By the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb

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Sighting #1 in Connecticut

I received the following email in late July of 2019:

. . . I live in Gales Ferry, CT. It’s in between Foxwoods Resort Casino and  Mohegan Sun Casino. In August 2013 at around 5:30 pm, I was working on the the front of my house
and I was on a ladder ready to step down. I got off the ladder and looked up towards the north and saw this Pterosaur flying from East to West. The two things that I noticed right away was the head. It looked exactly like the pictures that you would see as depicted. The second thing I noticed was the wings. There were no feathers, just a light brown “cape” like wing. It was above a smaller bird. I ran inside to get a camera, but it was gone. It was flying towards the Thames River. Some people didn’t believe me when I told them. I know what I saw.

By the way, this eyewitness referred to the Thames River in Connecticut, not the River Thames in England, although we do have sightings in England.

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Sighting #2 in Minnesota

I believe I saw a Pterosaur last year on July 16, 2018. I had just gotten done shopping at Walmart for some supplies in northwestern Minnesota and was on my way back home.  It was between 5 and 5:30 pm and as I got into my car I turned to drive north and I immediately looked up at this flying creature that looked and flew very odd . . .

I didn’t think to look for a tail or even notice one at the time but what I did notice was the way it flapped its wings. The wings seemed to roll or have a wave like form from the body outward to the wing tip. The wings would flap very slowly but the creature did not seem to have any trouble flying. The wings also were shimmering on the top of them reflecting the sunlight. I noticed no feathers at all on it but the rear of the wings were very smooth in a curved shape.

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Sighting #3 in Ohio

This was around the beginning of June, 2019:

. . . what I saw the other day was remarkable. My mother in law and I were at her land bird watching… we seen a HUGE shadow creep across the ground, we looked up and what we saw will forever be engraved in my brain. We both saw what looked like a dinosaur bird-like
prehistoric animal. There were absolutely no feathers . . .

It was the size of a small private jet. . . . it had enlarged bat like wings . . . I’m … curious of other sighting in or around Ohio. We live in a small town called Franklin . . .

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                               Youtube video “Living Pterosaurs – in newspapers”

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Living pterosaurs in newspapers

Two days ago I uploaded a video to Youtube: “Living Pterosaurs – in newspapers,” an introduction to some newspaper articles published over the years, one of them being back in the late 1800’s. Part of this mini-documentary explains part of why such news coverage is rare in the United States: Average readers assume that all “pterodactyls” became extinct long ago . . .

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Ropen of Papua New Guinea

Several Americans have investigated reports of what natives of Umboi Island call “ropen,” including three pioneers. Jim Blume, a missionary in Papua New Guinea for decades, interviewed dozens of native eyewitnesses of pterosaur-like creatures. Carl Baugh led the first three expeditions, pre-paring the way for the rest of us to follow. Paul Nation, in four expeditions, searched in two areas of PNG, contracting serious infections twice.

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Living pterosaurs in the United States

Not all human encounters with live pterosaurs are a pleasant surprise. On rare occasions, a ropen, or kor, or indava (or by whatever name) will attack somebody, and the results are sometimes tragic, at least for the human. Although reports of people being attacked by large flying creatures in the United States, in recent generations, are rare, attacks have been reported in other areas of the world and in earlier times.

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A ropen in North Carolina

I estimate that it was flying 250-300 feet above the ground level. If guessing, I would estimate the wing span to have been 15-20 feet.

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A living pterosaur in South Carolina

Learn much more about the South Carolina sighting. Read the non-fiction cryptozoology book by Jonathan Whitcomb: Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition).

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According to the cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb, of Murray, Utah, people keep reporting pterosaurs in California, not fossil discoveries but non-extinct “pterodactyls” flying overhead. Sometimes an eyewitness will even use the word ‘dragon’ in the sighting report.

The most recent sighting was on May 12, 2019, in Southern California. Here is part of what the eyewitness reported to Whitcomb:

Today at 3:30 pm I exited my in laws home in Villa Park and all five of my kids were standing
at the car looking up at the sky. I looked up and my first thought was “dragon.” It was huge. . . . My 10 year old was scared . . . I can’t stop thinking about it. Someone had to have seen it besides us.

In 2018 another eyewitness reported the following to Whitcomb, although the sighting itself was years earlier in another area of Southern California:

In 2005 a perfectly clear afternoon, I seen two “Pterosaurs” flying simultaneously,
the 2nd about 2/3 the size of the first one and it was right behind it. Neither
flapping their wings until almost out of site, but gliding in a downward direction
from about 200 feet in the air. My guess is the wingspan of the first and larger one
was about 14 foot total length. They seem to be going directly to Lake San Vicente
from my position on Mussey Grade Rd in Ramona . . . San Diego county.

