Pterosaurs in the Western United States

What do you call a live pterosaur? Pick one of the following:

• pterodactyl
• dinosaur bird
• flying dinosaur
• dragon
• ropen
• kongamato

We now have another word for what may be the same basic kind of flying creature: “monkey bird.”

Tacoma, Washington, Sightings

We live in the pacific northwest (near Tacoma, WA) on many acres of mostly tree covered land with a creek. We have seen and heard a strange nocturnal, batlike creature. This thing is huge, light grey, skin with no fur, feathers or scales . . .

It makes a sound like a jungle monkey or bird, thus we refer to it as the monkey bird . . . There were two of them together and they seemed fearless of me when they swooped down at me more than once and returned way up to the top of the highest trees. I couldn’t get a look at the faces or eyes, mainly the huge grey bat wings approximately 4′ span are what I could see.

This is not the first time someone has reported a pterosaur in the state of Washington, by any means:

Biology Professor Sees Possible Pterosaur

. . . flashing lights. I would have assumed that [they] were fireflies but we [don’t] have them in Washington. One of the flashes took off from a big tree overhanging the river and made a kind of flashing coma turn. Many flashes were parallel to the river. . . . there were many fish . . . Prime hunting grounds for fish-eating birds. Only these things fish at night with bioluminescence. At first I thought I was just seeing shooting stars, but they were all parallel to the river and close to the horizon. Next I noticed that when the cloud cover came in, I could still see the flashes. They were under the cloud cover.

Pterosaur in Irvine, California

A huge pterosaur-like creature, in daylight, in August of 2007, flew into the wildlife refuge, crossing the road going north from the university campus (road on the west side of the sanctuary), and according to the anonymous eyewitness, the length of the flying creature was close to the width of the road (30 feet).

Dinosaur Bird

Of course knowing a “dinosaur bird” flys over our heads should be shocking. But what about generations of teachings of extinction of dinosaurs and pterosaurs? Learning that supposedly extinct things are very much alive, well, that is quite shocking by itself. Nevertheless, we need to examine these reports with an open mind.