Living pterosaurs

[Commander CMG]

1 minute ago, jethrofloyd said:

For the 'living pterosaurus'(Ropen) sightings, the most likely cause is Frigatebird. Their appearance, and a shape of the wings can really deceive that it is in fact a living pterosaur.

 

When I used to drive my daughter to her University in York, I would always take the scenic route, which took me through the Harewood Estate (Harewood house) and the sky was full of Red Kites, to anyone that had never seen one, never mind dozens... the sky looked like it was full of Pterodactyls... very impressive.

 

 

 

 

[Carnoferox]

1 hour ago, jethrofloyd said:

For the 'living pterosaurus'(Ropen) sightings, the most likely cause is Frigatebird. Their appearance, and a shape of the wings can really deceive that it is in fact a living pterosaur.

Hmmm, I wonder what this video of a "ropen" could really be... 

 

[N176CM]

On 2/2/2022 at 11:05 AM, AnnaNova said:

I'd be interested in reading your considered thoughts about whether living pterosaurs may exist anywhere on Earth? I'd be very interested if you've looked into this and have done some research about it. Thanks.

I know I'm going to regret saying this, but if you ever see one you'll know it. I wished I had had a camera with me, or a firearm large enough to shoot it down. but i really don't know if i had either it would have mattered, i was so nervous, fascinated, and confused I doubt I would have hit the thing, even with the close proximity that I had encountered it. As for believing, you won't ever know what walks this earth until you see it with your own eyes. The only misidentification that occurs is from those who've never seen one. Even had I spotted it from a long distance, I would have known exactly what I was looking at. This thing had a wingspan that would come closer to matching that of a cessna 152, than any living bird i know of. Not to mention this bird didn't have any feathers, looked more leathery like a bat. To clarify my confusion, i still wonder how something so unique and large could fall off the radar of existence for so long. I was fascinated because I had always believed these things were not longer living, nervous because I thought I was small enough to be carried off by this big ****er, as it nearly flew right over my head at about 30-40 feet. 

I'd love to go into more detail, about the entire story, but the way people react that have never had such an encounter, you're really just setting yourself up, and likely never hear the end of it. I've wondered if hypnosis would uncover as far as my memory of certain details I wish I could remember, because after so many years, I'm not sure if I remember the color of its beak, and the dorsal that extended well behind it's head.  And for some reason I seem to remember this thing having a long tail unlike a pterodactyl. It looked more like a dragon than any bird. 

Anyway, if we get to talking I might agree to exchange contact info and go into more detail about that day.  

Edited February 15, 2022 by N176CM

[Commander CMG]

32 minutes ago, N176CM said:

I know I'm going to regret saying this, but if you ever see one you'll know it. I wished I had had a camera with me, or a firearm large enough to shoot it down. but i really don't know if i had either it would have mattered, i was so nervous, fascinated, and confused I doubt I would have hit the thing, even with the close proximity that I had encountered it. As for believing, you won't ever know what walks this earth until you see it with your own eyes. The only misidentification that occurs is from those who've never seen one. Even had I spotted it from a long distance, I would have known exactly what I was looking at. This thing had a wingspan that would come closer to matching that of a cessna 152, than any living bird i know of. Not to mention this bird didn't have any feathers, looked more leathery like a bat. To clarify my confusion, i still wonder how something so unique and large could fall off the radar of existence for so long. I was fascinated because I had always believed these things were not longer living, nervous because I thought I was small enough to be carried off by this big ****er, as it nearly flew right over my head at about 30-40 feet. 

I'd love to go into more detail, about the entire story, but the way people react that have never had such an encounter, you're really just setting yourself up, and likely never hear the end of it. I've wondered if hypnosis would uncover as far as my memory of certain details I wish I could remember, because after so many years, I'm not sure if I remember the color of its beak, and the dorsal that extended well behind it's head.  And for some reason I seem to remember this thing having a long tail unlike a pterodactyl. It looked more like a dragon than any bird. 

Anyway, if we get to talking I might agree to exchange contact info and go into more detail about that day.  

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Can you confirm the location of your sighting?

