According to nonfiction author Jonathan Whitcomb, “at least 1400″ Americans have seen an obvious living pterosaur in the United States within the past three decades. One cryptozooology forum-blog has challenged that crude calculation, but what would be a better estimate? How can anyone estimate what is not reported?

We know, from what eyewitnesses have told us, that some people just will not come forward and admit that they have seen an obvious pterosaur. The Chasepeake Bay area sighting is one example: several men saw the creature in daylight, but only one of them wanted to talk about it. This is part of Western culture, for it is considered crazy to report seeing something like a “live pterodactyl.” Considering the many eyewitnesses who have come forward, it seems that there must have been at least hundreds of eyewitnesses within the past three decades.

The point is, we can no longer accept the old criticism: “If pterosaurs were still alive, we would have seen them.” That circular reasoning, to dismiss sightings, becomes more obviously invalid now that we have begun to consider how many eyewitnesses there really are.