Pterosaur Sighting in Slidell, Louisiana
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on December 26th, 2013
A recent sighting of a living pterosaur.
On October 10, 2013, I received a phone call from a lady in Slidell, Louisiana. She had seen a flying creature just two hours earlier, a frightening experience, and had received no help from the police or the Wildlife-Fisheries. Two days later, we spoke again by phone, with more time for questions and answers.
She was outside when she heard the strange sound, a loud crow-like call, but when she looked overhead, she was shocked to see something very unlike a crow. The creature was about the size of a normal bird but it was far from normal. It had no feathers but did have small teeth in its beak.
She also saw a long neck and something like long hair or something suggesting that. The flying creature ”looked prehistoric.” The lady started wondering if she were hallucinating, but took no chances as she quickly left the area, afraid the creature might bite her.
How often I have received similar reports from eyewitnesses! Featherless flying creatures unlike any bat—those are what people see before they sent me an email or give me a phone call. I seldom give an overall credibility estimate for any particular sighting, yet I am sure of pterosaur non-extinction, having seen so many reports that each appear over 50% likely to have been from an encounter with some species of that type flying creature. At the end of 2012, I had a compilation of 128 such reports, with details about many factors, and each one I esteemed to have been probably from an encounter with a living pterosaur.
~ Jonathan David Whitcomb
Live Pterosaur
Encounter eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs in the United States. Live “pterodactyls?” In the United States? Many scientists have long assumed all pterosaurs died millions of years ago. Now take a whirlwind tour of many years of investigations in cryptozoology, and prepare for a shock: At least two species of pterosaurs have survived, uncommon, not so much rare as widely, thinly distributed.
Nocturnal pterosaurs have always lived among us, but hidden by something. Enter now the realm of a new branch of cryptozoology, a branch overshadowed by the dogma of a “universal extinction.” How did scientists miss living pterosaurs? Get the answers here, hidden secrets about how these amazing flying creatures of the night have gone mostly unreported: Until recently, almost nobody would listen to eyewitnesses; but for the past seven years many of them have been interviewed by the author of this book.
Many modern pterosaurs are much larger than any bat, many with long tails, many with head crests. What about news headlines? How did these creatures avoid media attention? Get the answers from years of work by American cryptozoologists.
The old “fruit bat” explanation for reports of pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea–that bat idea has now been shot down; the tail length of the larger Rhamphorhynchoid-like flying creatures has been estimated at a minimum of ten feet and a maximum of over twenty feet. More shocking, these giant long-tailed flying creatures are not confined to the southwest Pacific: They are seen in the contiguous United States of America. Most pterosaurs in North America, however, are smaller, with many wingspan estimates at less than fifteen feet; nevertheless, how shocking!
What amazing encounters! In California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and many other states, eyewitnesses have seen strange featherless creatures flying overhead. These are not bats; most have long tails and are bigger than any bat. Dive into eyewitness testimonies; compare sightings through the author’s detailed analysis. Third edition, nonfiction.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Well you know I never say never. Just not the way a scientist looks at the world, saying never.
ok… not disputing she saw something.
but a pterosaur?
a dinosaur?
she saw something she immediately could not explain…. natural reaction? dinosaur.
I mean when you think about it like this, it makes no sense to jump to such a big conclusion so quickly.
there’s variation in humans… weight, height, color, looks etc.
why couldn’t it be a normal animal, perhaps one thats not as plentiful in the area but that has a different look?
I’d try to rule out any normal explanation first before making a “grand canyon” ish jump.
And its not even April 1.
Why not, we have bigfoot, skunk apes, Oko Pogo, Champ, the Jersey Devil, Lizard Men, and Wolfmen already running around, so why would anyone question the existence of these?
Why question? Because it’s an absurd conclusion to say a living pterosaur was observed. Also, logic:
* someone is making a claim, the burden of proof is on them
* witnesses get many observations completely wrong, eyewitness testimony is not reliable
* many birds can look like “pterosaurs”
* there is no evidence, NONE, that pterosaurs survived to modern times
* there is PLENTY of evidence that they became extinct, completely, over 60 million years ago. That’s a very long time.
