Lots of unverified supposed vintage photos of thunderbird captures by army corp engineers and cowboys have been passed around the internet for decades, but did such a creature really exist?
Mentions and drawings of thunderbirds have shown up in many native cultures. It is said to be an enormous bird that made a thundering sound when it flapped its wings and fire shooting from its beak. It is often associated with thunderstorms.
This was said to live in caves and eat people. There is even a legend that inside its cave explorers found hundreds of human bones of the tribes that fell victim to its ravenous appetite.
Today, there are numerous sightings of pterodactyls, mostly in the Pacific region, especially New Guinea and the Pacific Coastline in the US. I've had many reports of the females flying up from South America to give birth to their eggs inside caves in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. I've also heard about some teams chasing the sightings from Northern California to Alaska. In fact, I was given a photo from California taken by a sheriff on his lunch break in his car. He had been called out to a home where the owners said something huge was nesting in their shed. The shed did have what appeared to be cobbled debris to create a nest and a pungent odor. Later, while on his lunch break, he witnessed a bird like no other he'd seen. He took a photo and sat in disbelief. The homeowners were right!
I'd love to share the photo but the sheriff is still active duty.
There have also been lots of mentions in the Carolinas and Georgia area of witnesses reporting what could only be the distinct look of a pterodactyl.
If you think about it, it's likely that if the pterodactyls still exist in a small population, what the Native People report as thunderbirds could be their interpretation.
What were pterdactyls like?
LINK: Pterodactyls had wings made of a thin membrane of skin, muscle, and other tissues that stretched from their elongated fourth finger to their bodies. These wings could span from a few feet to over 30 feet wide, making them excellent gliders. They had lightweight, hollow bones, and large, sharp beaks.
When it comes to Thunderbirds, the Native Americans who spoke of these creatures, considered them a spiritual and not physical entity.
As far as largest birds we know of, the ostrich is top of the list, although does not fly. For birds of flight, there are albatross varieties, pelican, condors, stork, vultures, and swans.
Is there any validity to the notion that dinosaurs became birds?
There was an ancient bird called the archaeopteryx from 150,000,000 years ago. When archaeologists studied it, they considered the bird to be a transitional bird from the theropod dinosaur era.
So, it's widely accepted in the scientific world that a set of smaller theropod dinosaurs adapted to flight and are the ancestors of today's birds. I know it flies in the face (pun intended) of accepted notion that dinosaurs went extinct. Some of them did, but near the end of their time on earth, there were plenty of transitional bird-types that somehow survived the cataclysm. Why they needed to adapt to flight is a puzzle. Did something change with our atmosphere? The ability to seek out food? Or perhaps even our gravitational pull?
Do gigantic other-era birds still fly in our skies? I would say it's absolutely possible. Remember, the birds survived what killed the dinosaurs. That is an adaptable species.