While real cryptozoologists believe in the existence of dinosaur and/or pterosaur like creatures living in remote areas of the world today, which are all believed to be direct descendants of the original dinosaurs and pterosaurs that have died out 65 million years ago, creationists, who believe in the fabled young earth as well as believe in the existence of the creatures, shamelessly exploit them in a desperate attempt to prove their young earth idiocy to be true and evolution and "millions of years" to be false. In their idiot blind reason, if it's either a big, huge, monstrous bird that's bigger than any other bird known or a big, large snake with bat or bird wings flying in the air, it's a pterosaur, never mind all the details saying it's not. Creationists heavily rely only on science fiction and its influence in pop culture for knowledge on dinosaurs and pterosaurs and cite myths, legends, and alleged sightings of cryptic animals they fabricate themselves as evidence and proof of their young earth idiocy of humans seeing live dinosaurs and pterosaurs, while deliberately ignoring the fossil record that's completely void of pterosaur fossils dated above the Mesozoic Strata as well as human and pterosaur fossil remains remains mixed together.
In this article from "Answers" in Genesis, entitled Thunderbirds: Did the American Indians see 'winged dinosaurs'? (article also here on the Creation Ministries International website), however, Creationist, Bill Johnson (who actually works as a mailman!) claims that they did saw pterosaurs. If so, then they only saw fossilized skeletal remains of pterosaurs, not live ones.
Knowing Johnson, however, he would rather ignore the true anatomy of pterosaurs based on fossil evidence, the fact that pterosaurs are not birds nor are they related to them, and make it as if they did saw live pterosaurs according to his idiot article he made up in which he fabricated a few Native American monster legends that mainly involves flying monsters such as the legendary ThunderBird, a massive bird with huge wings, eyes that shoots out peals of lightning, and flaps its wings to create a sound similar to a clap of thunder.
Johnson started out his article by recalling the time he went and saw the movie Jurassic Park III, where in the movie there was a scene where one of the characters was seized and carried up in the air by a large Pteranodon that was given teeth in its beak through Ingen's DNA splicing experiments despite it having a name that means "winged and toothless".
He says the scene, where Dr Grant and his team of explorers struggles to find a lost family member, who got lost in the park, were being pursued by the giant Pteranodon while making their way out of the birdcage section of the park, had him on the edge of his seat.
Then he says,
"Of course, the standard long-age scenario of our evolution-riddled culture says that such encounters between pterosaurs and man have never happened, because all flying reptiles, along with the dinosaurs, allegedly became extinct some 65 million years before man came on the scene."
There's no "allegedly" to it. It has happened due to findings of valid scientific evidence that confirms such a concept of "all flying reptiles, along with the dinosaurs, (sic) allegedly became extinct some 65 million years before man came on the scene", valid evidence Johnson would rather pretend to not exist. Otherwise, we would have seen post-Mesozoic pterosaur fossils and a mixbag of human and pterosaur remains in the fossil record. But none are found.
He then goes on,
"However, my research on the Indians of North and South America permits a different conclusion."
He never did any research. What he really did is made up false, twisted stories and just mimic his gurus who fabricate, twist, and distort Native American folklore to fit into their dogmatic beliefs. What he calls "research" that's not truly research at all.
He gives out the list of fabrications and examples of creationists branding any feathered bird-like monster a pterosaur out of desperation to prove their young earth lies true, never mind the fact that pterosaurs have no feathers, no bird-like bodies, possess wings each supported by one long finger, and lots of hair.
First off, he fabricates the claim involving the Pima Indians' story about a giant bird monster that lived in caves up in the mountains and devour many members of the tribe.
"While exploring the Sonora Desert (Located in Arizona) on 12 February 1699, Captain Juan Mateo Manje, accompanied by Jesuits Eusebio Francisco Kino and Adamo Gil, was told by the Pima Indians that a giant monster lived in a nearby cave in days past. It was a menace to the Pima because it would fly around and catch as many Indians as it could eat. One day, after the creature had eaten its fill, some Indians followed it back to its cave. When it was sound asleep they closed the entrance of the cave with wood collected for this occasion; then set it on fire. The creature couldn't escape and, growling fiercely, died as it was asphyxiated by the flames and smoke. The Pima recalled another story of killing a similar creature in the pueblo of Oposura (also in Arizona) by using the same strategy. We are told the bones of this creature were found during the pacification of Mexico by General Don Hernándo Cortés and were sent to Spain."
