Cuban Pterosaurs?

Cuban Pterosaurs-Or Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers?

No-that isn't meant to be funny. I have a suggestion which may account for "Modern Pterosaur" reports eminating from Cuba in a large crested bird commonly thought to be extinct-but which in fact was not yet declared extinct in Cuba at the time.

http://livepterosaurs.blogspot.com/2011/05/another-pterosaur-in-cuba.html

Friday, May 6, 2011

[Quoting the sightings in question wholly and without modification, as per Fair Use allowance]

Another Pterosaur in Cuba

Until this year, Eskin Kuhn's sighting of two long-tailed pterosaurs in Cuba appeared to be a one-eyewitness encounter; perhaps those giant Rhamphorhynchoids were lost, flying over the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base by accident, being native to Central America, not Cuba. But two days ago I spoke by phone to Patty Carson: Eskin Kuhn is no longer alone in witnessing a long-tailed pterosaur at Guantanamo Bay.


Modern Pterosaur in Cuba

We were walking down near the boat yards, headed home. . . . We were walking from the boat yards toward home, but still closer to the boat yards, to where it was sandy underfoot, sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall . . . We were walking through that scrub area, and suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. The head and upper part of its body, about a third of the wings at the joint (tips still held down) showed. . . . right in front of us about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound . . . and flew to its left and disappeared behind trees and terrain.

Two Pterosaur Sightings in Cuba

Very recently another eyewitness, a lady living in California, has come forward, supporting the U.S. Marine’s testimony with her own sighting report. Patty Carson observed a single pterosaur, about six years before the sighting by Kuhn, but was disbelieved for decades and unaware that anyone else, other than the ones with her at the Guantanamo Bay installation in around 1965, had seen anything similar.

Pterosaurs at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

In our phone conversation, Patty explained to me that . . . the wings were like bat wings, in a way, but not at all transparent [ie, black]. She is sure of the structure at the end of the tail (what I call a “vein” or “flange”) and estimates the “diamond” was about five inches long and about three inches wide.

There appears to me to be no coincidence that both Patty Carson and Eskin Kuhn saw a long-tailed pterosaur at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the middle of the twentieth century. Patty told me that the sketch drawn by Kuhn was very similar to what she had seen, especially the head and body. She did feel that the tail might have been drawn shorter and the wings larger, however.

 Now in this case we have the incarnation of some misapprehensions about Pterosaurs. Basically Pterosaurs came in two large groups, the earlier long-tailed and smaller ones related to Rhamphorhynchus and the tailleless group originating later  in the Mesozoic, replacing the long-tailed kinds and which grew much larger and persisted until the end of the Age of Reptiles. The tailless group included both the crested Pteranodon and the earlier Pterodactlus, and so can properly be called the Pterodactyls. No in ALL Ropen accounts is that they fail to make the distinction and they always report enormous long-tailed AND crested pterosaurs, mixing the traits of both types. The mixed-trait Pterosaurs do not exist in Paleontology but they DO occur commonly in popular cartoons such as The Flintstones in the 1960s. Therefore the asumption that such creatures ever existed as such in real life is born in a pre-conceived notion out of such representations as the Flintstones cartoon and born out of ignorance.

I do not make that statement lightly. These reports are not reporting accurate reflections of the anatomy of known fossil animals, they are reporting accurate portrayals of fantasies made up about the fossil animals.And therefore even if there were actual animals involved in the sightings, the descriptions are based on a preconceived fantasy version covering over whatever real characteristics there might have been in the original sightings, and this goes for any such sightings in either Cuba or in New Guinea. So the problem is coming as close as possible to an animal corresponding to the reported outline but in full knowledge it is not going to be what the witness thought it was and not exactly as it was reported as a consequence. there happens to be a separate reported Cryptid with a crest on the head, a bird, and in fact a Giant Hornbill, also reputedly growing to the same exact enormous size as the supposed Ropen (a 20 foot wingspan). And in Cuba there was another known giant bird with a pointed crest on the back of its head and known to sometimes fly together in mated pairs as in Erskin Kuhn's account. And that would be the Cuban ivory-billed woodpecker.

Pileated And IvoryBilled Woodpeckers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Ivory-billed_Woodpecker

The Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker is now classified as a separate species from the North American kind and it was not considered to be extinct until perhaps 1990 (this is still disputed and the IUCN Red List merely calls it "Extremely Endangered") It was a large bird that could be newide and long in flighty broad wings and an extremely long tail. One resting in the top branches of four-foot-tall shrubbery might well give the impression of its being as large as a human and standing on the ground. A real Pteranodon's body is not nearly as large as a person's and its head is very much larger in proportion, both these points being noted on this blog earlier in reference to a similar crested bird seen perched in a tree on the US West Coast in much the same reported position. A real Pteranodon would never perch in that position; its hindquarters would be very much smaller than its forequarters.)

