.

Belief perseverance

Let’s begin with some online writings of the cryptozoologist Dale Drinnon, who is mentioned 11 times in GKLP (May 18th version). A few years ago, I communicated with him regarding his interpretation of a sighting of a potential extant pterosaur in the Philippines: He thought it was an encounter with some kind of fish. He suggested the man in the Philippines had witnessed a stingray (or similar fish) jumping out of water rather than a pterosaur flying overhead.

I had written more than one blog post about that sighting, but one post was short. In that post, is said little except that the eyewitness went to some fishermen, who told them of their own experiences with that kind of flying creature. Because of that reference to fishermen, Dale Drinnon concluded that the original sighting was of a fish jumping out of water. In fact, Drinnon wrote about his interpretation of that sighting.

I communicated with that cryptozoologist, informing him that he had read only a partial account of the original report. A more complete account explained that the sighting was high above a city in the Philippines, not over any body of water. I assumed that this would solve the misunderstanding. How surprised I was when Drinnon still held onto his idea that it was a fish jumping out of water! Years later, I learned that this kind of reasoning error has a name: “belief perseverance.”

In other words, Mr. Drinnon read a partial account, assumed that it was a fish, then refused to change his mind, even after I had told him that the creature was flying over a city.

We need to acknowledge that a person who has once fallen into belief perseverance (or its cousin, confirmation bias) need not always fall into that faulty kind of reasoning. But when the same controversial subject comes up with someone who had once fallen into that kind of error, it can very well happen again. This seems to have happened with Mr. Drinnon.

Confirmation bias

To begin, I used to work with 2D animation, part time, in my own business in Southern California, although I used animation only on occasion and as more like a tool for other projects rather than as a general animation business. The point is this: I had experience with digital image manipulation software, including Photoshop.

Glen Kuban has mentioned Dale Drinnon 11 times in GKLP, in ways suggesting he is a trusted authority. GK has not, apparently, noticed any problem that DD has had with belief perseverance. I do not say or imply that the flying ray-fish conjecture never has any merit, but I do say that DD has fallen into faulty reasoning on at least one occasion with that idea. Since GK appears to support ideas by that cryptozoologist, I’ll mention another problem.

.

A real animal in a 19th century photograph

The old photograph that is now called “Ptp” – supported by two scientists as genuine

.

For several months, the physicist Clifford Paiva and I have examined the photo Ptp in detail, finding significant points of evidence that it is from before about the year 1870 and that the apparent animal shown in the image was a real animal. In addition, we have found weaknesses in criticisms that have been leveled against the photograph.

Drinnon has mentioned two points in the Ptp photograph that he has assumed are evidences of a Photoshop hoax. From the experiences I have had with Photoshop, and with other digital image manipulation software, I found those two points not only weak but completely wrong. Neither of them have any relationship to Photoshop manipulation.

Yet I needed to carefully examine those places in the photo, to see if Drinnon’s ideas had merit. I found that they completely failed. (One point was missing fingertips with a hand of the soldier on our far left; the other, an apparent “halo” above the head of another soldier.) He also made two other statements, other details that he assumed were evidences of a hoax. I found one of them questionable and the other one totally incorrect.

I then wondered how Drinnon had come to so many blunders in what he had assumed were evidences that Ptp was a hoax photo. The best explanation seems to be this: He fell into a confirmation bias.

Something caused him to assume Ptp was not a valid photograph of a modern pterosaur. He found several details, most of them in the soldiers rather than in the animal, and assumed they were evidence for what he already believed: that the photograph was a hoax. He then concluded that his evidence was valid and published his ideas online. Those points alone suggest he fell into a confirmation bias. Combine that with his previous problem with a belief perseverance and it seems even more likely that this was what happened.

Belief perseverance and confirmation bias with Glen Kuban

I believe that GK has fallen into similar errors in his “Living Pterosaurs” article, but I’ll not examine those possibilities in detail here except for one problem: He seems to assume that a significant number of the reported sightings could be misidentifications of common birds. That assumption seems to have caused him to see only a narrow range of interpretations for descriptions given in sighting reports of apparent pterosaurs.

.

Glen Kuban site has these two images

From “Living Pterosaurs” (online article by Glen Kuban)

The above images were taken directly from GKLP, without any change of perspective or spacing. Notice the problem with the Blue Heron conjecture: The sketch by Eskin Kuhn differs a great deal from the appearance of that bird. Notice the clear lack of feather in the lower image (EK sketch). Now see how the legs are built into the wings in that sketch.

