Scientific Discussion – Dinosaur Birds

January 31, 2019

Glen Kuban Criticisms

By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

Introduction

Glen Kuban and I completely disagree on the value of eyewitness testimonies of flying creatures that have been reported to me as living pterosaurs, what some people call “pterodactyls” or “flying dinosaurs” or “dragons.” He has spent years trying to convince people that all the testimonies are of no value; I have spent years writing books and online publications explaining why some of them are of great value.

We also differ in experiences and background:

I am a cryptozoologist who interviews eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs; Kuban is not a cryptozoologist and apparently has never interviewed anybody.
I have written a scientific paper, in a peer-reviewed journal, on living pterosaurs; Kuban has not.
I have written five nonfiction books on these flying creatures, in ten total editions; Kuban has never written any book about them.
I have been certified by the American Guild of Court Videographers and worked as a professional videographer for attorney firms, often interviewing people; Kuban has no experience interviewing anyone.
I have traveled to many areas, interviewing people and searching for flying creatures, including an expedition in Papua New Guinea; Kuban has not.

What is Glen Kuban’s background? He has a keen interest in paleontology, although most of his experience seems to be as an amateur paleontologist. To the best of my knowledge, he has never taught that subject in any university.

Here’s the point: The subject of human encounters with apparent living pterosaurs has been entirely in the realm of cryptozoology, and Kuban is anything but a cryptozoologist.

What do we have in common? We’re both human, so we make mistakes, at least sometimes. We also both seem to be passionate about science, although how we would define science may differ.

Reader-review for a new book on living pterosaurs

Kuban has taken it upon himself to try to convince potential readers of my newest book to avoid it. He seems to have purchased his own copy of The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. His Amazon reader-review of it, however, has serious problems.

His misspelling a word in the title of his review (“unspsecting”) has little importance, only hinting at a general potential for carelessness. But things go downhill from there.

The title of my book refers to six-year-old Patty Carson, who witnessed a very strange flying creature at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, around 1965. Kuban refers to her as a “Cuban girl.” The book was written for children and young teenagers, and I now see that perhaps I failed to make it perfectly clear that Patty’s family was American, not Cuban. But Kuban is not a child and should have realized that a man who worked in the Pentagon in 1965 would not likely be Cuban and neither would his little daughter. In addition, Guantanamo Bay in 1965 was not a playground for Cuban children.

That mistake by Kuban might be excused, but it gets worse.

Kuban mentions “the discovery in the 1700s or 1800s of animals such as the mountain gorilla, Komodo dragon, and Omura’s Whale.” If he knows much about biology then he needs to read what he has written before he publishes it online. I never wrote anything like that in my book. What’s in The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur? Here’s the relevant sentence from page 51:

We now know about many kinds of animals now living. Some of them, however, were not known to any Western scientist in the year 1800.

It then lists ten animals, including the three mentioned by Kuban. In the book, notice the word not. Kuban wrote the opposite of what the book says. It gets worse.

Nothing in this book is about religion: nothing about the Bible or about divine creation or about Christianity. Yet Kuban writes about my religious beliefs as if he knows a lot about them and then writes that my “claims are not even endorsed by any major creationist or cryptozoology groups.” Regardless of the truth of that, it is irrelevant to the book. After all, that part of the Amazon page is for writing about the book; it’s not a personal space for Mr. Kuban to criticize another person regarding religion.

Conclusion

I suggest people be allowed to know what books actually contain, and a book review should be about that book.

A flying dinosaur book

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Glen Kuban and Living Pterosaurs

Glen J. Kuban seems to me to have dedicated much of his life, in the past seven years or so, to try to convince people that no modern pterosaur exists, anywhere on the planet, and that is where we completely disagree.

Ropen denied by Glen Kuban (sighting in 1944)

. . . Kuban apparently never communicated with either Hodgkinson or the army buddy. Guessman and I have interviewed Hodgkinson, and it was clear to us what the veteran said about the buddy who had no desire to tell anybody that they had seen a living pterosaur the size of a small airplane. The denial was ONLY immediately after the sighting, and nothing was said by that buddy about any possibility of any misidentification.