[N176CM]

43 minutes ago, Uncle Yammy said:

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Can you confirm the location of your sighting?

yeah i know where i was standing and could take you to the exact spot till this very day. it was in a residential area, it came in from the west and flew to the east, i lost sight of it as it went over the hill. 37.186662, -87.033366. It had flew across this neighborhood, and if anyone else had seen it, I hope they would come forward. I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one to have seen it, given where it happened. I wish I had documented the date, and written down what happened, but I really decided for decades not to say anything about it. 

Edited February 15, 2022 by N176CM

[Commander CMG]

17 minutes ago, N176CM said:

yeah i know where i was standing and could take you to the exact spot till this very day. it was in a residential area, it came in from the west and flew to the east, i lost sight of it as it went over the hill. 37.186662, -87.033366. It had flew across this neighborhood, and if anyone else had seen it, I hope they would come forward. I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one to have seen it, given where it happened. I wish I had documented the date, and written down what happened, but I really decided for decades not to say anything about it. 

Cheers, really appreciate that, and appreciate you sharing your experience. 

[the13bats]

On 2/15/2022 at 6:38 AM, N176CM said:

I know I'm going to regret saying this, but if you ever see one you'll know it. I wished I had had a camera with me, or a firearm large enough to shoot it down. but i really don't know if i had either it would have mattered, i was so nervous, fascinated, and confused I doubt I would have hit the thing, even with the close proximity that I had encountered it. As for believing, you won't ever know what walks this earth until you see it with your own eyes. The only misidentification that occurs is from those who've never seen one. Even had I spotted it from a long distance, I would have known exactly what I was looking at. This thing had a wingspan that would come closer to matching that of a cessna 152, than any living bird i know of. Not to mention this bird didn't have any feathers, looked more leathery like a bat. To clarify my confusion, i still wonder how something so unique and large could fall off the radar of existence for so long. I was fascinated because I had always believed these things were not longer living, nervous because I thought I was small enough to be carried off by this big ****er, as it nearly flew right over my head at about 30-40 feet. 

I'd love to go into more detail, about the entire story, but the way people react that have never had such an encounter, you're really just setting yourself up, and likely never hear the end of it. I've wondered if hypnosis would uncover as far as my memory of certain details I wish I could remember, because after so many years, I'm not sure if I remember the color of its beak, and the dorsal that extended well behind it's head.  And for some reason I seem to remember this thing having a long tail unlike a pterodactyl. It looked more like a dragon than any bird. 

Anyway, if we get to talking I might agree to exchange contact info and go into more detail about that day.  

Eye witness is unreliable,  not evidence just another story.

And no way to get an accurate gauge of size of something at an unknown distance in the sky,  you are just guessing

[Jon the frog]

 

[jmccr8]

1 hour ago, Jon the frog said:

 

Nice drone

[Jon the frog]

34 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

Nice drone

Yep, right now... sightings need to be pretty good to be credible.

[Myles]

2 hours ago, the13bats said:

Eye witness is unreliable,  not evidence just another story.

And no way to get an accurate gauge of size of something at an unknown distance in the sky,  you are just guessing

Yep.  I think credible witnesses are just mistaken witnesses. 

I remember a year or 2 ago, I was out in my yard.  Suddenly a huge shadow of a bird passed by the ground in front of me.  I'll admit, I was a bit scared at first.  I looked up and there was a low flying hawk going overhead.   I don't know if certain times of year the sun is in a better position to do this, but I don't remember it happening before.   

[the13bats]

6 hours ago, Myles said:

Yep.  I think credible witnesses are just mistaken witnesses. 

I remember a year or 2 ago, I was out in my yard.  Suddenly a huge shadow of a bird passed by the ground in front of me.  I'll admit, I was a bit scared at first.  I looked up and there was a low flying hawk going overhead.   I don't know if certain times of year the sun is in a better position to do this, but I don't remember it happening before.   

