misidentification

March 18, 2011

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.

March 2, 2011June 1, 2011

Regarding the sightings by Hodgkinson and Hennessy, misidentification of a Frigate bird or a Flying Fox fruit bat seems practically impossible; those two flying creatures were anything but birds or bats. But critics have also used the word “misidentified” (or “misidentify”) for reports of living pterosaurs in the United States.

Before getting into details about that kind of supposed misidentification, what about Marfa Lights? The common rebuff, “car headlights,” comes from either ignorance of careful observations and scientific work on CE-III mystery lights around Marfa, Texas, or from just plain careless thinking. When that type of light flys around southwest Texas, and it is examined carefully (through photographs or video from cameras set up by the scientist James Bunnell), it is found to be very unlike any car headlights, even when the night-mirage phenomena is taken into account.

About Marfa Lights, I see two ways to relate the word “misidentification.” Many visitors at the Marfa Lights Viewing Park see car headlights and assume they see “Marfa Lights,” and critics of the idea that anything strange exists near Marfa, Texas, think that any reference to any strange light there must be misidentified car headlights. The critics are also guilty of misidentification.

Misidentification or Live Pterosaurs?

In that post, Hodgkinson and Hennessy make the case for a living pterosaur, with little, if any, chance for misidentification.

So what do critics mention about eyewitnesses? They mostly mention theoretical sightings or two or three that are more than a hundred years old. What a problem! Critics often ignore critical witnesses, those whose credibility has attracted cryptozoologists who interview them. So why do critics mostly ignore those important eyewitnesses? What other explanation but the obvious? They do not have any reasonable reply to the testimonies of Duane Hodgkinson and Brian Hennessy . . .

Pterosaurs Alive Today

Darren Naish has said that “sightings of pterosaur-like animals that have been reported appear to be a combination of hoaxes and misidentification of large birds and bats.” On that web page, however, he said nothing about Hodgkinson or Hennessy or any of the other eyewitnesses who have enlivened the living-pterosaur investigations since the 1990’s. His evaluation is nothing like a scientific examination; it is more like the simplistic verbage of common politics, with “a combination of” signaling to the more-wise reader that Naish has nothing particular to prove his point about the nonexistence of modern living pterosaurs.

The New Zealand Flying Slasher

Across the New Zealand, North Islands farmland and countryside, there have been for almost a century tales from farmers and hunters, of a horrid winged beast, with long sharp fangs lining its narrow, beak-like jaws. Its eyes gleam in the night, where it can be seen flying overhead, shillouted in the moon. Farmers despise it because it tears chunks from their cattle in the nightime. It is called The Flying Slasher.

One commenter remarked, “The ‘pterosaur’ of NZ is probably a megabats (like flying fox etc).” One of the problems with that conjecture is that the Flying Fox fruit bat eats fruit, not chunks of flesh from cattle.

Another commenter remarked, “I have a feeling it may be the hast eagle that was once thought to be extinct.” The problem with that conjecture is that the post refers to “a very dangerous flying reptile, with . . . abnormally long, razor-like teeth.” The Haast’s Eagle was a feathered bird, not a reptile, and it had no teeth. Whether extinct or not, the Haast’s Eagle really was an eagle, not a reptile with teeth.

From the Introduction in the cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America (second edition):

“Those who’ve been shocked at the sight of a flying creature that “should” be extinct—those eyewitnesses, more numerous than most Americans would guess, need no longer be afraid that everyone will think them crazy, and no longer need they feel alone. Those of us who’ve listened to the American eyewitnesses, we who have interviewed them, we now believe. So, if you will, consider the experiences of these ordinary persons (I’ve interviewed most of them myself) and accept whatever enlightenment you may.”

August 25, 2010March 2, 2011

Ropen Pterosaur Seen by Hodgkinson and Hennessy

The American Duane Hodgkinson and the Australian Brian Hennessy have something in common: They have seen, in daylight, in Papua New Guinea, a huge long-tailed featherless flying creature. In the blog Live Pterosaurs, “Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen,” we read:

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. . . .

As I mentioned in my scientific paper (in The Creation Research Society Quarterly, Volume 45, Number 3, “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific”), 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.

I have interviewed both of these eyewitnesses, finding both of them to be highly credible. Nothing in either the substance of their testimonies or in the way they communicated with me gave any hint of any hoax or any reasonable possibility of any misidentification error.

Pterosaurs are sometimes called “dinosaur birds,” even though they are neither dinosaurs nor birds.