Scientific paper on living pterosaurs

The ten-year anniversary is approaching for the publication of my scientific paper “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific,” so here is an introduction to that peer-reviewed article, with links to images of some of the pages.

Books on living pterosaurs

Features five nonfiction books on these shocking flying creatures

The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur (new book)

Simple to read yet stimulating for middle-grade children and teens
Explains the benefits of believing someone who has seen something
Gives interesting comparisons between accounts, allowing the reader to come to his or her own conclusion about each report
Explains the three major interpretations available for a sighting report, allowing the reader to choose one of them for each reported account
Gives the young reader many photos, sketches, and other images, making the book easier to dig into and understand

Science and living pterosaurs

Examines two scientific papers that were published in a peer-reviewed journal of science in the twenty-first century

February 10, 2017January 30, 2019

Real “Dinosaur” in a Civil War Photograph

By the modern-pterosaur expert Jonathan Whitcomb

Important Update:

Early in November, 2018, I withdrew my support for the image called “Ptp.” The reasons I have changed my position are explained elsewhere; part of the image is also present in an animation in one of the episodes of Walking with Dinosaurs.

I will leave the following original post intact, for whatever use it may be for readers (perhaps to learn something about how I fell into such a blunder).

Introduction

Years ago, a scientist in California began noticing details in a photograph, clues that the image of an apparent modern pterosaur was genuine. On January 14, 2017, I spoke with Clifford Paiva (a physicist) by phone. We agreed that the photo (now labeled “Ptp”) has a genuine photographic image of a modern pterosaur. Some people call this kind of animal a “flying dinosaur” or a “pterodactyl.” Let’s look at this from a scientific perspective, keeping an open mind to various possibilities.

The photo had been known by many people for a long time, but it had been confused with another photo, of a hoax Civil War reenactment, that had been made in imitation of the original. Compare the two photographs in Figure-1:

Figure-1: Original (Ptp) photo on the left; imitation on the right (click on image)

Comparing the two Apparent Civil War Photographs

Notice that the photo on the right has nothing in focus, which is not normal for Civil-War era photography. The one on the left, however, has both soldiers and the animal in focus.

Several things suggest the one on the right is a Civil War reenactment with actors dressed to look like soldiers of that period. It’s not that any one clue is proof by itself, but when taken together they at least strongly suggest it’s a hoax photo.

Notice one soldier in the photo on the right, the man on the far left of that image. It looks like his stomach is so large that he cannot button his shirt. That can be explained: Perhaps all the other apparent soldiers were regular Civil War reenactors, and one more man wanted to join them. The new man had never played that kind of part before, so he had to borrow at least part of a uniform. The shirt was too small, so he left it unbuttoned.

In addition, the stance of at least two of the “soldiers,” in the photo on the right, is unusual. In old Civil War photographs, one or two soldiers might be seen with arms folded across the chest; is a bit uncommon but not rare. For two soldiers to hold their rifles while folding their arms across their chests, however, appears strange. I’ve never seen a genuine Civil War photo that had two men standing like that.

But we have a direct way of judging the photo on the right: It was leaked out, early in the 21st century, that this was a hoax for the Freakylinks television show. Photoshop or something similar was probably used to make the modern photo appear to be old.

Now notice how the two photos resemble each other. Obviously one of them is imitating the other, but which is the older one? Several persons have reported that they remember the one we see on the left (in Figure-1). They say that it was in a book they had seen around the 1960’s or 1970’s. Some persons may have seen it even earlier. Combining that with the knowledge we have of the Freakylinks hoax, we can see that Ptp is the older one.

Many TV shows entertain with fiction, but in this case it created a problem, for many persons seem to have become confused by the two similar photos. When the subject of a “Civil War pterodactyl photo” comes up, they assume there’s only one photo and that it’s a joke or hoax. In addition, other persons assume, after learning of the hoax, that both photos must be fake. Those persons, however, probably do not look deeply into the clues, that are there for the viewing, in the older photograph: clues to the authenticity of Ptp.

Science and Objective Evaluations

The physicist Clifford Paiva examined the Ptp photo, finding several things that suggested that the image of an apparent Pteranodon is genuine. (Apparently the scientist felt that it was unnecessary to examine the TV-show hoax photo.)