Thank you for that, you see that actually makes you a fairly credible witness, you saw the weird shadow but then saw the reason for it, ironically ive had that same thing happen to me in my case it was turkey buzzards, unlikely anyone would question our stories as we are not making outlandish claims

I have seen time and again a witness take what they actually saw ( assuming they did see something ) and run with it filling in the unknowns making claims their guesses are facts,

A few episodes of monsterquest proved this one with a bird kite high in the air another a log out in a lake and the mothman show every case all the people they asked over estimated size, and i believe they would have made claims it was even bigger had they not known they were being tested for size perception.

[Carnoferox]

On 2/15/2022 at 4:38 AM, N176CM said:

Not to mention this bird didn't have any feathers, looked more leathery like a bat. 

I think you have been influenced by pop culture depictions of pterosaurs as scaly, bat-winged monsters. In reality, they were covered in fuzzy protofeathers.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0728-7

[the13bats]

Carn, do you happen to known if they would do a ground to air take off like a modern bird or had to more drop off sometjing to get flying?

Can a flying fox take off from the ground?

[Carnoferox]

43 minutes ago, the13bats said:

Carn, do you happen to known if they would do a ground to air take off like a modern bird or had to more drop off sometjing to get flying?

Can a flying fox take off from the ground?

The current consensus is that pterosaurs took off from the ground using a quadrupedal launch. Here's a great animation showing how that works.

Vampire bats use the same take off method, but I think they are the only bats that do so.

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by Carnoferox

[the13bats]

1 hour ago, Carnoferox said:

The current consensus is that pterosaurs took off from the ground using a quadrupedal launch. Here's a great animation showing how that works.

Vampire bats use the same take off method, but I think they are the only bats that do so.

 

Thanks,

I can imagine in the real world the pterosaurs might have stumbled for lack of a better term like the little bat did.

here in fl we have lots of little bats and they dont really fly like birds more spazzy and give me the impression they have to work harder to stay in the air,

I could also imagine that once in the air pterosaurs could have caught thermals and stayed up until they wanted to come down, but yeah, another nail in the coffin there arent any flying around today being that large we would see them and lots of them,

 

[AnnaNova]

Hi. I'm enjoying all the responses to my posting. Thank you all. I just wanted to jump in and add that what initially got me into this whole living pterasaur thing is that my region in UK has a lot of folklore about 'dragons' living here around the medieval era, which led me to look at art from that time and it's extremely curious how the 'dragons' in the UK at that time look exactly like modern ideas of the pterasaur even though fossils weren't dug up until years later, plus even then they couldn't figure them out and it's only been in modern times that we've had an idea of what they looked like. So I definitely believe they existed in northern Europe and possibly the Americas until relatively recently and believe some may still live in remote areas with underground cave systems where they roost during the day and fly at night. I also believe they are bioluminescent in some way. What do you think about that!! Please don't be too mean to me.

 

[stereologist]

1 hour ago, AnnaNova said:

Hi. I'm enjoying all the responses to my posting. Thank you all. I just wanted to jump in and add that what initially got me into this whole living pterasaur thing is that my region in UK has a lot of folklore about 'dragons' living here around the medieval era, which led me to look at art from that time and it's extremely curious how the 'dragons' in the UK at that time look exactly like modern ideas of the pterasaur even though fossils weren't dug up until years later, plus even then they couldn't figure them out and it's only been in modern times that we've had an idea of what they looked like. So I definitely believe they existed in northern Europe and possibly the Americas until relatively recently and believe some may still live in remote areas with underground cave systems where they roost during the day and fly at night. I also believe they are bioluminescent in some way. What do you think about that!! Please don't be too mean to me.

 

Would you be able to post some links to art that shows what you believe to be a pterosaur? When I think of a dragon I think of a 6 limbed creature. A wyvern has only 4 limbs. Notice in this drawing that the wings of this wyvern are set back and are not like the limbs of a bird, bat or pterosaur that are used for flying. Those limbs are attached to the shoulder of the animal. Also, notice that wyverns have a long thick tail.

Here we see  a pterosaur with limbs attached to its shoulders. Like a wyvern it is 4 limbed. The tail is quite thin and much shorter relative to the body length than that depicted for wyverns. Finally, check out the hind limbs.  They are part of the flight surface unlike the wyvern.

