Comments on: Lost “Thunderbird” Photo

By: stwolf

stwolf — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 03:40:54 +0000

I am aware of other alleged pterosaur photos, including one whose "prop" -- if it is one -- puts the one in your collection to shame. Nevertheless, I am actually going to endorse this new photos as probably authentic. Why, you ask? The reason actually has nothing to do with the pterosaur in the image. Look at those men. There are eight of them, yet not one of them is obese. No random selection of men in Europe or North America, places currently experiencing an obesity epidemic,.would be likely to provide such healthy specimens. So, either the men in the photo were selected in awareness of that fact, or the photo was taken at a time when fewer than one-in-eight men were obese. For that reason, I endorse it as probably authentic.

By: cryptozoodles

cryptozoodles — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:24:07 +0000

Mnynames is exactly right, that photo found on google images shows exactly the same creature. I took the google pic into Photoshop and added it over the main photo – all I had to do was flip it, scale it a bit and the wings and body (including the creases/stretches in the wing material) match exactly. Quite a bit of work has been done to make it authentic; the head has been rotated downwards and a drop shadow has been added for example – nonetheless it’s definitely a fake.

I would hesitate to call it a hoax – some people use that word too willingly when they something that’s not “genuine” without knowing the background of an image and how it came to be. Perhaps it was an art project, or just an artist trying out his/her skills in digital photo manipulation. Maybe the people in the picture are friends who got together to make their own joke postcard (I used to play in a band, and we would make similarly manipulated images like this for demo covers).

I’ve saved my (crudely done) overlaid image but I have no idea how to upload it to this site – Loren perhaps I could email it to you and you can decide if it’s worth showing to my fellow Cryptomundians?

I really enjoy topics like this by the way, and I’m as fascinated as everyone else about the possible “lost thunderbird photo”!

By: springheeledjack

springheeledjack — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:47:04 +0000

With all of the software out there and the ability to mess with pictures–or create them out of thin air, I think we’ve pretty much established that a picture is no longer worth anything on the crypto front. Sad but true.

By: flame821

flame821 — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 03:42:23 +0000

This isn’t the photo I remember. The one I remember from Primary/Grade school had the creature nailed to the outside of a barn and the men were dressed differently. More like farmers than hunters.

Although this picture IS pretty good. The face looks likes its been mummified a bit and that fur body was well thought out. The wings look odd though, very wrinkly or like a nylon or sateen fabric that was crumpled. The fellows look period appropriate for 1930-50′s. What are the chances that this was ‘blended’ (sorry, don’t know the correct term – merged, maybe) with a real photo of hunters with their prizes and the bird imposed behind them?

Knowing that Americans didn’t start getting that big until after WWII, can we guesstimate the wing span of the creature? 12-16 feet maybe?

By: JMcLaren

JMcLaren — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 01:32:20 +0000

I must say, even if it's fake (as it probably is), I really love the first photo and am tempted to make it my computer screen wallpaper. Regarding the "lost thunderbird photo," could it be the pic halfway down this blog post? Either way, it's quite a nice post pondering the possibility of pterosaurs in Texas, which, though pretty darned unlikely, would be a lovely thing to find.

By: Cryptidcrazy

Cryptidcrazy — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 20:10:28 +0000

The top photo screams, “hoax” and as it has already been stated, the second photo was a still from “Freakylinks”. I guess the “Lost” photo is destined to remain that way. It’s beyond weird.

By: Cryptidcrazy

Cryptidcrazy — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:08:42 +0000

I remember seeing the “lost photograph” when I was a kid. I was in the King Library in Hamilton and I was reading a cryptozoological book (I can’t remember the name, I’ve read so many in my lifetime). It’s the standard description that everyone gives. It’s shows a the “creature” apparently nailed to the side of a barn, with several men lined up in front of it. I KNOW it isn’t a false memory, as some have suggested. I saw that photo and no one can convince me otherwise.

By: Red Earth White Lies

Red Earth White Lies — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:23:57 +0000

That sporterised bolt action rifle in the middle wasn’t invented until the 1920s/1930s.
Any other depicted “Mauser” type bolt action weapon wasn’t in the hands of hunters dressed in “North of the Mason Dixon Line” attire until around around WWI.

So a Cowboy Days or Civil War pic it is not. Now fur on fossil flying reptiles wasn’t revealed to the public until the early 70s such as Sordes.

The head looks like something lifted out of a painting of dinosaurs.

Interesting if it is Sanderson’s pic from the mid 60s or earlier.

By: Red Earth White Lies

Red Earth White Lies — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:08:45 +0000

Oh and just to point out the obvious, the picture is at least “retouched”(?) because the overall feel-visual impact of the “creature” is flatter than the depth perspective of the men standing in front.

By: Red Earth White Lies

Red Earth White Lies — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:03:38 +0000

It always pays to put even a poor quality JPEG photo with compression artifacts in a Photoshop type program and blow it up 4X to 10X.

Taxonomically it is large compared to a “described” fossil specimen of pterydactylus… but that would hardly rule it out.

However old post cards sold a century ago occasionally featured outsized faked creatures – “fish tales”.

If the photo is the one that Ivan Sanderson had in his possession since the mid 1960s or earlier, a hoax theoretically is considerably less likely than a debunker “hoax” type photo produced in the days of the Internet & computer digital editing programs.

Unlikely the source photo had just one animal hanging… no reason for all those men to be standing unless fine trophy animals were hanging fom all the ropes or one very unusual animal was hanging in the middle. The long coarse oddly cut dark hair on the belly is not deer fur. The end wing bone on the right side of the pic is longer than the corresponding one on the left side of the pic. The wing membranes look oddly wrinkled… and blown up there seems to be a hem line running at the bottom of the wing membrane on the right half of the pic.