The following was reported from Northern California, in December of 2018:

Bat wing cryptid with pterodactyl like head . . . pointed crest on back of head like pterodactyl gliding 12 ft above road by Riege Road on our way from Marysville to American Canyon in Northern California. Nose to rump body 4 ft long. 1:24 am today. Clearly seen in headlights.

Whitcomb reports that certain details are often common with reports from around the world:

• lack of feathers
• long tail
• horn-like head crest
• large size

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Youtube video about a pterosaur sighting report from Sudan, Africa

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Youtube videos on living pterosaurs

The following is a partial listing of videos that I [Jonathan D. Whitcomb] have uploaded to Youtube from March through May of 2019, onto the channel Protect Animal Life . . .

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Living Pterosaurs in the USA

The following details are compiled from the June 23, 2018, update of “Declaration on Eyewitness Reports of Apparent Living Pterosaurs.” It seems easier to count the American states that do not have reported sightings of non-extinct “pterodactyls” than to count the ones that do.

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Dragon-pterodactyl living in California

“I walked out from under the awning and lost my breath when I saw this huge dragon pteradactal [sic] looking thing. I scared it because when he saw me he jumped off the telephone wires . . .”

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Dragons and Flying Snakes

Sightings mentioned were in these locations:

• England
• Namibia, Africa
• California, USA

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The nonfiction cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb wrote the book The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur, which was published by the Createspace publishing platform on November 8, 2018. The intended readers are between the ages of eight and fourteen, for this short paperback.

In spite of the title, this nonfiction book is not technically about dinosaurs but about reported sightings of apparent pterosaurs, flying creatures that have long been thought to have all gone extinct long ago. The sightings covered in The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur are in the following locations:

• Papua New Guinea (seven)
• Los Angeles County, California (four)
• Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (three)

The ten reported benefits for readers, listed by Whitcomb on the Amazon page, include these:

• Is understandable yet stimulating for kids and teens of about 8-14 years old
• Tells you not WHAT to think, like many other nonfictions, but HOW to think about possibilities
• By a positive example, invites you to use critical thinking

Title Page of the Book

Quotation

The following three paragraphs, submitted by the author, are taken from page 54:

“In Western countries, people are taught from early childhood that all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs became extinct many millions of years ago. That means those who live in countries like the United States assume none of those animals could now be alive. When those people read or hear about somebody seeing a living pterosaur, they do not believe it, with almost no exceptions.

“My associates and I are some of those exceptions. We know that not all species of pterosaurs became extinct. Some of us have talked with natives of non-Western countries, persons who have seen animals like the ropen. That has helped us to be open minded when Americans and others tell us that they have seen a living pterosaur.

“I understand that all those things that I’ve just told you may not, by themselves, prove that one or more species of these wonderful flying creatures are still living. I’ve told you all those things to prepare you to learn about how I came to be sure that at least a few species of pterosaurs are still living.”

Basics

The following is taken from the Amazon page for The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur:

Paperback; $7.80

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (November 8, 2018)

“Patty Carson and other children, and teenagers and adults, have seen a living pterosaur, sometimes called a pterodactyl”

56 pages; 8½ by 5½ (inches); English

ISBN-13: 978-1727778847

Front cover of the book

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Two books about living pterosaurs

Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition) and The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur

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Living Pterosaurs in the USA?

This post lists 40 states where sightings have been reported (plus the District of Columbia): encounters with apparent non-extinct pterosaurs.

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“Flying dinosaur” book

“The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is a nonfiction book, but it’s not technically about dinosaurs: It’s a short cryptozoology book about apparent living pterosaurs.”

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Pterodactyls that are not extinct

“Many species of pterosaurs have lived on this planet at some time in the past. What evidence is there that all of those species have become extinct? NONE!”

