SH Archive 19th Century Pterodactyls and Thunderbirds: photoshop or not?

[KD Archive]

Avian dinosaurs supposedly became extinct approximately 65 mln years ago. Yet there are a few photographs circulating on the internet, where we can see creatures definitely looking like some sort of Pterodactyl, and a Thunderbird (by the looks of it.)

So I figured to see who thinks those are real, and at the same time to test the site poll system.

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The above poll is a multiple choice one. Up to 5 votes are allowed. Please vote for photographs you think are real. If you think that all are fake, choose the last option.

Note: This OP was recovered from the Wayback Archive.

Note: Archived SH.org replies to this OP: 19th Century Pterodactyls and Thunderbirds: photoshop or not?

 

[luddite]

Voting is now open!

 

[Fortuna Fled]

All three birds are different. The last one has a more rounded beak, and the claws are visible, as well as the teeth. The heads of the first two are different. That means that they would have had to build three fake birds. The sizes are roughly the same though. None of the guys are smiling, but look somber, and except for a handful of them, their faces and builds are different, so a completely different set of guys with guns. The other two pictures are very hard to see. So three pictures that you can compare, basically. If they’re fakes, why would they have bothered to build them? What would they have gained? Did they even know of the existence of pterodactyls? Was that something they learned in school? One last thing. I’ve held bats in my hands and my first thought when I saw these pictures was that their “skin”, completely free of feathers and with visible veins under the skin, seems similar to those bats, and so does the body shape.

According to Wikipedia, the first fossils were found in Europe in 1784. “Fossil remains of Pterodactylus have primarily been found in the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria, Germany, which dates back to the Late Jurassic period (early Tithonian stage), about 150.8 to 148.5 million years ago. More fragmentary remains of Pterodactylus have tentatively been identified from elsewhere in Europe, as well as in Africa.[5]”

Description, also from Wikipedia, matches the bird in the last photo. “The skulls of adult Pterodactylus were long and thin, with about 90 narrow and conical teeth. The teeth extended back from the tips of both jaws, and became smaller farther away from the jaw tips, this was unlike the ones seen in most relatives, where teeth were absent in the upper jaw tip, and were relatively uniform in size. The teeth of Pterodactylus also extended farther back into the jaw compared to close relatives, and some were present below the front of the nasoantorbital fenestra, which is the largest opening in the skull.[18] Another autapomorphy that Pterodactylus has is that the skull and jaws were straight, which are unlike the upwardly curved jaws seen in the related ctenochasmatids.[25”