Hoax Explanations for Living Pterosaurs Old Hoaxes of Pterodactyls  In 1856, according to The Illustrated London News  (newspaper) at the time, men working on a tunnel in France discovered a living pterosaur (by whatever name). In 1890, according to the Tombstone Epitaph  (newspaper) at the time, two Arizona ranchers shot a giant flying creature. What do these two accounts have in common? Each is now believed by many to be a hoax. But not all accounts of living pterosaurs can be easily dismissed as hoaxes. Consider each of the following reports: See if a hoax can adequately explain the details. Is it possible that some pterosaurs, at least one or two species, are still living? Scott Norman: Pterosaur Eyewitness  Two cryptozoologists have stated their opinions on Scott Norman and his associates: “I don’t think for a moment that Scott or his companions were pulling a hoax." “We can put the ‘hoax’ question to rest regarding veteran ropen hunters like Paul Nation, Garth Guessman, and David Woetzel.” “Ropen” on Creationwiki.org “Some critics have suggested that living-pterosaur investigators are dishonest: that they are engaged in a hoax. Perhaps the best rebuttal to that is in the reports of what the investigators have personally seen. While searching for living pterosaurs, and while promoting belief in them, investigators have traveled to Papua New Guinea intermittently from 1994 through early 2007. Not one of the investigators ever declared seeing anything similar to a pterosaur.” Whitcomb’s book Searching for Ropens Asserts Pterodactyl Reported in Papua New Guinea  “A study by an American cryptozoologist suggests that the ‘pterodactyl’ described by the World War II veteran Duane Hodgkinson was a real creature, of a species living in coastal areas of Papua New Guinea.” Introduction to the Indava Light Video Recording of 2006 (by Paul Nation)  . . . “the physicist Cliff Paiva, who analyzed the lights and found them to be anything but ordinary: Not meteors, airplanes, car headlights, lanterns, or campfires. And a hoax it was not.” More on the Indava-Light video recording analysis by Cliff Paiva, physicist:  “After sophisticated image-processing and analysis, the video does not appear to be anything produced by a hoax.” [The two lights in Papua New Guinea were real.] “Mr. Paiva also found that Plate 24-B shows that no image-pasting hoax created the two lights. In other words, Paul Nation videotaped these two lights; they were not created separately and then inserted onto the background.” [Mr. Nation did not perpetrate a hoax.] “This image processing showed what seemed to be air turbulence between the camera and the two lights (as would be expected of authentic video footage). This Plate 26 shows that there was no cutting and pasting as in a hoax: The video is genuine.” “Image processing also eliminates the ‘cut-and-paste’ hoax possibility.” See the Table of Contents for the online version of the scientific report. Who Plays a Hoax?  The person who has nothing to gain but much to loose from creating and maintaining a hoax is very unlikely to endure years of ridicule while still proclaiming that a pterosaur was observed. Several eyewitnesses come to mind who would not perpetrate a hoax: Duane Hodgkinson Brian Hennessy                      Patty Carson Susan Wooten                        Eskin Kuhn Nonfiction Cryptozoology  Book: Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition)  Two “pterodactyls” that were observed by the U. S. Marine Eskin Kuhn, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba  Eskin Kuhn sketched the two flying creatures soon after the sighting  Copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Jonathan Whitcomb