The following details are compiled from the June 23, 2018, update of “Declaration on Eyewitness Reports of Apparent Living Pterosaurs.” It seems easier to count the American states that do not have reported sightings of non-extinct “pterodactyls” than to count the ones that do. Here’s the accounting for the states that have such reports, including the District of Columbia (making a total of forty-one), beginning with the greatest number of sightings:

California = 39

Georgia = 15

Texas = 15

North Carolina = 13

Virginia = 11

Hawaii = 10

Ohio = 10

Utah = 10

Arkansas = 9

Pennsylvania = 9

Oklahoma = 8

South Carolina = 8

Washington = 8

Kansas = 7

Florida = 6

Illinois = 6

New York = 6

Missouri = 5

Wisconsin = 5

Louisiana = 4

Arizona = 3

Kentucky = 3

Massachusetts = 3

Mississippi = 3

New Mexico = 3

Oregon = 3

Michigan = 2

Minnesota = 2

Montana = 2

New Jersey = 2

Indiana = 2

West Virginia = 2

Alabama = 1

Connecticut = 1

District of Columbia = 1

Iowa = 1

Idaho = 1

Maine = 1

Nevada = 1

Rhode Island = 1

Tennessee = 1

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The great majority of those 243 sightings of apparent “flying dinosaurs” were from Americans who contacted the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, who published a listing of them on the Declaration page, along with a list of 47 other sightings from other areas of the world.

Whitcomb (now living in Murray, Utah) declares that those 243 reported encounters with living pterosaurs is just a tiny fraction of the total number of Americans who have gotten a clear view of that kind of flying creature:

“The number of legitimate sightings in the United States, over the past sixty years, could be a hundred times that many. The vast majority of Americans who see these flying creatures never report them to any cryptozoologist, and I’m just one of countless Americans who research sightings of cryptids.

“On the other hand, the person who reports an encounter to a newspaper will probably be ignored, for it’s just one person with a story that runs against generations of teachings about ancient extinctions. Very few news professionals, at least until recent years, have had any inkling of how many Americans have reported seeing living pterosaurs, and it’s just too strange to be published in most newspapers.”

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Two large pterosaurs reported in Cuba in 1971

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News release on living pterosaurs

A nonfiction-cryptozoology author has analyzed reports of non-extinct pterosaurs, commonly called “pterodactyls” or “flying dinosaurs,” and found how sightings relate to thirty-three states (and Washington D.C.) of the United States.

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Sightings of pterosaurs in California

On March 18, 2013, I compared eight sighting reports of apparent pterosaurs in Southern California. The most recent sighting had been just fifteen days earlier, between Griffith Park and Glendale. Not one of those sightings was very far from a storm channel or stream bed.

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Press release on modern pterosaurs

Reports of living “pterodactyls” in Georgia, during the past seven years, probably relate to sightings of some flying creatures in South Carolina and Florida, according to author Jonathan Whitcomb . . .

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Non-extinct pterosaurs in the USA

“Reports of huge flying ‘pterodactyls’ in American skies have floated around the internet for years; but before about 2005, details were scarce. . . .”

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Not all biology professors fight modern pterosaurs

A recent survey of biology professors in the USA reveals not all of them are completely convinced that all species of pterosaurs became extinct by 65 million years ago.

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Living pterosaurs in Texas

Many other eyewitnesses have seen apparent pterosaurs in many states of the USA, including in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas. Yet these featherless flying creatures have been encountered in other areas of the United States, including California.

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Norman Huntington (a pseudonym used by American author Jonathan Whitcomb), a writer on a cryptozoology blog, contends that sightings of apparent pterosaurs in Cuba, in the 1960′s and 1970′s, are not from misidentified woodpeckers. He was replying to another cryptozoology post, by a Dale Drinnon, in which extinct woodpeckers were suggested as an explanation for the “pterodactyl” encounters.

According to Huntington/Whitcomb, eyewitness accounts of featherless flying creatures with head crests and long tails, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not from the imaginations of persons who had watched too many Flintstones cartoons. He suggests that the most modern insights into pterosaur fossils allow for the possibility that a large long-tailed pterosaur species with a head crest might very well have lived, and might still be living.

That line of thinking comes from details in two sighting reports from the U.S. military installation at Gitmo, Cuba. Patty Carson reported a flying “dinosaur” was there in 1965 and Eskin Kuhn reported two “pterodactyls” were there in 1971. Both eyewitnesses drew sketches, neither of which looked anything like a woodpecker. Both sketches looked like pterosaurs with long head crests and no feathers.

In addition, those two sketches have compared favorably to details in sighting reports from other areas of North America, including in the United States, according to Whitcomb.

Pterosaurs and Woodpeckers in Cuba

There were at least a small number of basal pterosaurs that had head crests, and basal pterosaurs are the ones that had long tails.

Pterosaur Sightings in Cuba

“I was looking in the direction of the ocean when I saw an incredible sight. It mesmerized me! I saw two pterosaurs . . . flying together  . . . perhaps 100 feet [high], very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them.”