Controversial scientific finding:
“Research on a 19th Century Photograph of an Apparent Pterosaur”
Salt Lake City-Murray, UT (sfrfg press release)
May 10, 2017
Two American scientists have declared that a photograph, that was previously
assumed a hoax made through Photoshop, was not created through any digital
image-manipulation trickery.
On May 6, 2017, Clifford Paiva, director of BSM Research Associates in California,
announced his discovery of an apparently previously unknown detail in the photo
that is called Ptp. While magnifying part of the image under the head of the animal,
looking for possible evidence for its legs or feet, he discovered a pile of small tree
branches or small logs that supported the head.
He phoned his associate, Jonathan Whitcomb, a forensic videographer in Utah, who
had been working with him in analyzing the photo. They agreed that the pile of props
under the head was evidence finalizing the disproof of the Photoshop conjecture.
The two American scientists acknowledge the controversy in the idea that the head of
the animal might be that of a large pterosaur, but they maintain it is a real object:
That apparent “pterodactyl” head was not created in a computer and then digitally
pasted onto a photograph of Civil War soldiers. A photographer, or the men shown in
the photo, had propped up that apparent Pteranodon head so that it could be better
photographed in that clearing.
Earlier in 2017, Whitcomb had magnified the images of buttons and belt buckles on
the soldiers and measured their pixel widths. He found that the soldier standing in
front of the animal appears closer not just from a human imaging trickery of the
mind, but the man was actually standing closer to the camera.
The buttons and belt buckles are actually slightly wider for that soldier, verifying the
apparent placement relationships of the men. This makes it likely that those six men
were actually photographed together rather than having their images pasted onto a
background. Whitcomb gives this as additional evidence that no hoax was involved.
On February 16, 2007, ten years before the investigations by Paiva and Whitcomb,
Loren Coleman, “one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists,” put the photograph on
one of his online pages, declaring that it originated from “photoshopping.” Yet he
gave no evidence, at least on that page, to support the Photoshop idea.
On the site skeptic.com, the paleontologist Dr. Dave Martill, a well-known expert on
pterosaur fossils, perhaps the world’s leading expert, also referred to the Ptp
photograph, saying, “it is very similar to a faked photo from the canceled television
show FreakyLinks.” Yet he gave no evidence, at least on that page, that this particular
photo (Ptp) was a fake.
In April of 2017, Whitcomb published a nonfiction book on the photograph: Modern
Pterosaurs. The following is from page 71:
I got an email from a Tom Payne, early in 2017, and he told me he remembers this photo
from a book he saw when he was in his twenties, which would put his encounter, with the
photo, in the 1970's. Here's part of what he told me:
“Check out the uniforms! The guy on the right is a lefty, and he has a left handed holster. .
. . I have a degree in Computer Science. I can tell you that technology [Photoshop] wasn't
available to modify a photo like this before about 1980. . . . I've always been convinced
that this is an authentic photo. . . . Thanks.”
###
Clifford Paiva, a physicist
in central California
Jonathan Whitcomb,
a forensic videographer
Contact Information
The photograph called “Ptp”
Paiva’s imaging work and his discovery
of a pile of support props under the head
(The image is reversed horizontally to prevent
mental fatigue in the person who examines it)
“I not only use all the
brains that I have,
but all that I can
borrow.”
Woodrow Wilson
“Education is what
remains after one has
forgotten what one has
learned in school.”
Albert Einstein
Nonfiction Modern Pterosaurs
Copyright 2017 Jonathan David Whitcomb