Can you show  us art that depicts a pterosaur?

[Robotic Jew]

Why would they hide?

[Carnoferox]

2 hours ago, AnnaNova said:

Hi. I'm enjoying all the responses to my posting. Thank you all. I just wanted to jump in and add that what initially got me into this whole living pterasaur thing is that my region in UK has a lot of folklore about 'dragons' living here around the medieval era, which led me to look at art from that time and it's extremely curious how the 'dragons' in the UK at that time look exactly like modern ideas of the pterasaur even though fossils weren't dug up until years later, plus even then they couldn't figure them out and it's only been in modern times that we've had an idea of what they looked like. So I definitely believe they existed in northern Europe and possibly the Americas until relatively recently and believe some may still live in remote areas with underground cave systems where they roost during the day and fly at night. I also believe they are bioluminescent in some way. What do you think about that!! Please don't be too mean to me.

European dragons can resemble pop culture depictions of pterosaurs, sure. They look nothing like actual pterosaurs though.

There is ample evidence that pterosaurs nested on the open ground in large colonies. They were not bat-like cave dwellers, but were instead similar to modern seabirds.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214005259

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aan2329

Edited February 17, 2022 by Carnoferox

[the13bats]

6 hours ago, AnnaNova said:

Hi. I'm enjoying all the responses to my posting. Thank you all. I just wanted to jump in and add that what initially got me into this whole living pterasaur thing is that my region in UK has a lot of folklore about 'dragons' living here around the medieval era, which led me to look at art from that time and it's extremely curious how the 'dragons' in the UK at that time look exactly like modern ideas of the pterasaur even though fossils weren't dug up until years later, plus even then they couldn't figure them out and it's only been in modern times that we've had an idea of what they looked like. So I definitely believe they existed in northern Europe and possibly the Americas until relatively recently and believe some may still live in remote areas with underground cave systems where they roost during the day and fly at night. I also believe they are bioluminescent in some way. What do you think about that!! Please don't be too mean to me.

 

I think you took far too much to heart the monsterquest episode about pterasaurs in PNG,

Not being mean but there is zero evidence to support any of your desires.

[stereologist]

5 hours ago, Robotic Jew said:

Why would they hide?

That's a good question. Here are some unintelligent thoughts

• They make awesome hamburgers
• Someone told them they were the real source of Corinthian leather
• Amazon wants to enslave them for package delivery

[the13bats]

1 hour ago, stereologist said:

That's a good question. Here are some unintelligent thoughts

• They make awesome hamburgers
• Someone told them they were the real source of Corinthian leather
• Amazon wants to enslave them for package delivery

Perhaps, just perhaps we now know where those abnormally large drumsticks sold at theme parks actually come from...no, brother, that aint turkey.

[AnnaNova]

Hello. Here is one of my favourites of medieval art that appears to be based on a pterosaur from the Liber Floridus. I used to have a lot more, but lost them on my previous laptop. If you did a search of dragon, or wyvern, medieval manuscripts and so on, you'll see many examples, though a lot of them are stylised, or look like snakes, or crocodiles - interesting some do look like shaggy pterosaurs like the great points made earlier about some of them being hairy or feathered.

 

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by AnnaNova

[Carnoferox]

2 hours ago, AnnaNova said:

Hello. Here is one of my favourites of medieval art that appears to be based on a pterosaur from the Liber Floridus. I used to have a lot more, but lost them on my previous laptop. If you did a search of dragon, or wyvern, medieval manuscripts and so on, you'll see many examples, though a lot of them are stylised, or look like snakes, or crocodiles - interesting some do look like shaggy pterosaurs like the great points made earlier about some of them being hairy or feathered.

 

 

The mammalian features are unlike any pterosaur, with the pinnae on the ears, the bat-like wing fingers, and the scrotum being the most noticeable. The long, flexible tail is more reptilian, but still unlike pterosaurs which had stiff tails. It's clearly a fictional creature that combines elements from modern animals, rather than a representation of a pterosaur.