* animals that fly and are large would be impossible to miss and would be known to science.
Also note: Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs. All pterosaurs are not pterodactyls.
If you want to believe stuff like this with such flimsy evidence, go ahead, but it’s nonsense. There are reasonable conclusions that fit MUCH better, it’s just that people really want there to be living pterosaurs. There are no living pterosaurs or decendents of pterosaurs.
william, we DO question all of them.
i question the existence of all of them, as does probably the majority of the public.
the evidence for most of them is suspect and mostly based on eyewitness story with little to no evidence for us to look at other than their stories.
although there’s more “stuff” about bigfoot as its more likely to be real than the rest.
aside from the mansi photo, what real solid evidence do we have of champ?
skunk apes i’ve heard were released chimps after hurricane andrew… down here we have several ape theme parks… monkey world etc that got hit by andrew, sending all the animals out in the wild (i.e. the everglades)
COULD possibly explain skunk apes… perhaps?
It is possible that they are seeing a molting Great Blue Heron. They live all along the Mid to Southern East Coast and they are gray, not really blue. They are quite large and can have a wing span of almost six feet. I have them right in my backyard as my neighbor has a fish pond. On the ground they cannot be mistaken for anything but a large heron/wading bird. In the air they can appear very different and unsettling. They fly with very long fluid strokes, at a very leisurely pace. They also fold their long necks under their head and do look quite prehistoric. Now one would say – don’t people who live in these areas know what a heron would look like? Yes they would, but just as people find a mangy fox or raccoon strange and eerie, a haggard looking molting heron may appear out of the ordinary. I have to feel that the teeth observation was an extrapolation from seeing something that wasn’t immediately recognizable.
FYI; as of this date, there have been no flying dinosaurs discovered.
It’s Ogopogo by the way and forget about the Jersey Devil. I lived in new Jersey for 21 years and have been to and through the Pine barrens. No Devil, just folklore.
Almost everyone has seen a blue heron, or ten. Or a hundred. They are not seeing herons. They are seeing the real deal: pterosaurs. These people wouldn’t sell you short. Stop selling them short.
Yo Shill; Chill.
The Ceolecanth was an extinct fish known only from it’s fossils…(supposedly extinct for 60 million years)except for fishermen who occasionally landed live specimens. They ended up in local fish markets once in a while….no-one seemed too upset about it…until a white scientist saw it…he about lost his mind.
Someday the same may occur with pterosaurs, sasquatch, raptor like dinos in the southwest USA etc…
Don’t set yourself up to so easily be knocked off your perch.
Get it? Perch! that was pretty funny on my part I thought…
To you scoffers, I would believe this any day of the week over some nutty woman’s claim of being captured by a family of bigfoot who “told” her they were escaped prisoners from a spaceship who somehow were let loose on earth. Yet, after keeping this alleged event secret since 1970, she suddenly decides on a whim to call this information in or a radio talk show. It seemed there were some here actually believing that malarky. So, yes, I would definitely consider these sightings about a thousand times more believeable than that, and yet even so, highly doubtful.
The coelacanth (which is the correct spelling) is not a great example to use when proving that pterosaurs may still exist – in Louisiana. The Latimera, 2 species, were able to survive relatively unchanged because their habitat in the ocean remained relatively unchanged for them and what pelagic changes that did occur were not enough to overcome them. They are in fact one the most endangered groups of animals that exist today.
Pterosaurs, in Louisiana today on the other hand, would have overwhelming changes in the their habitat in both climate and competition. Not even the largest pterosaur would be able to compete with today’s modern raptors.
A pair of Bald or Golden Eagles could easily dispatch a slow flying pterosaur with membranes for wings. Note that all North American bats are nocturnal where owls are their only real threat. The huge biomass of modern birds leaves very little room for domestic pterosaurs.
