Cowboys and Dinosaurs

Where did this pterodactyl come from, and why aren't we supposed to know about it?

There are always unsubstantiated reports of dinosaurs in the jungle and things like that. Most of these have no particular evidence, but one case has left unexplained evidence in the form of a newspaper article. This is kinda long, but stay with me.

According to an account in the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper late last century [now the century before last], two ranchers encountered a "winged monster" on the desert in Arizona. It resembled a huge alligator with an extremely elongated tail and an immense pair of wings. After chasing the obviously exhausted animal several miles, they managed to wound it with their Winchester rifles, whereupon it turned on the ranchers. Due to its exhausted condition the ranchers were able to keep out of its way, and they eventually killed it. Upon examination, its head was found to be about eight feet long, containing strong, sharp teeth, and its eyes were as big as dinner plates. It had two feet, being just in front of where the wings joined the body. The wings were bat-like and transparent, devoid of feathers or hair, along with the entire body. According to the article, it measured about 92 feet in length and 160 feet from wingtip to wingtip (The Tombstone Epitaph newspaper, April 26, 1890).

That's from a website claiming this sighting as evidence that man and dinosaurs were created on the same day (Day 6, I think). Sounds like a pterodactyl to me. The cowboys went back for the corpse after returning to town, but according to the article, it had disappeared. I've seen pictures of the article itself on several websites now. Here's a link from the site quoted above:

The Epitath Article: Cowboys and Saurians

The cowboys found the creature in an area of Arizona that's hard to read whenever it crops up in the article - it almost looks as though it's blurred out, but the whole text is hard to read - but I guessed a few letters and found more information on the area: "Huachuca". Here's one article that mentions a legendary photograph of the thing's corpse, sought by every cryptozoologist, and a hoax version of same. It cites the Epitath article and is more readable.

"Notes on a Strange World"

This article mentions not the article but only the alleged photo; if the two aren't always connected, does that suggest that some people have only seen the article and others have only seen the photo itself?

"Weird California" site

Here's the full text of the Epitath article, I believe, and possible evidence that the article is being suppressed. No doubt anyone with an interest in that realized that the best way to discredit something like this is to let a site like faithalone use it as "evidence". But who would have an interest in that?

Why lie about an article from 1890?

Now, this is just getting disturbing . . . this "Thunderbird photo" is apparently one of the hot topics for American cryptozoologists. It apparently exists only in rumor and appears to be a fabrication from a retelling of the original story by a writer for Saga magazine; no record of it can be found; but people actually remember seeing it in places where no record of it now exists. Multiple people report seeing it in magazines, even on television, although there is no evidence that it ever existed.

So Why Can't We Find It?

These are not people who want to run a hoax; they want to find the thing. So people killed an animal that can't exist in a place that's blurred out of the article and took a photo that never happened. Why do people remember a photo that never existed? Why are they so desperate to prove that it did? (A messy Cliomancer, maybe?) And, perhaps most importantly, how did a pterodactyl get to Arizona and who wants it covered up? I think this is more than Sleepers - this is one front of the war of belief between science and creationism.

- F.A.R. out

Definitely not the first I've heard of such a thing. There's whole sections of the American west that used to be wholly unexplored. Who knows what could have been there? But now we have. We've found it out, solidified and codified the reality, and sucked most of the mojo out of it. Caesar Salad | profile | Apr 01, 07 | 12:20 pm

The ironic thing is, when I first saw the title I thought "Ooo, like that photo I saw of those cowboys with that pteradon!" Spooky. MessiahDave | profile | Apr 01, 07 | 4:19 pm

That is strange - especially because every one of the hoax photos has shown Confederate soldiers, not cowboys. Only the legendary original shows the cowboys. So yeah, that's pretty spooky. - F.A.R. out F.A.R. | profile | Apr 01, 07 | 6:15 pm

"The Tombstone Epitaph" is also a fake newspaper used as a supplement for "Deadlands: The Weird West" RPG Neville Yale Cronten | profile | Apr 01, 07 | 10:20 pm