Nexus - 0214 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

The Pterodactyl is a huge flying dinosaur-type bird, which has a vora- cious appetite for raw meat. It is also extinct ... .- OF is it? lhe sun was beating down mercilessly. It was as hot in Texas as it was in Mexico. I had crossed the border into Texas at Brownsville a few days before and had stayed at a trailer court that my mother and stepfather owned, though they lived in Arizona- I had promised them that I would look at the trailer court and make sure that the couple they had hired to manage it were keeping it in good condition. After resting for a few days, it was fortunate that my old pickup truck was sitting in the parking lot. After looking under the hood, and a few trips down to the local auto parts store, I had the truck running and was now on my way across Texas, heading for Arizona. My first main stop was Big Bend National Park in the south-west portion of the state. Texas has its share of mysteries, lost treasure and ancient civilisations. A number of stone heads and pottery figures have been found in Texas, including a ceramic figure found near Cisco, Texas, that was identified in 1946 by three professors from the University of Mexico as the figure of the Aztec god of agriculture, Xipe-Totec. They surmised that the head had been made between the 10th and 12th centuries. Larger, stone heads have been discovered at Cross Plains, Texas, that wore conical hats and were “very old". Myself, I was after pterodactyls. “Pterodactyl pens? How far are they?" I asked. I shielded the sun from my eyes, and looked at the man with a cowboy hat and blue cotton shirt. "Just nearby, across the creek,” said the sun-weathered rancher. He had on a brown cow- boy hat and a red checkered shirt. I followed him across a bridge that crossed the small creek in front of us and then noticed some rock walls along a cliff. "These here are the pterodactyl pens," said the man pointing to the ancient, crumbling structures. "Why do they call them pterodactyl pens?" I asked. “Well, they have these legends around here about pterodactyls," he said. "I've never seen one around here myself, though. Just in a museum.” I stopped and looked at the walls. They were like pens, and since they were against cliffs, they could have been made into cages. Still, they were maybe just the ruins of a small set- tlement. Though pterodactyl pens was an intriguing notion, it was less likely an explanation than others. The subject of living pterodactyls is, however, a fascinating subject, and one that is not to be shrugged off lightly. Strange and persistent legends abound in the south-west of giant winged creatures. These stories have been told since before the Spanish arrived and contin- ue to this day. Some radical theorists have gone so far as to say that these legends and sight- ings can be attributed to still-living flying dinosaurs—to pterodactyls or, more precisely, pterodons . There are literally hundreds of reports of giant birds and flying lizards showing up around the world. And it is a fact that the remains of pterodons have been discovered at Big Bend National Park. The park was the site of the discovery of the skeleton of a giant pteranodon in 1975. It had a wingspan of 51 feet and is the largest such fossil of a flying reptile so far discovered, Other pterodactyls were much smaller and had wingspans from 8 to 20 feet. Though pterodons are believed to have become extinct about 65 million years ago, this may not necessarily be the case. Many creatures which lived at that time are still alive, such as crocodiles, turtles, and the famous coelacanth. Even the date of the fossil of the giant pterodon recently found at Big Bend is in question. Since fossils cannot be dated by any known technical method, their age is guessed at from the geological strata around it, and since the current dating of geological strata is based on the prevailing uniformitarian theory of slow geological change, the date of many fossils may be radically closer to our own than 65 million years. Almost every Indian tribe from Alaska to Tierro del Fuego has legends of a gigantic fly- ing monster so large that "...it darkened the sun”. The Haida natives of the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia believe that some Thunderbirds were so large that they could lit- .- OF is it? Extracted from chapter 9 of the book Lost Cities of North & Central America by David Hatcher Childress Available through Nexus Magazine PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Price: $25 (includes postage) JUNE - JULY 1993 16¢NEXUS