Do Pterodactyls Still Live Today?
Modern Sightings: Do Flying Lizards Still Haunt the Skies?
For thousands of years, monstrous flying creatures thought to be pterodactyls have been reported throughout the world, from Arizona to Zambia.
The appearance of creatures thought to be extinct for millions of years captures the imagination as few other images can. Sightings of the pterodactyl have been recorded for over one-thousand years; there are actual photographs of these flying reptiles, although many believe they have been doctored. The fact that the descriptions in these alleged sightings never vary lends credibility to the theory that this anomaly might actually exist.
Did Dragons Actually Exist?
For over one thousand years, China has told tales of monstrous flying snakes, which are believed to be the root of their cultural conception of the dragon. Modern traditions tracing to ancient times have been centered around the concept of the dragon, and one cannot help but question whether pterodactyls are the origin of these myths.
Pterodactyls are the largest creatures ever to have achieved flight, and contrary to the beliefs of many, they are not dinosaurs, but fish-eating reptiles; until recently they were thought to have become extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs.
From central Africa come some incredible reports of winged beasts that they call "Kongamato" (meaning overwhelmer of boats). In 1925, a man from Rhodesia (now Zambia) was attacked by one of these creatures; he sustained deep wounds in his chest from what he claimed was its sharp beak. When natives from tribes living all over Africa were shown illustrations of a pterodactyl, they unanimously said it was Kongamato.
Demetrius the Topographer was an Egyptian who made Greece his home. He created a famous mosaic in 100 BC called the "Nile Mosaic of Palestrina", which depicted scenes of African hunters pursuing native African animals such as the hippopotamus and crocodile. Gliding above the dark-skinned men were winged creatures closely resembling pterodactyls. These supposedly extinct animals pictured along with the native fauna leads one to wonder if they, too, were common in that environment.
Europe has not been immune to such findings. In 1856, French workmen were digging a railway tunnel when they split open a giant boulder only to reveal an immense bat-like creature with a ten-foot wing span. It was later identified as a pterodactyl by a student of paleontology.
Descriptions Do Not Vary
Aside from variations in size and wing-span, descriptions of these creatures are startlingly alike. Each sighting tells of a dark grey or black creature with scaly, featherless skin, a long beak filled with sharp teeth, bony, membranous skin and taloned feet. A tale is told of some ranchers in Arizona in 1890 who chased a flying monster until they were close enough to shoot it. When spread out and measured, if they are to be believed, the wing-span was ninety-two feet!
To this day people still talk of monstrous, winged creatures; some as large as a small airplane. Out of remote areas in Africa, from the heights of the Andes in Peru and in the South-western United States are persistent and unvarying descriptions of these creatures. It would be fascinating to have incontrovertible proof that they still soar through the skies, but for now we are forced to wonder if these shadows of a time long past have managed to survive.
Sources cited:
- about.com
- ©2007 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
- Book Rags, article by David Hatcher Childress, ©2001-2006 by Greenhaven Press, Inc., an imprint of The Gale Group. All rights reserved.
- s8int.com
- Answers.com, Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.