Could pterosaurs still survive in some form? It’s possible, but not in Louisiana.
Everyone has seen foxes, raccoons and coyotes too, yet the mangy ones are always regarded as “something else” until caught and proven to be otherwise.
It’s coelacanth and I don’t need to “chill”. I prefer reality to fantasy when it comes to nature. YMMV.
“We have not evolved to understand or comprehend reality. For understanding we need science.” – M. Crislip
I’ll never understand why the Coelacanth is always brought out during these arguments. Can you not see the difference between an deep sea dwelling fish that lives in areas remote from western science and a large flying reptile soaring above a state in one of the most developed nations of the planet? Really? Or how about the mountain gorilla? A sub-species of a species belonging to a genus described in 1847. From the relatively uninhabited jungles of Africa. For some reason that is somehow comparable to a speculative genus of large primate walking bipedal across the entire North American continent. And that is fine if you believe in pterosaurs or sasquatch, I’m not arguing against that. I’m simply saying these “darlings of cryptozoology” are poor comparisons for these unsubscribed cryptid animals and that they do not validate the science of cryptozoology in their existence.
All right. Maybe it’s too much cheer, but I REALLY did not understand what you were trying to say.
Yo, I think The Coelecanth is a GREAT example!…Why? Because people live right on shore from them and are FISHERMEN-so, the fish had a hard time eluding detection in that situation.
And I don’t like the term “essentially unchanged”
They are unchanged allright?! Get over it.
Who says the pterosaurs are not nocturnal? Maybe they ARE and are only occasionally caught out in the daylight.
As a matter of fact many reports of these creatures are at night-I am refering to the bio-luminescence reports here.
Also maybe they ARE rare because they do have a hard time competing with eagles, hawks and falcons.
Plus; the location; quite swampy-many low hanging trees and tangle that eagles probably avoid where a critter like this might thrive.
Besides, who says a pterosaur might not be a formidable foe for an eagle? Lets see they both have claws, one has a sharp beak-the other a beak full of sharp teeth…toss-up=’cept for speed probably-Eagle…but hey, maybe they don’t like this kinda food.
Could be poison for all we know. Some frogs develop poison from their diets- that keeps other animals away.
I don’t know how else to say it. I take it by cheer you mean alcohol and if that is the case I dunno…read it again when sober? Basically I’m just saying that these recent discoveries like the mountain gorilla and coelacanth are poor analogies in the attempt to validate the existence of unknown animals like sasquatch and pterosaurs. You cannot compare the discovery of the coelacanth in an undeveloped part of the world, found in deep ocean waters to a pterosaur flying around the southern United States. I basically said that same exact thing already but maybe repeating it will help.
Who’s talking to who here? Anyway;
I’ll just take on the last statement; that the southern united states can’t be compared to the “undeveloped” part of the word where the Coelecanth was first caught…
Really? I can:
I’ve been down south and gone up and down the highways of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee….not to mention parts of eastern Texas that are incredibly thick with raggedy forestland.
5 minutes outside of almost any town down there and you are in pretty thick rough stuff, and in a lot of areas this also includes swamps with 13 foot prehistoric looking reptiles that’ll eat your—if given half the chance.
Not to mention several poisonous snakes and now even non indigenous species, because the climate and terrain is so favorable that these things are thriving. Jaguars, cougars, red wolves, wild boar, black bears, jaguardini’s (or is it ocelots?), coyotes, even escaped (from Tarzan film productions etc.) monkeys are making a living in the wilds of Florida…and other parts of the southern united states…Jaguars have been found in Arizona now! It’s like an undeveloped world down south I tell ya! hee, hee…yee-haw!
There are plenty of valid opinions in the room.
Even if some are drinking…I don’t drink personally.
Sasquatch;
Some eagle pterosaur comparisons;
1. Eagles…some of the fastest birds and animals on the planet.
Strong wing structure. Very maneuverable for a large bird.
Eagles routinely engage in aerial dogfights with themselves and other birds.
