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Pterosaur Head

Regarding potential misidentifications of birds or bats for a pterosaur, how often we have considered long tails! Now let’s look at the other end. When an eyewitness tells me the flying creature had a “horn” or “bone” or “crown” on its head, I consider it a possible pterosaur-head-crest, but a one-word description, at least early in the interview, has limited evidential value. When the eyewitness mentions looking at a book and identifying the creature with an image of a “pterodactyl,” I consider that as a minor contribution but with limited value in itself. But when specially constructed multiple images are compared and the eyewitness chooses one from among several similar images, misunderstanding becomes less likely. Consider images evaluated by the World War II veteran Duane Hodgkinson.

crude head sketches evaluated by Hodgkinson

The entire survey was completed by Duane Hodgkinson in 2004. This page was to help in evaluating the length of the head appendage of the “Finschhafen Pterodactyl” that the two America soldiers witnessed in a jungle clearing in 1944. D.H. chose the longest length of head appendage on this page. In his verbal description, recorded in the scientific paper “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific” (by Jonathan D. Whitcomb, Creation Research Society Quarterly, Volume 45, Winter 2009), the length of the head was estimated to be 3-4 feet, and the length of the head crest was about half of that or about 1.5-2.0 feet. Whatever the nature of that structure on the back of the creature’s head, it was no trivial bump.

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second head crest page in survey

As best as I now recall (I created the survey in 2004), this next page was to confirm the general length estimate for the head crest. The different curve in that structure was to throw off the interviewee’s attention, if possible, from the exact nature of what was being evaluated for this page. Hodgkinson again showed that the head crest was long in comparison with the beak.

 

Note that these sketches are crude and none were drawn by the eyewitness. It was simply a means to get to a general sense of the relative length of the head crest. As an unexpected bonus, we got Hodgkinson’s notes about the positioning of the head and crest during the creature’s flight: more streamlined with the neck, or parallel to it.

Flying Fox Fruit Bat

Even recent criciticms (for example, by the paleontologist Darren Naish) of living-pterosaur research sometimes includes the insinuation of misidentification regarding bats, especially the fruit bat called “flying fox.” A typical sighting of a large long-tailed pterosaur, however, differs greatly from a sighting of a Flying Fox fruit bat. For one thing, at least some critics fail to realize how many sightings of apparent pterosaurs are in locations where this Megabat does not live.

Georgia Pterosaur (from the cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America)

The lady . . . had been trying to find someone who might help her verify the existence of the strange animals that she had seen twice in the past few weeks. . . . Her first sighting was at 7 a.m., the second, 9 a.m., with both mornings overcast. . . .

Fifteen miles of her commute is on a two-lane 55-mph road through woods alternating with pastures . . . on August 27, 2008. She had woken up early and could not get back to sleep, so she left her house at 6:45 a.m., with the sky still overcast from the last remnants of [a] storm. . . . She had driven less than ten miles, just leaving an area of pasture, entering an area of thick woods . . . when an animal suddenly flew from the right, just over the front of her car. Although alone, she yelled, “What the — what — what is that?” She was stunned.

. . . It was the tail; she looked up at a “very long” tail that had a strange shape at the end. . . . a thick almost-heart-shape at the end of the tail . . . “Dive-bombing my car,” is how she described the flight path, as it crossed the highway in front of and slightly above her. “Curved, like a hammer,” is how she described the head, which had a crest that she thought was “solid, not feathery at all.” . . . a smoothly curved head crest.

Obviously what the lady saw near Winder, Georgia, in the summer of 2008, was no Flying Fox fruit bat, even if that species of Megabat lived in Georgia, which it does not. So what about sightings in Papua New Guinea, where those bats live in great numbers?

Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen

The cryptid seen in New Guinea, by Duane Hodgkinson in 1944 and by Brian Hennessy in 1971, I have named “Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen.” Similarities between the descriptions given to me by these two eyewitnesses struck me as too much for coincidence. . . .

. . . these different lengths of head crest I believe fall within the range of eyewitness error. In other words, the creatures observed by these two men could very well have had the same length of head crest (relative to the size of the head) . . .  it seems likely that the species is the same for the 1944 and 1971 sightings.

Both Duane Hodgkinson and Brian Hennessy were struck by the long pterosaur tail . . .  in a manner of speaking, and Hodgkinson was close enough to make an estimate of tail-length: “at least ten or fifteen feet.” It was obviously not any Flying Fox fruit bat.

Eskin Kuhn Pterosaur Sighting

Her sighting [Patty Carson] confirms the credibility of the eyewitness Eskin Kuhn, who long ago reported his 1971 encounter. But Patty saw a similar creature in 1965 . . .

Kuhn sketched what he had seen, soon after his sighting (obviously no fruit bat):

sketch of the two pterosaurs observed by Eskin Kuhn in Cuba

Frigate Birds and Misidentification

Last August, I wrote the post “Frigate Birds are not Pterosaurs.” It briefly explained why some commenters were mistaken about a Youtube video of a Frigate bird. The subject, the possibility that eyewitnesses have actually seen those sea birds instead of pterosaurs, deserves more attention.

On The Bible and Modern Pterosaurs, the February 23, 2011, post gives more details about the Frigate bird, in particular on how the misidentification possibility relates to the 1944 sighting by Duane Hodgkinson. That American saw a giant featherless flying creature that could not have been a Frigate bird.

Two army buddies were standing at one side of a jungle clearing (1944, west of Finschhafen, New Guinea); a large creature flew up from the ground of the other side of that clearing. The soldiers had a perfectly clear view of the “pterodactyl,” as it ran to their left and took off into the air. Hodgkinson still remembers how the vegetation swayed from the wing flapping. How critical is the size of that clearing! At about one hundred feet in diameter, that field was small enough to prevent any major distortion in estimating the size of the flying creature. An estimate of twenty-seven feet for the wingspan makes it impossible for it to have been a Frigate bird in masquerade.

The Frigate Bird and Pterosaur Sightings in Papua New Guinea

Duane Hodgkinson’s 1944 sighting leads us into other sightings of apparent pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea. Could this World War II veteran’s encounter be an exception? Could the Frigate-bird-explanation answer most other sightings? Actually, no. One problem relates to pterosaur bioluminescence: Frigate birds do not glow at night. Another problem relates to grave robbery: Frigate birds do not rob human graves, carrying off the body of an adult human. And then there are the reports of live adult humans being carried away by giant flying creatures: not likely Frigate birds.

Frigate Birds and Living Pterosaurs in General

How are some critical sightings evidence of a live pterosaur, rather than a misidentified bird? Consider the 1971 Cuba sighting by Eskin Kuhn. Look at his sketch of the pterosaur with wings down, about to begin an upbeat-cycle of wing-flapping. Notice the legs, separate from the long tail. Also notice the large head crest at the back of the creature’s head. How obvious that this is not a sketch of a Frigate bird!

Consider the 2007 San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary pterosaur sighting of a long-tailed flying creature with no feathers and with a total length of about thirty feet. (The length-estimate was no wild guess, for the apparent-ropen flew just above the road; I later measured the width of that road, the approximate length of the ropen: thirty feet) In addition, the wrinkles on the underside of the wings indicated the giant flying creature had no feathers.

Consider also the worldwide sightings of glowing pterosaurs flying at night: those are not Frigate birds.