The woodpecker's long tail might look diamond-shaped in some views but really a better explanation is that one of the tail feathers was ruffled and bent out of shape! A bird with a feather out of place in its tail could also give the appearance of having a longer and thinner tail until the feather actually did fall out. In the case of the estimated ten-foot wingspan in Kuhn's sighting: he describes his sighting as from a view of the two birds in profile, not a position that he could accurately judge the full width of the wingspan. Since the ivorybilled woodpecker is already the size of a goodsized hawk, it is not that much of a stretch to suggest he mistook the birds for being the size of a large eagle, especially since he was startled and the sighting was brief. And because he was startled and the sighting was brief, there is less worry about the discrepancies in shape between the woodpeckers and the animals he drew: and we need not preoccupy ourselves worrying over the impressions either witness stated about the colour or reported featherlessness of the creatures they had witnessed [Or about the teeth in the jaws, another feature that would NOT apply to Pteranodon: Pteranodon's name means "Winged and toothless"]. In both cases the animal closest to the witness might be the female and hence the red head patch of the male would not be observed on the creature more obvious to the witness  In this case although the very distinct discrepancies ARE in the reports that way, the bottom line is still that the creatures in question would not be and could not be exactly as the witnesses state because they are not thinking of the real creatures but of a fantasy representation of the real creatures.

I am fully aware that this explanation will not satisfy proponants of the Living Pterosaur theory. I apologise for that part, but the fact remains that the sightings cannot be Pterosaurs going by the actual fossils that we have of such creatures. The reported anatomy is all wrong.

Greater-Imperial Woodpecker (New Category)

Female Imperial Woodpecker mounted and photographed in 2007, now at the Indiana State Museum and formerly thought to be an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Imperial Woodpeckers usually live in Mexico and so the sight of such an unusual bird here is doubly jolting.

Imperial, Ivory-Billed and Pileated Woodpeckers [The Males]

Similar Field Guide Comparison for Mexico.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Woodpecker








Imperial Woodpecker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Imperial Woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis) is – or was – a member of the woodpecker family Picidae. If it is not extinct, it is the world's largest woodpecker species at 56-60 cm (22-24 in) long.[1] Due to its close relationship and similarity to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, it is sometimes also called "Mexican Ivorybill" but this name is also used for the Pale-billed Woodpecker. The large and conspicuous bird has for long been known to the native inhabitants of Mexico and was called cuauhtotomomi in Nahuatl, uagam by the Tepehuán, and cumecócari by the Tarahumara

Description and ecology
The male had a red-sided crest, but was otherwise black, apart from the inner primaries, which were white-tipped, white secondaries, and a white scapular stripe which unlike in the Ivory-billed Woodpecker did not extend on the neck. The female was similar but the crest was all black and (unlike the Ivorybill) recurved at the top. It was once widespread and, until the early 1950s, not uncommon throughout the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico, from western Sonora and Chihuahua southwards to Jalisco and Michoacan.

It preferred open montane forests made up of Durango, Mexican White, Loblolly and Montezuma Pines and oak, usually between 2100 and 2700 meters ASL. It fed mainly by scaling bark from dead pine trees and feeding on the insect larvae found underneath. A mating pair required a very large area of untouched mature forest to survive, approximately 26 km² (10 square miles); outside the breeding season, the birds apparently formed small groups of a handful to a dozen individuals and moved about a wider area, apparently in response to availability of food (Lammertink et al., 1996).

Decline and probable extinction
The Imperial Woodpecker is officially listed as Critically Endangered (possibly extinct) by the IUCN and BirdLife International. However, the last confirmed report was of a recently-shot bird in Durango in 1956 and the species is probably now extinct. The primary reason for its decline was loss of habitat, although the decline was also accelerated by over-hunting for use in folk medicine and because nestlings were considered a delicacy at least by the Tarahumara. Imperial Woodpeckers were stunning birds and as the species became rare many were apparently shot by people who had never encountered such a bird and wanted to get a closer look (Lammertink et al., 1996).