The shadow under the boot of the soldier in front corresponds with shadows found on and under the image of the animal. This gives at least a strong suggestion that no digital pasting was done of a soldier-image being put onto another photograph.

That fits perfectly with what people tell us: This photo (Ptp) was seen in a book many years before Photoshop existed. But another question arises: Why would any hoaxer, who was an expert in modern computerized image manipulation, want to paste even one soldier onto a photograph that had a convincing Pteranodon image? And where would that hoaxer get such an incredible photograph?

Those questions arise because of what Paiva found in closer examinations of Ptp. The head suggests the animal is a Pteranodon or a modern pterosaur that appears much like a Pteranodon. But it’s not just the beak and head crest. The neck and shoulder also suggest it is something like that Pterodactyloid pterosaur.

By the way, pterosaurs are not technically dinosaurs. They’ve just been associated together because of old ideas about “primitive” animals living many millions of years ago.

Why are dinosaurs and pterosaurs not nearly as common today as they were in the past? Look to the one major cause of complete extinction: human interference. Let the present be the key to the past and recognize how easy it would have been, over thousands of years, for humans to have destroyed many species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

Most reported sightings of dinosaurs appear to be confined to certain areas of central Africa and Papua New Guinea. Yet over the past 14 years, I’ve received reports from eyewitnesses from five continents, from persons of various backgrounds, who have seen apparent modern pterosaurs. It seems that the “primitive” animals that can fly through the air have survived extinction and expanded their ranges worldwide, although they seem to be at least somewhat rare and mostly nocturnal.

Conclusion

This photograph (Ptp) deserves a much closer look. It appears to support the many eyewitnesses who report large featherless flying creatures in a number of areas of the world, including North America. We need to look past old 19-century dogmas about universal extinctions of all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Keep an open mind to new discoveries.

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Update: I, Jonathan Whitcomb, no longer support this image as evidence for a modern living pterosaur in 19th century North America. I maintain, however, my support for the many eyewitness testimonies in the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Pterodactyl in a Civil War photograph

Someone looking for evidence of Civil War reenactment may have little difficulty noticing one or more problems with the photo on the right. That’s a hoax-photo, made to promote the Freakylinks TV series . . . The photo on the left, however, is older, apparently seen by many readers of a book in the mid-20th century.

Live pterosaur in a photo

Introduction to the Civil War photograph, comparing it to a hoax-photo, with a short history of living-pterosaur investigations regarding credibility

Ropen-pterosaur or “dinosaur bird”

The photo shown here, recently given the label of “Ptp,” has been declared to have a genuine image of a modern pterosaur. The proclamation was given by the physicist Clifford Paiva and the cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb on January 14, 2017.

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Jonathan Whitcomb's third edition of "Live Pterosaurs in America" - nonfiction cryptozoology genre - sightings of "pterodactyls" still living

Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition), nonfiction cryptozoology book

February 28, 2015January 30, 2019

North American Dinosaurs Dated by Carbon-14

green dinosaur

In recent years, dinosaur bones have been dated using radiometric carbon-14 methods, something almost never attempted before. Why is this testing relatively new? It was previously assumed by many scientists that all dinosaurs became extinct by at least tens of millions of years ago. Some critics continue to hold onto that opinion.

Yet a number of dinosaur fossils excavated in North America have been ¹⁴C dated to well below the ceiling level for those testing methods, with none of the materials over 40,000 years old, according to the rigorous methods used. This deserves attention.

types of dinosaurs dated by c-14

From the newgeology-dot-us web site

Dinosaur Bones Excavated in Montana

Notice the data from carbon-14 dating of two Triceratops dinosaurs: both were found in Montana. The margin for error is mostly small in these test results, most being plus-or-minus 80-200 years. Critical is the general age calculation: between 24,340 and 39,230 years before the present (BP). If these two animals had lived many millions of years ago (in what is now Montana,) there would no longer be any sign of any carbon-14, yet the testing showed the presence of that isotope (¹⁴C).

Other dinosaur remains, excavated in North America, show similar results from the radiometric carbon testing.