Large talons at the end of powerful legs. Fully bipedal on ground.
Incredible vision. Among, perhaps the keenest, vision on the planet.
Enormous, hooked, sharp beak for tearing tough hides.
Still formidable when on the ground. Able to run on long strong legs.
Fully adapted to all climates from arctic to tropical.
2. Pterosaurs…relatively slow flyers when compared to eagles.
Membrane wing design very fragile. Far less maneuverable than feathered eagles.
Reduced claws at the end of reduced legs. Probably slowly quadrupedal on ground.
Semi-binocular vision.
Varied dental arrangements, no hooked beak.
Very awkward when on the ground.
Adapted to climate of it’s particular era. Mostly sub-tropical to warm-temperate.
A pair of modern Golden Eagles would make very short work of a pterosaur that would never them coming.
Sasquatch: First off, you’re wrong about the coelacanth avoiding detection. Local fishermen already knew about the fish, they just didn’t know its significance. The only people it eluded were western scientists who weren’t even in the area looking for it. Since North America is a highly developed western nation the discovery of any new species (especially something like a pterosaur) would be fairly easy and not go unnoticed. I don’t think local fishermen in 1938 South Africa would make a big stink about what was to them, just another fish. Maybe those rural southerners don’t think pterosaurs are a big deal either, they probably catch and eat them all the time.
I’m not going to sit here and compare pterosaurs to eagles because the concept that pterosaurs are even still alive is laughable. Is that what this is going to be? A this versus that discussion? There is zero evidence to support the existence of these animals in modern times and I’m sorry but even in the rural south, people are gonna see ’em and we would have known they were there in short order. Not only is there no evidence for their modern existence but pterosaurs are completely absent from the fossil record past the Cretaceous extinction. Speculation about bioluminescence or nocturnal habits is just that…speculation. Again, no evidence. Bioluminescence is not even known to exist in any tetropod extinct or extant. A preference for swampy environments that eagles would avoid? Is this for real? Are you trolling? Plus, we have a perfectly good answer for these “pterosaur sightings”…they’re the birds flying around with 6-10′ wingspans! Species already documented by science.
Some of you guys really need to narrow your focus on what cryptids are worth your time and which simply aren’t there. Anyone interested in cryptozoology should scrutinize the evidence and think logically. Also learn something about the animal you think your cryptid is. How easy it is for someone to believe pterosaurs are still alive…when they don’t know a damn thing about pterosaurs. Learn about you subject and figure out how to distinguish what is worth your time and what is bull.
Maslo; First of all I didn’t say coelecanths avoided detection.(period) I said no-one was upset about them until a white scientist saw one in a fish market. Re-read my posts more carefully. Now something you said;
“People in the rural south would’ve seen ’em and we would know know they were there in short order”.
That’s what the reports are! People seeing them!
Ever think of that?
You choose not to believe them…your right.
I think YOU are trolling to try to exert your superior knowledge on us poor crypto leaning miscreants to pump up your ego or something-I’ve been on this site for years and years son-get use to it.
Now, to the guy before you; (Cryptokellie)
Why haven’t eagles decimated the populations of herons,
pelicans and vultures etc…?
These are all much slower moving & less equipped for battle than the raptors…plus they are very large targets.
Seems to me there are many more of these type birds out there than the raptors.
I see large swarms of American white pelicans where I live and also sometimes large flocks of buzzards.
Why don’t the raptors just wipe ’em all out?
Pretty easy lunch, breakfast and dinner-who needs mice or rabbits?
BTW I stand by my contention that swampy areas would be
conducive for smaller pterosaur types…they could hop from tree to tree and get close to the water and pick off fish and not have far to go to regain cover from dive bombing raptors…just a scenario for you to ponder.
I never said that eagles would wipe out pterosaurs. I’m saying in the long run scheme of things that eagles, along with the other birds you mention, would out compete pterosaurs and they would dwindle. It is not the objective one specie to wipe out any other, it is the objective of every species to survive as modern-type birds have proven for about 60 million years. Notice that except for bats, there are no other vertebrate flyers. A pterosaur would easily succumb to a hunting pair of large eagles, if they chose to do so.