Next, Johnson fabricates the story about an orphaned boy who successfully kills another bird-like monster,
"Stories of giant man-eating birds are common among many other Indian tribes of the American Southwest. The Yaqui Indians spoke of a giant bird that lived on the hill of Otan Kawi. Every morning it would fly out to capture its human prey. After many deaths, a young boy who lost his family to this bird killed the creature with a bow and arrows."
It isn't just "bows and arrows" he used to kill the monster, he hid in a hole and used the bow and arrows to bring down the monster and, then, used a club to finish it off just after it crashed landed on a tree stump. According to the full context of the story, when the hero killed the bird monster, its feathers became the birds of the air and its flesh became the animals of the field and predators of what the people call the creature "the claw." Before that, the only kind of animals that lived with humans at that time, was only the hoofed types such as horses and deer. All that was left was its bones the hero showed to his people as proof that he killed the monster. The warriors returned to the village where a great celebration was held. But the boy warn everyone that even though they no longer faced threats from the sky, from now on they are to watch out for "the animals of the claw" which are the predators who were morphed from the flesh of the big clawed bird. (Source: Adrienne Mayor's Fossil Legends and the First Americans, p. 101-103)
These stories must have been invented based upon actual sightings of fossilized remains of condors, mammoths, camels, bison, and horses all dated to the Pleistocene epoch found inside caves way up in the mountains of the Southwestern areas of the US. The area must have been a large Teratornis nesting ground where these large birds would catch and carry their prey the size of a deer up to their nesting site and feed them to their offspring. Despite Johnson's idiot assertions, The Native Americans in ancient times really did had an idea that there was once a time before man. A deep, ancient time where large massive monsters once roamed the land before there were any men on earth.
Next, Johnson makes claims of an alleged sighting of a Native American rock art drawing of a Pterosaur,
"In Utah's San Raphael Swell there is other suggestive evidence for man's coexistence with pterosaurs. In the Black Dragon Canyon there is a beautiful pictograph of a pterosaur. The Indians of the Swell apparently saw a bird-like creature with enormous wings, a tail, a long neck and beak, and a vertical head crest, which some flying reptiles sported."
The source of the claim is right here.
However Glen Kuban, who closely observed the alleged drawing, concludes,
"However, this seems to be a case of special pleading at best. The "beak" on the pictograph is relatively small and simple, appearing at least as bird-like as pterosaur-like. The head crest seems moot, as any number of birds have them. The wings are appear "wavy" and highly stylized, and thus don't particularly match a bird or pterosaur. The legs are simply drawn, without showing individual toes. In short, there is nothing about the image to suggest a pterosaur over a bird." (Source here.)
This is nothing more than a distorted image of a crested bird, with a narrow tail, flapping its wings, not a pterosaur. There are no signs of fingers found on its wings and the wings in the image do appeared wavy. Pterosaur wings are not wavy at all.
Next in the next segment called Thunderbirds, Johnson fabricates the legendary story of the Thunderbird, including this story you'll find in a classic 1959 dinosaur book, Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals by Darlene Geis. Note how Johnson fabricated the tale to leave out the other discovery made by the hunters - the discovery of what they believed to be "thunderstones" which are in fact fossilized seashells that were found alongside of the fossil remains of the Pteranodon.
According to many stories about the Thunderbird, The Thunderbird is said to waged many battle against killer whales (or water monsters). Johnson mentioned this in his claims as well. However, the stories about the Thunderbird's battle with the killer whales may have been based on sightings of Pterosaurs and marine reptiles of the Mesozoic Era whose fossils have been found in areas such as in Kansas, where there was once a large inland sea known as the Niobrara covering much of North America during the Cretaceous.
