MonsterQuest "Flying Monsters"
Excerpts from the book "Live Pterosaurs in America"
By Jonathan Whitcomb
"To begin, I am grateful that the History Channel’s
MonsterQuest episode on 'flying monsters' in Papua New Guinea revealed to many Americans the living-pterosaur research of Garth Guessman
and Paul Nation; but the MonsterQuest expedition on New Britain Island, in early 2009, was not itself a serious living-pterosaur investigation
. . . video footage from previous expeditions was shown with little mention of those expeditions. Nevertheless, this episode introduced
many Americans to the possibility of extant pterosaurs. In that sense, it was a success.
"Some viewers of this episode may have
become convinced that evidence for living pterosaurs is scarce. Why? The eyewitness testimonies, scarcely covered, were overshadowed
by a fossil-expert’s declaration about ancient extinctions and his personal disbelief in extant pterosaurs. Truth would have been
better served with more coverage of the eyewitness evidence, rather than the overemphasized personal doubts of that man."
AKA Pterodactyl
Nathaniel Coleman's opinion
(nonfiction book by Whitcomb)