Given the near total destruction of its original habitat, and the lack of any confirmed sightings in over 50 years, most ornithologists believe the Imperial Woodpecker must be extinct. There are a handful of more recent, unconfirmed sightings (Mendenhall, 2005), the most recent of which closely followed the 2005 publication of the purported rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Lammertink et al. (1996), after extensively reviewing post-1956 reports, conclude that the species did indeed survive into the 1990s in the central part of its range but also consider a continued survival very unlikely. According to them, the population was always restricted in historic times, although the species was indeed present in maximum density before a catastrophic decline during the 1950s. The lack of good records during that time is apparently more based on lack of research than on actual rarity, but this seems to have changed radically only one decade later.

The Imperial Woodpecker is known from about 120 museum specimens; unlike the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, no photographs or recordings of living birds are known to exist. However one bird was filmed flying in 1953, and Cornell University is said to be in possession of a copy (Dalton 2005), though it has not been made public.

See also Ivory-billed Woodpecker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory-billed_Woodpecker


References
BirdLife International (2004). Campephilus imperialis. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 9 May 2006. Database entry includes a range map and justification for why this species is possibly extinct
Casillas-Orona, Federico Moctezuma (2005): The Imperial Woodpecker, Campephilus imperialis (Gould, 1832). Short paper published online; June, 2005. PDF fulltext
Dalton, Rex (2005): Ornithology: A wing and a prayer. Nature 437(8 September 2005): 188–190. Summary
Lammertink, M.; Rojas-Tomé, J.A.; Casillas-Orona, F.M. & Otto, R.L. (1996): Status and conservation of old-growth forests and endemic birds in the pine-oak zone of the Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico. Verslagen en Technische Gegevens Instituut voor Systematiek en Populatiebiologie (Zoologisch Museum) 69: 1–89. HTML fulltext
Mendenhall, Matt (2005): Old Friend Missing. Birder's World 2005(6): 35–39. HTML fulltext
Tanner, James T. (1964): The Decline and Present Status of the Imperial Woodpecker of Mexico. Auk 81(1): 74–81. PDF fulltext
[edit] External linksBirdLife Species Factsheet
3D view of specimen RMNH 110.098, Naturalis, Leiden – requires QuickTime browser plugin)
1.^ http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=718

It is my hypothesis that the large bird seen by Phillip O'Donnell and others and thought by them to represent a small Pteranodon was instead a gigantic woodpecker. This viewpoint is not shared by the witnesses and they should not be construed as going along with my identification. My idea was that it could be an outsized Imperial Woodpecker in an unexpected range far to the North of their usual range in Western Mexico. It might sit up three feet tall or more and with a possible maximum wingspan of five feet plus or minus - these being gigantic specimens and perhaps well above the average for the species. The witnesses said it was as big as an eagle and I see no reason to slight them on that.

Usual Range For Imperial Woodpecker.

Map for typical range of Pileated Woodpeckers plus red squares added for the unusual outsized-outrange Impies. The one at the Indiana State Museum is labelled a vagrant but no doubt came originally from further south.


The series of reports from Northern California-Oregon and surrounding regions appear as birds of very large size and very exaggerated crests.



Scale Comparison: at Right, Ivory-Billed (top) and Pileated woodpeckers (bottom), centre a turkey vulture as a size comparison and at left mock-ups for Greater-Imperial woodpeckers using a modified ivory-billed woodpecker photo as a base - at top, larger than usual imperial as the average base for the proposed cryptid category, and at bottom, gigantic (freakish) individual to be more in line with the reports. Note that the tail is also unusually elongated, another feature of such reports.

Incidentally my earlier statement on the continuance of Ivory-Billed woodpeckers remains valid: there is a subspecies of Ivory-billed woodpecker on Cuba that nobody insists must be extinct. Such birds could very easily fly over to Florida and re-establish themselves there. So in my opinion the whole argument is a lot of hogwash when various authorities insist ivorybills "must" be extinct or witnesses "must" be seeing pileated woodpeckers instead. There is no "must" about it. And just coincidentally, a Pileated woodpecker lives in the tree outside my back room library window and it has been so close outside that I could have opened the window and touched it before.


Best Wishes, Dale D.

Some More Possible Pterosaurian Reports

Great Blue Heron Photos Sent In by Phillip along with emails

Phillip O'Donnell wrote a comment at the end of my ropens blog and said he saw what he thought was a similar type of pterosaur to the description of a ropen. I said I was interested and that I wanted to run the story on this blog. At first our comments centred around the possibility that the sighting might have been of a great blue heron, which was Phillip's own explanation he thought of, but which he considered to be a bad fit.