Another Native American myth, which Johnson fabricates, is about the famous legend of the Thunderbird's battle with a killer whale on Vancouver Island whom he claims,
"The Indians of Vancouver Island say that they feared being in the presence of killer whales when they were plentiful, because of their frail canoes. Knowing thunderbirds to be their enemy, the Indians painted these birds on their bodies and homes to try to secure protection."
Vancouver Island is famous for the story of the Thunderbird and the Whale. However, these stories were all made up as a metaphor to explain the cause of great subduction zone earthquakes and flooding often occurring on the coast of Cascadia (Source here.) The art was not made up for protection, but to celebrate this famous folklore. This is what Johnson does not want his gullible followers to know about.
Next, Johnson fabricates the Native American legend about the Piasa,
"In the Midwest, the Illini Indians of Illinois were once terrorized by a creature they called 'Piasa', which means 'bird that devours man'. The Piasa was so large that it could allegedly carry off a full-grown deer. When it finally acquired a taste for human flesh, no Indian was safe. The Illini, as well as other Indian tribes in the area, greatly feared the Piasa and sought to destroy it. One day the Illini were said to have tricked the Piasa by hiding 20 armed warriors in a designated spot, while the Chief chose to stand in open view as a victim for the Piasa. When the bird was about to pounce upon the Chief, the warriors leapt out and speared it to death. John Russell was a writer from Illinois who had a great interest in the Piasa. In 1848, Mr Russell explored the caves where this creature was said to live. One cave that was extremely difficult to access yielded evidence for the Illini's story. Russell stated, 'The shape of the cave was irregular, but so far as I could judge the bottom would average twenty by thirty feet. The floor of the cave throughout its whole extent was one mass of human bones. So, what kind of creature was the Piasa? High upon a cliff in Alton, Illinois, the Indians made a painting of the Piasa. The painting was destroyed in the 1850s when the face of the cliff collapsed into the river. However, many explorers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the painting and described it in great detail in their journals. These explorers describe a bird-like creature with many reptilian characteristics."
The Piasa was a monstrous bird that was anything but a pterosaur. The creature is described to have deer-like antlers on its bearded human like head (no pterosaur had antlers or a human like head), a body covered with scales like a reptile (pterosaurs had hair), a tail extremely long that can coil itself around until the tip comes out between its legs, and red eyes on its face. No pterosaur ever had such features. How can Johnson say that it is a pterosaur while in fact the creature has none of what the pterosaurs have such as hair, wings supported each with one elongated finger, bird-like heads, light, hollow bones and much shorter tails compared with the Piasa's? The answer is just another case of creationists fabricating monster tales to fit their beliefs about dinosaurs and pterosaurs living alongside humans, as inspired by science fiction and its influence in pop culture.
To see what the Piasa actually looks like, click here.
Now in the next paragraph, Johnson make claims of a discovery of a Mayan stone carving of a winged creature that's dubbed, "The Serpent Bird of the Mayans (And Mexico, too for that matter.),"
"There is similar evidence, suggesting possible coexistence with pterosaurs, among the Indians of Mexico and South America, too. Jose Diaz-Bolio, a Mexican archaeologist, discovered an ancient Mayan relief sculpture in Veracruz, Mexico, of a bird with some features of the Pteranodon. The November 1968 edition of Science Digest published an article on this 'evolutionary oddity', called 'Serpent-bird of the Mayans'. The serpent-bird, says Bolio, 'is not merely the product of Mayan flights of fancy, but a realistic representation of an animal that lived during the period of the ancient Mayans-1,000 to 5,000 years ago."
I have not gotten hold of that article, yet. But don't count on the carving to have hair, bat wings, a short tail, and a created pointed head. For this carving, discovered by Jose Diaz-Bolio, an archaeologist who invented a theory on how the Mayans use the rattlesnake to shape their beliefs and culture, could possibly be that of Quetzalcoatl, "The Feathered Serpent of Ancient Mexico", a well known Mexican deity who is depicted as a limbless serpentine dragon cloaked in feathers of a quetzal, a well known bird native to the Mexican region. He is seen sometimes in his human incarnate form cloaked elaborately in quetzal feathers and is said to have been banished from his land by a rival deity named Tezcaltlipoca, who was his enemy who usurped him after fighting with him over world leadership prior to creating it altogether. As Quetzalcoatl sailed away on a raft made of snakes, he made a promise to his people that he will someday return to reclaim his world he lost to Tezcaltlipoca and rule over his people once more.