Scientific Discussion and Censorship

Few critics have said much in direct response to the censored lecture-abstract on the official web site of the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore. Apparently those who would prefer keeping in the dark of 19th-century ideas about dinosaur extinction (before humans)—those critics write mostly about a very few of the earlier datings (by carbon-14 methods), if they write anything at all. The censorship of the scientific lecture appears to suite them just fine.

They refer to publications in 1991 and 1992, which refer to testing or writings from 1979-1990. Do a Google search for information on carbon-14 dating of dinosaurs and notice two different kind of sites:

Those that support C14 dating of dinosaurs
Those that dismiss that testing

You may notice that the second type of web site, if it has many details, refers to criticisms of pre-21st-century testing or it refers to other sites that criticize those earlier datings. What you may never find is a web site that both opposes dating dinosaur remains and discusses details about the recent carbon-14 dating work done on those fossils. It seems that those who want us all to continue believing in ancient extinctions (many millions of years ago) prefer to say nothing about the censorship of a scientific lecture in 2012 in Singapore.

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Dating Dinosaur Bones by C14 Methods

Some dinosaurs appear to have lived between 22,000 and 39,000 years ago.

C-14 Dating of Dinosaurs

How do we know that dinosaurs lived much more recently than many millions of years ago? It’s in carbon dating, testing which shows that a number of species lived only tens of thousands of years ago, yes dinosaur species.

Carbon-14 Dating and Dinosaurs

Radiocarbon dating is the most accurate and most verifiable of the radiometric dating systems. Dates for carbon material can often be independently verified by testing something that is known historically, from records of human observations.

December 18, 2014December 26, 2014

Was Jonathan Whitcomb Honest or Dishonest?

I’ve gotten some distinguished attention over the past few years, much of it negative reactions to my writings about the ropen or living pterosaurs in general, much of it including some degree of negative mentioning of my religious beliefs. In recent months, the attention has changed: It’s gotten worse and from a more distinguished paleontologist than I had imagined would take such notice of my writings. The critical point of difference is this: The honesty and integrity of Jonathan Whitcomb, unfortunately, is now the subject, more than the credibility of a species of modern pterosaur.

Have I been honest or dishonest?

For those who know much about my work in cryptozoology over the past eleven years, this may sound strange. I have written more about the possibility of living pterosaurs in this modern world of ours than any other writer: well over a thousand blog posts and web pages, and I mean original articles, not copy-and-paste duplications. During all those years of attempts to convince people of extant pterosaurs, I admitted that I had never seen anything like a living pterosaur myself, not after my expedition to a remote island in the southwest Pacific and not after I had examined many thousands of game-camera photos at a sighting location. Does that sound like I was being dishonest?

The most prominent attack appears to come from a well-known American paleontologist, Donald Prothero, and the page in question, easily found through a Google search on “Jonathan Whitcomb” states the following:

Donald Prothero considers the marginal story of the “ropen”—an allegedly pterosaur-like cryptid—and the man who has led a one-man crusade to promote it using an army of sock-puppets.

What is this “army of sock-puppets?” Only the following two pen names:

Norman Huntington
Nathaniel Coleman

Yes, my “army” consisted of those two names. And I continue to proclaim that the use of those two pseudonyms was completely justified and used to declare the truth.

What about my “one-man” crusade? Who were the persons involved in this? I will mention some of the names, the official names, of those men who participated in searching in Papua New Guinea for living pterosaurs. None of the following are pen names; they represent nine distinct persons.

Paul Nation
Carl Baugh
James Blume
Nathanael Nation
David Woetzel
Garth Guessman
Jacob Kepas
Luke Paina
Jonathan Whitcomb

Dr. Prothero mentions none of the above names in his post “Fake Pterosaurs and Sock Puppets,” except my name. Keep in mind, the above names are only a partial list of explorers who have searched for living pterosaurs in tropical wilderness areas of Papua New Guinea, and almost all of the above men did so with religious ideals, with confidence in the truth found in the Bible. Does not that sound like participants in a “crusade?” Why does the page-redirect for Prothero’s post call this a “one-man” crusade?

