Argentine Pterodactyl?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 11th, 2009
The UK’s Telegraph has published images being widely circulated in Spanish language media (here, here) of what reportedly is being called a pterodactyl or a ufo.
Says the Telegraph:
“The object, photographed by a fisherman near San Rafael over an artificial lake called El-Nihuil, was, according the the newspaper Los Andes, witnessed by more than one person. Mr Pino, 44, from San Rafael, fishes on the lake and told Los Andes that he often goes down to the water to watch the swans. On Saturday last week [September 5, 2009], however, he noticed a strange object hovering over the lake and took a series of photographs on his mobile phone.”
Why a kite or an airplane is not being considered escapes me.
The Telegraph proclaims:
“Members of UFO and cryptozoology communities are both claiming ownership of the object with some saying that it could be an unknown creature or a Pterodactyl – a flying dinosaur that last lived on Earth 66 million years ago.”
Okay, a couple things. Pterodactyls were not “flying dinosaurs.” Furthermore, as a member of the cryptozoology community, I firmly do not claim ownership of this object. It looks fixed, mechanical, and does not appear to be any kind of living species of cryptid known from the literature. I don’t know what it is, but it does not look like a biological animate object.
Photos by Diario San Rafael
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
My initial reaction is that is looks like a chip in a windshield.
To me it looks like a chip in the windshield of a car.
The first thing I noticed in that first blurry picture is that there is something running from the tip of a wing, behind the thing and touching the tip of the other wing. Whatever that is, I do not think it is alive. The lower pictures look more like those hovering things that the UFO community has been pondering for a while. Wait something just popped into my head. There are some people down that direction that use kites to fish with. I forget where these people live, but all this thing needs is a line heading for the water and a certain spider web at the end of that string (this particular spider web is more than 10x’s as strong as a black widow web).
Good call on the chip in a windshield! Definitely looks that way.
The first photo actually reminds me of Superman, but I don’t think he is in Argentina.
It seems, photos 2, 3 and 4 are the same, just different crops and zooms of photo 2.
In the photos, its orientation does not seems to change, its points appear in the same position in each photo. Its kinda hard to see that in photo 1, but the horizontal point in photo 2 lines up with the shoreline.
It does resemble how a zoomed in cracked windshield would appear. The only difference is that from photo 1 and the others is that in the first, its appears close to the shore, and the others, out over open water.
*note: I ran one of the Spanish articles through Google’s lang tool and the article says he had stopped the car and got out to take the photos, so unsure about cracked windshield. He also described it emitting a buzzing noise.
But I agree that the object itself seems inanimate, there is no obvious changes in its appearance that any flying creature would show. Seems to have an odd shape for a flying vehicle too, not at all streamlined. I don’t think it was Superman though.
The Diario San Rafael Article’s translation is the following:
I am interested in cryptozoolgy in my country (Argentina) but this seems some sort of fabrication or UFO related event. It is not an Argentine pterodactyl. (by the way, Argentine as opposed to Argentinian is the way we like to be named)
Austin V. W.
Buenos Aires – Argentina
I’m hating myself for writing this, but… it kinda reminds me of the infamous drones that were all the buzz among UFO websites a couple of years ago.
It does look like a chip on a windshield. Admittedly.
Not calling “fake” on this just yet, though.
IF this is real, it looks more Ufo-related than Pterodactyl.
I agree with the others who say it looks like a chip. Since he states he was out of the car when he took it I have to guess there was either a scratch/chip or piece of something on the lens to his cell phone’s camera.
Could be a fishing kite….
Chip on the windshield is a good observation, this also helps explain the object size in relation to background etc. If it is in the distance over the water it is huge. A windshield chip near the camera lens seems most plausible.
It really looks like anything but a pterodactyl.
I say let members of the UFO community have it.
my theories:
Aircraft
Unknown Bug
Cryptid
Pterosaur
fake Photo
Boom, it is a windshield crack!!! lol, because i don’t see how anything even a kite could take off with those skinny wings, it would more resemble a rooftop antenna. Nice optical illusion though!
I also wanted to add that you could see the same dirt marks around the object in both pictures, further confirming it’s a windshield crack.
