FT233

A man aged 29 was arrested on 27 December after he crashed his car into a streetlight pole in Wenatchee, Washington, at 11.20pm. Witnesses told police he had been driving down Wenatchee Avenue and drifted into the wrong lane, against oncoming traffic. When police asked him what caused the accident, he apparently replied with a single word: “pterodactyl”. A breathalyser test showed “a minimal amount of alcohol”, said Wenatchee police Sgt Cherie Smith, although – bearing in mind the hallucinations of giant winged things in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – it was not said if he was tested for other drugs. The unnamed man was treated and released at Central Washington Hospital. Metro, 31 Dec 2007; Wenatchee World (WA), 1 Jan 2008.

Most palæontologists believe pterodactyls (aka pterosaurs), an order of winged archosaurs, became extinct by the end of the Cretaceous period around 65 million years ago. They had long, thin hind legs, a long slender beak, large eyes, hair-covered body, claw-tipped leathery wings with which they glided rather than flew, and a neck held upright in flight with a head at right angles pointing forward. The story of a wounded pterodactyl killed by cowboys that appeared in the Epitaph news­paper in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1890 was almost certainly a tall tale.

Apart from sighting reports of the Thunderbird of Native American lore, the Jersey Devil, Mothman – and conventional-looking giant birds, such as those seen in Alaska in 2002 [FT166:6] – some modern reports of giant winged creatures in the US do sound like pterosaurs; and there are reports of flying sharp-toothed lizards with bat-like wings from many parts of Africa.

Following the 1975 discovery of a fossilised pterosaur skeleton with a wingspan of 51ft (15.5m) in Big Bend National Park, Texas, there was a run of sighting reports across Texas – although “big bird” sightings had been occurring in the state for at least 30 years. Witnesses in the early months of 1976 described enormous winged creatures with bat-like wings and a face like a cat’s. For example: on 24 February, three elementary schoolteachers, driving to work in San Antonio, saw a huge “bird” with a wingspan of 15–20ft (4.6–6m) or more swoop over their cars, no higher than a telephone line. “I could see the skeleton of this bird through the skin or feathers or whatever,” said Patricia Bryant, “and it stood out black against the background of the grey feathers.” David Rendon added that the creature glided rather than flew and that the huge wings had a bony structure. Later they found the “bird” illustrated in an encyclopædia, where it was captioned “pteranodon”.

Ken Gerhard, a cryptozoologist from San Antonio, Texas, who has written a book on giant winged creatures, suggests that some of them could be Argentinean pteratorns, (Argentavis magnificens), giant birds of prey with wingspans of over 25ft (7.6m), which survived much more recently than pterosaurs. “These are the surviving ancestors of modern condors and vultures,” he said. “They lived up to 6,000 years ago, we know for sure, in parts of North America. In fact, over 100 specimens have been recovered from the La Brea tar pits in California.” San Antonio (TX) Express, 28 July 2007.