Television Productions

Prothero does mention the television shows Destination Truth and Monsterquest, referring to the expeditions in Papua New Guinea that related to potential modern pterosaurs. Yet he gives me too much credit, declaring that those two TV episodes were “all unwittingly based on the obsessions of one individual.” What a strange declaration!

Why would he think that those two television episodes were “all” based on just my writings? Keep in mind that many of my online and book publications were written after those two episodes of Destination Truth and Monsterquest were aired. Indeed, many of my writings have been about those two episodes and how they relate to expeditions of many other explorers who were searching for modern pterosaurs. How strange for a celebrated scientist to overlook so many critical details!

I did consult with both production teams before they traveled to Papua New Guinea, but Destination Truth went to Papua New Guinea with knowledge of the 2006 expedition of Paul Nation and Monsterquest went there with Garth Guessman himself among the crew.

Dr. Prothero is not alone in this obsession that I must have been dishonest, but I am also not alone in searching for the truth about reports of living pterosaurs.

“Sock puppets” or proper use of two pseudonyms

My use of two pen names allowed eyewitness reports to be read by those who might not otherwise have paid attention to them, persons like Dr. Donald Prothero himself. I stand by my proper desires to disseminate those eyewitness testimonies.

In the first few years after my 2004 expedition on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, critics concentrated on ridiculing the possibility of any extant pterosaur, with limited libel against me. Accusations that I had been dishonest, however, were enough to justify my temporary use of two pen names, so that the reports themselves might become better known (without my regular name causing a distraction).

I do not accuse Prothero of dishonesty in spreading falsehoods about me; he has followed other careless writers of libel. But I am surprised that one with so many credentials in science would write so much in one post with not one mention of the word fossil and nothing scientific. I thought that a scientist who had written dozens of books and scientific papers would be able to write one scientific sentence in a blog post.

This paleontologist did think it worth his while to continue using bulverism by writing about my religious beliefs. Yes, it is strange, but while avoiding writing anything scientific in his post he did manage to write about my religious beliefs, or rather his opinion: what he believes I believe.

I am happy to allow the truth to come out in the end. A modern pterosaur will eventually be officially discovered. If paleontologists then will continue to accuse me of being dishonest, I will then feel sorry for their foolishness.

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Honest or Trying to Deceive?

This past summer, I wrote about a biology professor in Minnesota who criticized me for what he declared were my bad motivations. His post was not like a scientific article, not even slightly like a peer-reviewed paper in a journal of science; it appeared more like a dirty political attack.

Paul Nation, Jonathan Whitcomb, Garth Guessman, and David Woetzel

From 1994 through early 2007, a few American creationist cryptozoologists have explored remote areas of Papua New Guinea, searching for a flying creature called “ropen” on Umboi Island.

Honesty in Searching for a Ropen

“stupid dinosaur lies” – Those are not my words. They are part of a URL that I first saw [years ago] . . . perhaps the first major online attack against those who promote the possibility that not all of these featherless flying creatures are extinct.

Press Releases by Whitcomb

Many news releases on living pterosaurs or “pterodactyls”

Smithsonian and Ropen “Myth”

I applaud writers for pointing out the problem of people mistaking Frigate birds for what they thought were modern pterosaurs or “dinosaur birds.” Mr. Switek was correct in pointing out that error, that embarrassing error, in Aym’s newspaper article. But the blog post written four days later, by Switek, (“Don’t Get Strung Along by the ‘Ropen’ Myth”) is also full of error, not the same kind of glaring blunder as in the newspaper article but still serious error.

Jonathan Whitcomb and Sock Puppets

Soon after my expedition on Umboi Island, in 2004, I found a web site highly critical of the living pterosaur investigations. In fact, the URL included the words stupid, dinosaur, and lies. In the original posting, both my first and last names were misspelled: “John Whittcomb.” . . .

Insinuations and direct statements about dishonesty followed. It came to the point where one skeptic suggested people should take statements by Paul Nation with a “grain of salt” because he was associated with Jonathan Whitcomb. . . .

To publicize details about the encounters with apparent pterosaurs, I needed some way to emphasize those reports without my name getting in the way. I began using two pseudonyms on a limited number of my many blogs: Nathaniel Coleman and Norman Huntington.