Following is the main part of our correspondence with Phillip's messages set apart in blue and mine left in black print:

Hello Dale,

Here are the photographs I mentioned on your blog. The close-up Heron shots are from a science center near Lake Erie in Ohio. The remaining illustration below (the result of a collaborative effort) is the creature I saw. Please note that I am unable to recall most anatomical features below the neck, so here I am relying on two other witnesses (my attention was drawn to the most outstanding feature - the region of the head).
Here are some additional details from a draft of (Survival of Greater Mesozoic Organisms Hypothesis, Dec. 2009)

“In March of 2003 I observed a large winged animal perched in a fir tree in Northwest Oregon. My brother, Timothy also witnessed this creature. We both looked at this creature with binoculars and we could clearly see a protuberance extending from the back of its head at an angle of 15-20 degrees. The head, neck, nor the protuberance contained any noticeable colors, excluding a grayish tone. Unfortunately, note-worthy observations were not made concerning features below the neck. It certainly did have a good sized body. I would estimate the overall height was approx. 3 feet. Later, on April 30, 2004 we saw it again, this time in a nearby field. As it spread its wings (approx. 7-10 ft. spread) to lift off the ground, I was struck by the fact that its wings were reflecting sunlight intensely. The wings bent near the middle and they also seemed to contain what I and Timothy identified as red veins. There was no visible plumage in either of my observations. Most assuredly I am not claiming with certainty this animal was a living pterosaur, yet I must admit that it contained several features of Pteranodon. Since then I have interviewed approx. a dozen eyewitnesses to similar flying creatures. I have traveled to some locations where they were seen very recently. After making some observations that collaborated with the accounts I was given, I am convinced that some remnants of Pterosaurs still exist. I intend to publish the details of my research on Pterosaurs at a later date.”

The most recent nearby sighting took place in Nov. 2010 (Rainer, WA).

God Bless,

-Phillip [Phillip O'Donnell]

Hello, actually I was basically in my email account right now just hoping you would write. I am very interested in this matter and of course I would very much like to discuss it in my blog.
Actually I had heard of "Pterodactyl" reports originating in Michigan in the mid-1960s, a creature the size of a big eagle and with several of the features you noted, but I never was able to get a good complete report nor was I able to contact any of the witnesses directly. None of the reports described the head in any detail and none specified the long crest as you described.

I am going to assume you did NOT see the neck curved into an S-shape as I described in my blog, is this correct? Also, it seems that you saw this creature in heavy vegetation, is it possible that the appearance of some nearby branches or shadows from them exaggerated the apparent size of this crest? Forgive me, I have got to ask these questions, you know.

Best Wishes, Dale D.



Hello Dale,

I have also heard of a few reports from Michigan, but haven’t spoken with anyone directly as of yet. Yes, I do not recall the neck being in an S-shape. It may be been a bit longer than the illustration depicts, I certainly do remember seeing a neck. Thank you for asking questions, I’ve also thought about the illusion factor. It fails on two counts:

1. At the beginning of the sighting, its beak was facing us and we could see no crest, only after it turned its head we could see the crest.

2.With binoculars, Timothy watched it turn its head and the crest move with it.

Though the crest was the most distinguishing feature, it was not entirely isolated. Something was different about this animal from the usual Great Blue Herons that frequent our area. Fortunately there were no noticeable branches obscuring our view of the creature.

For the past several years I have kept “tabs” on the sightings of this animal in the Pacific Northwest. The investigations and reports are filed with all available information. As you might have already gathered, the creature has a 7-9 foot wingspread, a crest is mentioned in the majority of reports, some reports mention a long thin tail terminating in a diamond shaped flange and has bat-like wings with no feathers.

God Bless,

-Phillip


Dear Phillip,

If you have other information that would help, including sightings that described the tail such as you say, I would need to see those as well. However this is NOT anything like a Ropen, it is very much smaller and has a completely different "bird" attitude when perching. It is "Only" about the size of a big eagle.

Have you considered that an ivory-billed woodpecker at doubled the dimensions, elongated crest on head and an additionally elongating the tail, and at a more muted colouration (?female) might look very much like what you are describing? (see attached)

There are several kinds of different birds with crests on their heads, you know.

Best Wishes, Dale D.
Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker stretched out to double dimensions, at which the head and body are about 36-40 inches long, wingspan is 72 inches (7 feet) and the length of the head from beak to crest is perhaps 20 inches.

Comparison of (muted-colour) ivory-billed woodpecker X2 to sighting.

(To same absolute scale.)

I am not saying absolutely that this is what Phillip and Timothy saw, only to say that the sighting shows features which could be consistent with an ordinary bird rather than requiring a pterosaur as an explanation. As of Tuesday night, this is as far as our discussion has gone.

Best Wishes, Dale D..