I suggest that an objective observer would notice the great differences between the above two images and reject the Blue Heron conjecture in that case and be suspicious of its use for other sightings, unless a particular sighting seems relevant to the Blue Heron idea.

In addition, some of the eyewitnesses of apparent pterosaurs in the United States report that the flange at the end of the tail could not have been feet because the legs of the animal were clearly seen to be separate structures from the tail.

Conclusion

Protecting standard models that originated in the 19th century—that is no guarantee that the one trying to protect those ideas will not fall into confirmation bias or belief perseverance. How greatly we need careful objective evaluations of conflicting ideas, in particular regarding the possibility that at least some of the reported sightings of apparent living pterosaurs have come from actual encounters with that kind of flying creature!

Update: March 22, 2018, by Jonathan Whitcomb

Glen Kuban continues to expand his enormous web page “Living Pterosaurs (‘pterodactyls’)?” (GKLP) and, as far as I can see without devoting hours to researching all of it, probably continues to search for any reason that somebody may doubt that any species of pterosaur escaped extinction.

I now refer to a word count of GKLP, using the online tool found at Word Counter:

>>> Total words of “Living Pterosaurs” — 39,281

Some of the most common words under “Non-Common Keywords” are the following:

>>> whitcomb — 413 (number one)

>>> photo — 235 (number two)

>>> pterosaurs — 234 (number three)

>>> pterosaur — 233 (number four)

I point out the above to justify why I sometimes respond to Kuban’s online publication, for he mentions my name hundreds of times. Let’s take the above in context: The original version of the post you are now reading (published May 20, 2017), my own post, has the following, when submitted to Word Counter:

>>> Total words for the original post you are reading — 2023

Some of the most common words under “Non-Common Keywords” in this (Whitcomb’s response):

~~~ pterosaurs — 19 (number one)

~~~ sighting — 14 (number two)

etc.

Criticism or Lack Thereof

I don’t suggest any dramatic judgment in the above comparisons, with any criticism of the quality of GKLP or any promotion of the quality of my post here; draw whatever conclusions you will. But I do emphasize the enormous size of Kuban’s page. It has nineteen times the word count of the original post I wrote above, according to Word Counter, and if I am only partially correct in my evaluation of his lack of objectiveness then many of his readers can be greatly led away from the truth regarding eyewitness sighting reports of living pterosaurs.

Paleontology or Cryptozoology?

By writing what appears to be the longest online publication, in the world of the internet, on the subject of living pterosaurs, Kuban has inadvertently wandered, in my opinion, into the realm of cryptozoology. As far as I can tell he is really either a paleontologist or an amateur in the field of paleontology, not a cryptozoologist.

What is one of the primary tools used in cryptozoology? Interviewing an eyewitness. Mr. Kuban, on the other hand, has made it clear that he does not use that tool and appears to have no desire to ever use it. In the latest version of GKLP he states, “many alleged eyewitnesses are probably sincere, so there would probably be little to gain from seeking contact with them.”

I don’t recall anywhere in his “Living Pterosaurs” publication where he states that he is a scientist; In my own publications, I sometimes mention that I am a scientist. Yet what is the origin of modern Western science? Was it not in the search for explanations for human experience? If only people would remember that!

Real science should include trying to come to objective and realistic explanations for what people experience. Don’t try to explain away what people see, to protect old assumptions: Allow new discoveries to be made.

###

Copyright 2017, 2018 Jonathan David Whitcomb

.

Potential Bias and Objectiveness

“To pretend that a real scientist will speak only words of objective truth, with no hint of personal philosophy, is like swimming through images of a 1950’s science fiction movie. Every adult who is not mentally disabled promotes some point of a personal philosophy, almost with every word spoken or written.” [quotation from the fourth edition of the cryptozoology book Searching for Ropens and Finding God]

.

Photographie d’un ptérosaure moderne

Avant environ l’année 1870, l’enregistrement d’une photo a pris beaucoup de secondes. Les gens devaient rester immobiles pendant plusieurs secondes. Les accessoires ont été utilisés pour aider les gens à ne pas bouger. Ce type de prop est vu dans Ptp. Il fait partie d’une branche d’un arbre.

.

The Pteranodon Photo and Religion

Religion is related to the “Pteranodon” photograph that is now called “Ptp,” but those skeptical comments from critics who assume extreme bias in all Christian supporters of living-pterosaur investigations—those critical comments are incorrect. Paiva and I have looked carefully at this photo, with an open mind about various possibilities of hoaxing. Ptp has survived the close scrutiny extremely well.

.