To the untrained eye and the scientifically ignorant, any fossil is a dinosaur fossil regardless of whether the bones came from a Ice Age mastodon or a Devonian Trilobite. According to Adrienne Mayor's book, Fossil Legends and the First Americans (p. 334-339 and in the appendix on page 403), the only fossils found in the Mexican state of Guanajuato are fossilized mammals from the Oligocene and Pleistocene epoch, not dinosaurs. Nevertheless, the people living in that region must have been captivated by these fossils they greatly mistaken as dinosaurs to the point of taking advantage of it and began to make up all sorts of forgeries, which in many cases depicts humans and dinosaurs living together side by side despite complete absence of human and dinosaur fossils together. It is done either for profit or for political gain.
Case in point: the 2 infamous forgeries Johnson brings up in the next section of his drivel.
The next section featured the infamous Acambaro figurines that was "discovered" by an archaeologist named, Waldamar Julsrud (actually he was hardware merchant obsessed with the myth about Atlantis), who claimed to have allegedly discovered these clay figurines in Acambaro, Mexico in the 1945. The figurines are all phony. According to this page, Julsrud actually paid his helpers to have those figurines that were carved out by the workers themselves.
Then, Johnson talked about the Ica stones and their alleged discovery in a Peruvian cave. Just like the figurines, the stones are all phony. According to this page, however, the Ica Stones were unveiled to be fakes, all made up by villagers who confessed to engraving the stones they gathered up from a farm field while using all sorts of science fiction materials to help them do it.
Afterwards, Johnson concludes this section with this rhetoric,
"Unless both discoveries are elaborate hoaxes (always a possibility in this sinful world, as both evolutionists and creationists have been 'taken' by manufactured artefacts supporting their particular cause), they demonstrate once more that the American Indian was well acquainted with the pterosaur (Note how Johnson misspelled the word "artifacts".)."
Both "discoveries" are elaborate hoaxes just like all creationist claims are. All entirely made up for either personal or political gain. No Native American was acquainted with the pterosaur (or other Mesozoic animal for that matter), except for their fossils
The last section features Johnson focusing on the South American country of Venezuela where the Yek'wana (Ye'kuana misspelled on purpose.) natives claims to have encountered bat like creatures in which Johnson wrongly claims to be sightings of Pterosaurs being made by the natives while being ignorant of the fact that there are no pterosaur fossils found above the Mesozoic strata. Johnson claims to have speak with a missionary named Clint Vernoy, who worked spreading Christian faith to the natives. Here Johnson fabricates the legend of a giant, hairy, supernatural man-eating bat known as Dede who lived in a house (a cave) resembling a doorway on a large mountain the natives called Dedehidi (Guaicanima, a mountain peak in mid-Paragua). This monster once terrorized the people living near his lair by swooping down and capturing his victims with his clawed feet, just like several normal species of bat that are known to catch prey with their feet, and carry them back to his "house" to be devoured (Pterosaurs can't carry prey with their feet). This went on until the people had an old woman tied and sacrificed to Dede to learn of his location so they can go off and kill the creature. The natives put a bonfire right at the feet of the woman and wrapped some coal around her feet for the fire to catch it. Dede came and took her and the burning coal tied to her feet away to his lair on the mountaintop, thus giving away the exact location of the creature and his lair. The natives used their blowguns and curare (a poisonous plant) to bring down the creature who, after circling about in a dizzy state, fell into the Rio Erevato, a river tributary located next to The Caura River, which creationists deliberately misspelled as "Erebato" for the purpose of distorting the tale. The word "Erevato" came from the words "Dede watta" or "Dedevato." Each word literally means "bat fire" or in a dirty sense "bat s…" in the Ye'kuana language.
