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

Loren Coleman 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.


26 Responses to “Argentine Pterodactyl?”

  1. planettom responds:

    My initial reaction is that is looks like a chip in a windshield.

  2. ahab responds:

    To me it looks like a chip in the windshield of a car.

  3. shumway10973 responds:

    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).

  4. Greg102 responds:

    Good call on the chip in a windshield! Definitely looks that way.

  5. Insanity responds:

    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.

  6. austin_w responds:

    The Diario San Rafael Article’s translation is the following:

    “I stopped the car that I arrived in and see some two hundred meters away a strange object that floats above the lake’s water, so I decide to get out of the car and with my cell phone I take the first photograph. It was something that was suspended in the air, not more than one meter from the water, and in total silence” wrote this person in a handwritten note.
    Then it says that while he was trying to photograph it with his cell phone, the object began to issue a sort of humming, and as if blowing strongly on the water, shaking it, it began to ascend. It was then, while the object was rising, that he managed to take the photographs of the strange shilouette”
    As can be seen in the image (which due to be taken with a cell phone is of low resolution and size), the man had to use the camera’s zoom to close in on what was happening. After getting four images, the object disappeared in the sky.
    “I was not frightened by the apparition. Moreso, I liked it because they are things that I am interested in as I believe that there must be life on other planets” added the surprised neighbor.

    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

  7. red_pill_junkie responds:

    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.

  8. cryptidsrus responds:

    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.

  9. flame821 responds:

    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.

  10. Desert Dave responds:

    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.

  11. skimmer responds:

    It really looks like anything but a pterodactyl.

    I say let members of the UFO community have it.

  12. Dj Plasmic Nebula responds:

    my theories:

    Aircraft
    Unknown Bug
    Cryptid
    Pterosaur
    fake Photo

  13. jocen79 responds:

    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!

  14. jocen79 responds:

    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.

  15. alanborky responds:

    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.

  16. Fhqwhgads responds:

    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!

  17. LordBalto responds:

    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.

  18. norman-uk responds:

    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!

  19. elroyjetsn responds:

    If it’s not a crack in the windshield, it’s unfurtunate that it looks exactly like one.

  20. springheeledjack responds:

    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…

  21. YourPTR! responds:

    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.

  22. mystery_man responds:

    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.

  23. Labyrinth_13 responds:

    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!).

  24. XDisk responds:

    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?

  25. Insanity responds:

    @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.

  26. XDisk responds:

    @Insanity,

    Thank you for the clarification.

Sorry. Comments have been closed.

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