I thought the first one might be a picture of a bird after photoshopping.
The second one, though, had glass-like gleams all over it, hence I was trying to turn it into a photoshopped broken bottle.
But then I come on here and – bingo! – there’s the answer: a crack in a sheet of glass.
I hate to say this guys, but this is clearly an uncloaked Shadow vessel, about 250 years too early! Why, we haven’t even formally met the Centauri, let alone the Minbari!
The chipped windshield theory implies that the guy either intentionally photographed a chipped windshield (why?) or only discovered the object *after* he had taken the images. But why would he be photographing in that direction if he didn’t see something to begin with? There’s nothing there! So we have to assume he saw something and then photographed it, as he says. Keep in mind that it was seen by more than one person. All in the same car with the chipped windshield??? Come on you skeptics, you can do better than this. What’s peculiar is that he didn’t head off in the direction of the object and try to determine what it was.
Probably a small unmanned surveillance craft. Probably experimental. These are now becoming relatively commonplace and bound to raise questions. Used by the police and military.
That is probably, but could be part of a UFO’s tool kit!
Doesnt look much like a kite!
If it’s not a crack in the windshield, it’s unfurtunate that it looks exactly like one.
If that’s a pterodactyl…
a) no wonder they went extinct…
b) I’m joining the Skeptical Inquirer
c) it’s time to have the crack in my windshield fixed…
…take your pick…
From the eyewitness description, sounds to be either a UFO or some type of radio controlled (not sure how big this thing was?) or experimental aircraft. Doesn’t sound like a living animal, cryptid or otherwise.
LordBalto- He could have been taking pictures of the ocean or the sky, the landscape in general. Why would he have to be taking a picture of any specific object? Why must we assume that he saw some object and decided to photograph it? There is something there! The sea, the sky, maybe something else cropped out. Why could he not have been sitting or riding in a car and decided to take a snap of the scenery? There is no reason why he had to have intentionally taken the picture of a chipped windshield.
I think he took a photo of scenery through a windshield that happened to be chipped. The reason the object seems to move is because the car moved, so perhaps it was the passenger that took the shot. Maybe he knew that the chip was ther, maybe he didn’t. Who knows? I know I have taken many photos that had a finger or reflection or whatnot in them and didn’t realize it at the time. He also might not have even been thinking about the chip in the windshield when he took the photo of the scenery beyond. I know if I saw a beautiful ocean view, I wouldn’t be focusing on chips and splattered insects on the glass. He may have known the chip was there, but took the photo of the ocean anyway, possibly because it was the only window the view could be seen out of and it was worth taking the photo even with the chip. There are a wide range of scenarios.
I will say that assumptions about the motives behind the photograph are a fairly flimsy reason to accept this as photographic proof of surviving pterosaurs or interstellar travelers compared to the fact that it does look exactly like a cracked windshield which are quite known to exist. That is really hard to ignore. It’s a question of burden of proof here. Those who think it is a crack in the windshield are making a perfectly rational observation. There would have to be pretty solid evidence to demonstrate that it could not be a crack in the windshield, not the other way around.
In the end, this one would be fairly easy to check up on. Just find the car in question and see if there is a crack in the windshield. End of story. I’d be more than happy to be wrong on this, but it is what it is.
I have to say, I’m pretty suspicious of this one and think it should be viewed critically. The story we are being fed does not really fit into what is being seen in the photograph.
I will add myself to those who are voting for a windshield crack. (Most synchronically and quite annoyingly, I just had a well-timed acorn do the exact same thing to my own windshield yesterday, grrrrr!).
Definitely a windshield crack. Nice try though.
I do have one question though. Loren states that Pterodactyls were not “flying dinosaurs.”
Why wouldn’t a pterodactyl be considered a flying dinosaur?
@XDisk – Dinosaurs are restricted to terrestrial vertebrates with an upright stance. Pterosaurs belong to their own group, Pterosauria. Ichthyosaur, plesiosaurs do not belong in the same as dinosaurs either. Despite all of them being considered large reptiles, they are classified differently.
@Insanity,
Thank you for the clarification.