Comparison of two photographs

That’s a hoax-photo, made to promote the Freakylinks TV series that aired on the Fox Network from 2000-2001. The photo on the left, however, is older, apparently seen by many readers of a book in the mid-20th century. With that knowledge, it’s easy to see that the Freakylinks hoax was made to imitate the older photograph.

.

Advertisement:

.

nonfiction book about a photo of a 19th century pterosaur

The nonfiction cryptozoology book Modern Pterosaurs—the shocking truth about extant “pterodactyls”

.

Carbon Radiometric Dating and Neutron Capture Speculation

Tyrannosaurus Rex kind of dinosaur

By the nonfiction author Jonathan Whitcomb

UPDATE: To demonstrate internet security and support all worthy online sites, “https” has been added to the URL’s of the links of this post “Carbon Radiometric Dating and Neutron Capture Speculation.” Actually those sites were always safe, but this action demonstrates that they are certified secure.

Before getting into details about potential neutron capture and how it relates to radiometric dating of dinosaur bones, consider this introduction. According to the Paleo-Group web site (“Carbon Dating of Fossils“):

Almost all paleontologists never date dinosaur bones, because they have assumed for some time that the bones have to be millions of years old. True science is all about measurement and verification of the assumptions underlying each old theory in order to improve or replace outdated ideas.

Scientific methods and instrumentation have greatly improved since the earlier days of dinosaur dating, and those old assumptions are now being tested.

Indeed, many dinosaur fossils have been carbon-dated in recent years, with surprising results. Let us approach this with courage, accepting whatever results the scientific testing gives us. If there has been a problem with the testing methods, then we can improve them and test more dinosaur bones with improved methods.

Speculation: Neutrons Being Captured

On the site British Centre for Science Education, a comment from Steve660 included, “Fossil bones are often enriched in uranium . . .  although this would not explain why the pMC values are similar across all the constituents.” (He was referring to the possibility that neutron-capturing may have been at least part of the cause for surprisingly young carbon-14 dates for dinosaur remains.) Steve660 may have failed to dig deeply enough, doing insufficient research. The problems with that conjecture are much more serious than he seems to realize.

The KGOV site “Carbon 14 and Dinosaur Bones” goes into detail on the problems with neutron-capture speculation:

  1. A lot of nearby radioactivity is needed to produce even a small amount of carbon-14 in the ground, meaning through neutron capture, but C14 is found in specimens from around the world
  2. Radioactivity in the ground is relatively scarce, absent in most areas
  3. Data from dinosaur bones was presented at the 2012 AGU conference: Less than 20 parts per million of uranium and thorium were in the materials that had a lot of modern carbon . . .
  4. Carbon actually does poorly in capturing neutrons, with much heavier elements doing much better
  5. “Nitrogen creates carbon-14 from neutrons 110,000 times more easily than does carbon,” which makes the neutron-capture conjecture highly unlikely, considering what is known from the data
  6. Because of relative scarcity of radioactive substances in the earth’s crust, diamonds (which have been shown to have significant C14) destroy the neutron-capture speculation

Radioactive Carbon in Dinosaur Bones

Fossils of dinosaurs have significant amounts of C14. According to popular ideas about the “age of dinosaurs,” those bones should have no radioactive carbon at all. The result: Laboratories in the United States no longer date dinosaur bones. It makes the old ideas about “millions of years” look ridiculous, so those scientists refuse to carbon-date them.

.

Tyrannosaurus Rex kind of dinosaur

Photo by Michael Bentley

###

.

Neutron Capture in Carbon-Dated Dinosaur Bones

Some scientists are feeling awkward trying to get their hands around a T-Rex type dinosaur that appears much younger than it “should be.” The Allosaurus remains in question were excavated in 1989 in Colorado.

Carbon radiometric dating of dinosaur bones

Carbon-14 dating of dinosaur fossils in a number of areas of North America—that confirms the recent ages of those dinosaurs, for the C14 methods used by the laboratories and the researchers involved had guarded against contamination, making the evidence valid.

Dinosaur Fossils Being Radiocarbon Dated

Both the carbon-14 dating results and the discovery of soft tissue in incompletely fossilized dinosaur bones share the common theme of being indicators of much younger ages for dinosaurs than evolution claims.

Dinosaurs Carbon-Dated to < 40,000 Years BP

For generations, Americans and peoples of other Western countries have been indoctrinated . . . with continuous proclamations about all of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs becoming extinct many millions of years ago. . . . So why do we always seem to find that isotope of carbon [radioactive C14] when we do that testing on dinosaur bones? [Those animals lived much more recently than most scientists had assumed.]

.