© Jonathan Whitcomb 2011
Very little tropical rain forest remains in Singapore, but half a
century ago things were somewhat different.
Young Low Cheng was a small boy around 1959, when he
saw what he thought were two unusual birds; at that time,
he had no knowledge about extinction concepts and those
flying creatures we call “pterosaur.” The two he saw were
very unlike fruit bats: much bigger and flying differently.
The boy wandered away from his village but “staying
in Alexandra Road area.” He was “out on an adventure
hunt” in the forest when he saw the apparent pterosaurs
and noticed they were eating orange fruit from a palm.
in a 2010 email, Low Cheng said that “they were very
much bigger than flying foxes and they did not glide like
these smaller creatures. I have seen flying foxes many
times at my location before.”
The main point of credibility for pterosaurs living
in and around Indonesia, Papua New Guinea,
and Australia comes not from this sighting in the
Singapore area. It comes from many reports of
apparent pterosaurs, with some of the interviews
revealing much higher levels of credibility than
this half-century-old sighting by Low Cheng.
Singapore Pterosaur
Not all pterosaurs are extinct
This was once a tropical
environment, a rain forest