If there were pterosaurs living in the area, there would have been commonly sighted throughout the land along with nesting sites with eggs and young, fully intact bodies of pterosaurs that have recently died, unfossilized bony remains, and bony remains of pterosaurs dated to recent times - but none are found.
Finally, Johnson gives out only one brief claim about the Corentyn natives who, according to W.H. Brett, a missionary to Guiana, tells of a "gliding serpent." while refraining from mentioning of the fact that flying or gliding serpents told by ancients are said to have scaly bodies, feathery wings like birds, and no legs. Pterosaurs, in which all of them have limbs, are falsely branded as "flying serpents" by creationists, who call them that way because to them if it looks like a snake with bird or bat-like wings, it's a pterosaur. Never mind the fact that all pterosaurs have hair, 2 legs, 2 long arms with one elongated 4th finger each supporting a pair of bat-like wings made of only skin membrane, and no serpentine bodies.
Johnson concludes the article by blindly affirming the false notion of Native Americans by falsely claiming that there are sightings made on remote places throughout the world (other than in the Americas) within the past 120 years while all these sightings have been shown to nothing but elaborate hoaxes, made-up tales, fabrications, and misidentifications of birds and bats.
Then Johnson says, "Can all these sightings and stories be easily written off as 'coincidentally' having a pterosaur-like common thread?" The answer is no. All these sightings and stories are exactly what is mentioned previously above - all made up, fabricated fairy tales.
In Johnson's mind,
"It seems easier to believe that the evolutionary/long-age notion that these reptiles became extinct 65 million years ago is flawed.."
It does seem easier to believe the factual notion of "the evolutionary/long-age notion that these reptiles became extinct 65 million years ago" IF you are in complete denial of valid evidence pointing to the notion that's far from being flawed.
"..people have indeed encountered some of the terrifyingly large birdlike creatures we know today from the fossil record."</i>
Only fossils, Johnson, not live ones.
Another thing worth noting and repeating is the fact that pterosaurs are not birds or serpents nor are they related to them, but flying reptiles closely related to the dinosaurs that became extinct along with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. One of the last pterosaurs to die out is a large pterosaur known as Quetzalcoatlus. Named after the god of the Aztecs mentioned before, this toothless pterosaur has a wingspan of about 40 feet. Why am I mentioning this pterosaur? Because this pterosaur is what Johnson is mentioning at the closing of his article. In the article, Johnson stupidly claims that even though it was a glider, it can still carry off a human. It never did. Pterosaurs were long extinct by the time humans came along about 4 million years ago.
Johnson is stupidly claiming that the stories of giant birds carrying off whales and people may have inspired by sightings of Quetzalcoatlus swooping down to carry off a human, fish, or "even a dolphin frolicking at the surface." It is an absolute no brainer to where creationists are getting their inspirations from when it comes to reading comic books and watching a science fiction film.
Many science fiction films and comics, including Jurassic Park III, do depict pterosaurs carrying off people like a eagle swooping down to carry off a fish and a hawk swooping down to carry off a rabbit. But, it never happened in real life. Pterosaur legs and feet are weak and ill-equipped to carry anything, including humans. The feet are flat and the 1st digit toe is way too small to help hold on to anything. If they tried, holding prey with their feet would throw off their centers of balance, and render themselves incapable of flight. So, pterosaurs can't carry anything with their feet whatsoever. Also Quetzalcoatlus is now possibly known to be mostly a ground dwelling pterosaur, roaming around like a stork, plucking from the ground any meaty morsel it can find with only its beak, including a small dinosaur. Other pterosaurs ate insects, fish, squid, and other types of seafoods they caught only with their beaks along scavenged among the carcasses of dead dinosaurs.
Pterosaurs would have been a majestic sight to see in the air if they were alive and living and recent times. But sadly, Pterosaurs are long gone. All of them been dead for 65 million years. Just like dinosaurs, no one, past and present, has ever saw a living pterosaur, and they never will despite what creationists like Johnson continue to claim falsely.
