Last night, I watched a pretty interesting MonsterQuest show on supposed sightings of some sort of pterosaur in New Guinea.  The pterosaurs include the pterodactyl and the pteranondan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterodactyl

Now, I'm all for flying reptiles…but…they did go extinct about 65,000,000 years ago.  Of course, some of you at this point may be saying "Yeah, well…they thought that fish, the Coelacanth, was extinct for 65 million years and they found that.  Why not pterodactyls?"  Yes that is true.  However, finding a fish in very deep water of the oceans is one thing.  Missing a flying predator with a 30-40 foot wingspan is something else entirely.  To give you an example…a Cessna C421 airplane has a 41 foot wingspan.  So, you know, that's pretty sizable.  If they existed today, well, I think that they may stand out a bit more.

But, that's not why I'm posting this.  The other little fun fact that they threw in was that, apparently, these pterosaurs are also bioluminscent.  They glow!  And…they have film of it.  The film showed two…lights…in the darkened sky.  Some military guy then used some fancy-schmancy equipment to take a look at the images and determined that "heat" wasn't the source of the lights.  Now, that's kind of interesting.  I am taking this "evidence" with a grain of salt though.  Perhaps the data was faulty.  Maybe he misinterpreted some of the results.  But, for arguments sake, say he was right.

I don't know what was captured on film.  I can't even guess.  I've looked around and I can't find any animal with bioluminescent properties that flies.  There are some fish, some plants, some mushrooms (weird, I know) and some insects (of course, the firefly being the best known).

Back to the pterosaurs.  There is no information on whether or not they were bioluminescent.  The expert stated that he didn't believe so.  Some guy on the show (I don't remember his credentials) said that a fossil record wouldn't indicate that trait.  Ok, then again, the fossil record wouldn't indicate that they did math and wore tiny straw hats as well.  As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of "well the information that we have doesn't show this one thing so it could be true" type of argument.  Anyway…why would a huge flying predator want to glow, thus giving away its location to its prey?  I'm going with the expert on this one and saying that it's highly unlikely.

One of the guys on the show kept saying that people could just be seeing a new species of bat.  Ok.  A new "glowing" bat?  Well, you're still kind of pushing me there.  Yet, if I throw everything I know of biology to the side for a moment, I could make an incredibly weak argument that it could be possible.  Say this particular bat has a poor echo location system.  Throughout the centuries, it developed an utterly unique way to draw the insects towards them by glowing.  I can "kind of" go with this, but in no way, shape, or form would I write a paper on it and attach my name to it. 

Could it have been a couple of birds?  There are 781 known species of birds in New Guinea.  Do any of them glow?  Not so much, no.  Does any bird glow?  Um…not so much, no.  With feathers, I'm not sure how that would work.

So…what were the two lights caught on film?  They appeared to be flying and then independently flew over a hill.  An expert claimed that there was no heat signature.  Hmmm…the only thing that I came up with are these two things.  First, the expert was wrong.  There could have been reflections of two heat sources (perhaps from two campfires on the other side of the hill).  It's weak, but that's all I've got.  Second, two independent swarms of glowing insects.  This seems a bit more plausible to me.  The man who took the film could have misjudged the distance and the two swarms of glowing insects were much closer to him.  Also, insects that glow do exist.  

As weird as it sounds…I'm going with the two swarms of glowing insects.  Anyone else have any ideas?    

Consuming bioluminescent fungi?   Fireflies can swarm.  So far, no glowing birds.

Phillyk,

Thanks for the link…it's pretty interesting.  First though…the gliding aspect.  No idea.  I've never seen a reptile/pterosaur fly or glide.  I'm assuming they would do both given the wing span.

There were a couple of sections on that site that caught my eye.  First up:

http://www.objectiveness.com/pic-no/

It's the "tried and true" explanation given in cryptozoology as to why there is either no or little photographic evidence.  It goes "if you were given 'x' amount of time to photograph a car wreck, could you do it?"  This is supposed to show how "rare" it is to see whatever it is that they're discussing.  However…we are discussing something that has a wing span of a Cessna airplane.  How can you miss it?  Just look up!  In this particular case…we aren't looking for a car wreck…we're looking for a semi-truck in the sky.  Oh…and they glow too.  So…a glowing semi-truck in the sky…

 http://www.laattorneyvideo.com/nonlegal/pterodactyl/

It argues for the existence of the pterodactyls.  Here are a couple of interesting quotes from it:

"Textbooks and children’s books declare that they all became extinct many millions of years ago. (A commonly- published phrase is “by 65 million years ago.”) But where is the evidence for the extinction of all pterosaurs?"

First, I like how the author throws in "children's books" into the argument…giving it that "it's such a ridiculous premise that it's even in books for children" kind of flavor.  Nice…  Anyway, where's the evidence of the extinction of "all" pterosaurs?  The word "all" is pretty encompassing.  It's as if the author is asking me personally to account for every single pterosaurs death.  Another tame tactic.  As for the evidence that I can present, well, that's pretty easy.  Before 65 million years ago, there is a pretty good fossil record indicating their presence.  Since that point in time, there is no fossil record indicating their lack of presence.  Even if the date of their extinction is off by 50%, which is very generous, that still leaves us with 32 million years of pterodactyls being completely unaccounted for.  That's, um….a very, very long time. 

"The book "Searching for Ropens," explains the widespread Western belief in pterosaur extinction. It is not complimentary to “standard models” but seems to expose a superstitious nature within the belief in “universal pterosaur extinction.” Apparently human nature often causes bias when a person’s philosophy is involved. According to this book, the General Theory of Evolution is based on philosophical axioms or assumptions. The idea that all dinosaurs and pterosaurs became extinct many millions of years ago may have come from a desire to shore up a philosophy, namely atheism."

Um…what?  Why do I suddenly get the feeling that if I ask the author how old the Earth is, he's going to say 6,000 years?  *sighs* 

Learjet said:

At that size they would be visible on the sat images used in Google Earth.

It's baloney. They're dead, Jim.

I agree.  It's just that immense size of the wing span.  I think the smaller the creature is, the better chance that cryptozoology has of finding something.  Start talking airplane-sized creatures…and it just starts sounding a little like, as you said, baloney.

Hey…you're from Australia, which is pretty close to New Guinea.  Anything over there with bioluminescent properties that people else where in the world may not be familiar with?

Blinddog- As for Bill being there and seeing the lights, yeah, you're absolutely right.  And then once you tossed in the sightings of the pterodactyls, I'm sure he'd break out the "non-physical predatory Reptilian extraterrestrial species from the 4th Density" stuff.  I'm sure time travel, alternate dimensions, and time slips would also make their way into the conversation as well.

Bobarino said:

Revenant said:

  I've looked around and I can't find any animal with bioluminescent properties that flies.  There are some fish, some plants, some mushrooms (weird, I know) and some insects (of course, the firefly being the best known).

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I have never seen a glowing mushroom.  

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Ask…and thou shall receive…

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080808-bts-bioluminescent-fungi.html