Flying Dinosaurs

Patty Carson drew this sketch of the flying creature she had seen at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, around 1965. The head looks a lot like the sketch drawn by Eskin C. Kuhn:

The head crest is not identical, to be sure, but we have reasonable explanations for the difference: * Eyewitness memory * Perspective difference * Variations in the creatures At least one species of pterosaur known from fossils is thought to grow its head crest during the lifetime of the flying creatures. The two eyewitnesses, Patty Carson and Eskin Kuhn, are real persons who have allowed their real names to be used. Here are some older photos of these two Americans:

Kuhn sketch, 1971, sighting in Cuba Patty Carson Eskin C. Kuhn Both Carson and Kuhn saw flying but Carson saw a “dinosaur” before it took flight, while it was in some tall grass. She saw many small teeth in the creature’s mouth but Kuhn saw no teeth in the two flying creatures he observed. Kuhn used the word “pterodactyl,” but Carson, “dinosaur.” Now let’s consider another of the many eyewitnesses, the World War II veteran Duane Hodgkinson.

Flight instructor Duane Hodgkinson, in 2005 Duane Hodgkinson and his army buddy were stationed in or near Finschhafen, New Guinea, in 1944. They obtained permission to take a hike up into the interior, for there were no more Japanese in this part of New Guinea at that time. A native guided them. In a jungle clearing, after their guide had gone up ahead, the two American soldiers stopped to look at a colony of large ants. They were surprised when a large creature on the other side of the clearing caught their attention as it ran for several steps and flapped its enormous wings to get airbourne. Hodgkinson was fascinated by the head of the creature, for it had a pointed crest that looked like the back of the head of the pterodactyl in the Alley Oop cartoon strip (a newspaper cartoon that was popular in the mid-20th century). He was so intrigued by the head that he paid no close attention to the long tail. Later, during interviews with cryptozoologists, he realized that he could not remember any details about the tail except that it was long: “at least ten or fifteen feet” long. He estimated the wingspan of the “pterodactyl” as about that of a Piper Tri-Pacer airplane: twenty- nine feet. The actual size could not have been much different from his estimate, as both the soldiers and the “pterodactyl” were in the same clearing and that clearing was only about 100 feet across.