Pterosaur species were in great decline during the late Cretaceous and were being out competed by birds. The largest forms were almost reduced to scavenger status and the rest were piscivores dwelling along shorelines. None of them passed the KT boundary.
Eagles do not compete with herons which are wading birds and pelicans which are low flying and inhabit shallow water shorelines. There are pelagic pelicans as well but they don’t share habitat with eagles. Vultures are the only true full-time scavengers, something eagles are generally not. The real fact is that eagles are the apex predators of the avian food chain and have no real competitors, except for other eagles. They are supreme hunters of both small and large prey and will also harass other birds to drop their catch and take it for themselves.
But we’re getting far afield here as there are no pterosaurs alive today…at least in Louisiana.
How odd. I have always assumed the vast Southwest deserts were a more likely ptero-habitat! Snakes and jackrabbits. Who knows?
Sasquatch: You’re right, I misinterpreted your post. As for what I said…”People in the rural south would’ve seen ‘em and we would know know they were there in short order” Place emphasis on “we would KNOW they were there in short order”. By that I mean, we would have hard evidence. Someone telling me they saw a pterosaur is not good enough and if you think it is I have a story about a Tyrannosaurus that wandered through my yard and ate my dog…you must hear it really. Do I have evidence? No, but you can take my word for it that there is a real live Cretaceous mega predator in my yard because I said I saw it.
You believe pterosaurs live in swamps in the rural south. Well it sounds like you have a place to start looking. You even might know what they eat and their habits! Good luck, I hope you find one but I highly doubt you will. You might be better off looking for an ivory billed woodpecker while you’re down there. Something actually worth the effort.
And when you make bogus assumptions about bioluminescence and a preference for swampy environments yeah, that is so outlandish I have to assume you’re trolling.
Also, I’ve been here for years and years (2008 I think), get use to it son.
cryptokekellie: you conducted a personal head count?
I have seen herons, eagles, hawks, buzzards and white pelicans in the same vicinity where I live.
I agree that eagles etc. have done better than pterosaurs in recent times…if there really are any ptero’s left they are certainly very rare.
But I remain open minded.
The author of the above article claims to have received a hundred and twenty something eye witness reports from this country.
I think this deserves some serious attention.
I can’t help but notice a recent influx of general snottiness here; I have perhaps been guilty of it myself. My resolution for 2014 is to try and avoid it. I may not always succeed, but I will endeavor to persevere, as Chief Dan George related the Government Man told the Indians to do, in THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES.
Who’s with me?
Goodfoot:
Not quite sure what the head count comment means…
Sasquatch:
I wasn’t discounting that any one had seen something strange. I think they should think more of what actually is out there to see before extrapolating an unusual and perhaps out of place bird into a pterosaur sighting. I will say that one point that this lady’s story has going for it is that the creature she saw was small-normal bird sized. The sightings of huge pterosaurs for me is always questionable. A large Pteranodon or larger
Quetzalcoatlus sized flying animal could not escape detection. Millions of people see millions of birds every day and a large pterosaur would be seen by many and collected. A pair of nesting Bald Eagles live by the lake 1/4 mile from my house. There are avid bird-watchers viewing and photographing them every day from the road. The number of bird watchers nationwide wide is enormous and certainly would have discovered if a breeding group of large pterosaurs were around. A hoax is not out of the question either…see the Halloween Prank video presented in the PA Flying Humanoid article above. Many amateur aviation buffs are operating all manner of contrivances and having great success. In my area, Kite Day is a big deal and all kinds of flying things are buzzing around the park much to the delight of all attending.
Believe me, no one would want there to be a living pterosaur more than I. I have sculpted many of them and they are just incredible when you get down to the nuts and bolts – so to speak.
Wow. I knew roughly half of them carried nuts – but BOLTS?