Salt Lake Firedrake

There is a bizarre history of pterosaur-like entities being witnessed in the skies above Utah, usually around Great Salt Lake. There is a case from 1903 in which one of the monstrous anachronisms is said to have carried off a horse in broad daylight, and another from 2001 when the creature in question was said to glow brightly as if it was on fire. Although it can certainly be argued to be otherwise, there is also speculation that an ancient petrogylph on the San Rafael Swell (near to Great Salt Lake) depicts nothing less than a living pterosaur...

## The Petroglyph

According to an established rock art expert known as Fran Barnes (link to her book here), there is a petroglyph on the San Rafael Swell which '*looks very much like a pterosaur*'. The University of Ohio apparently quarried a fossilised pterosaur '*not too far away from this site*'. However, obviously the scientific skeptic community has gotten heavily involved in debunking and rationalising this seemingly-bizarre discovery, and their results have been promising - if disappointing for all those who really **really** wanted it to be a pterosaur, myself included. I implore you to read this article for more detail, but basically it turns out that a previous archaeologist had sketched an outline of what they thought the shape should be, when in fact the contents of this outline had been misinterpreted as a singular entity. In reality, it was a picture depicting a several humans and animals that just happened to look like a pterosaur under the right conditions.

## 1903

Reported on the September 3rd, 1903, a '*terrible, nameless, unclassified creature of the animal world*' whipped up visitors to Stansbury Island in the southern portion of Great Salt Lake into a mad frenzy of hysteria. The monster had apparently been seen by several shocked witnesses around the time that it was reported, with the best account of its likeness and behaviour being given by two hunters named Martin Gilbert and John Barry. They had returned that week from an expedition to the island on which they studied the behaviour of the creature for three days.

According to Barry and Gilbert, the monster seemed to '*be almost equally at home in the air, on the beach, or submerged in the briny waters of Salt Lake*'. They came to the conclusion that the monstrous reptile was likely the last surviving member of a prehistoric species - presumably in reference to a pterosaur. However, those who were said to have observed the thing at close range consistently gave descriptions painting it as '*a combination of fish, alligator and bat*', which is not something that we would nowadays associate with genuine pterosaurs.

The pair denoted its size to be '*simply tremendous*'. Gilbert estimated that it was roughly 50ft long, while Barry - being '*an amateur scientist*' examined the tracks of the beast and was able to, presumably in a more accurate fashion than Gilbert, place its approximate length at '*at least 65 feet from head to tail*'.

'*The head is like that of an alligator, the eyes fiercely glowing, the jaws, capable of opening to a distance of 10 feet from the top of the upper to the lower, are provided with a fearful array of sharp saw-edged teeth, the body, so far as observation goes, is increased with heavy, horny scales*'. However, the amateur explorers added the disclaimer that the creature's body was apparently caoted in a thick layer of salt due to its constant diving into the lake, which (save for the wings) almost completely obscures the exact features of the beast's anatomy.

Barry and Gilbert first caught sight of the monstrous flier at a distance of between one-and-a-half and two miles, and the day was described as being clear and brightly-lit by the sun. According to Gilbert:

'*We were walking westward from the east shore of the island about 9 o’clock in the morning when suddenly to the northwest there appeared a thing. I don’t know what to call it. It looked to me like a brilliant rainbow folded into compact mass, moving rapidly through the air. In three or four minutes the monster’s position was such that it no longer reflected the sunlight directly toward us, and we would then discern the outline of the form. Its wings were bat-like, stretching out over a great expanse. I should say at least 100 feet from tip to tip. The tail was proportionately short, and resembled that of a huge fish. We were not close enough at this time to tell much about the head, only we saw that the jaws were very long. In shape the head was like that of a crocodile.*

*We watched it disappear in the gathering gloom of night, but were for a long time paralyzed with fear, not knowing when it might return. It was probably an hour later when it did come back. We heard the swish of the mighty wings before it could be seen, but as it drew nearer, by the light of the young moon in the West, we saw that it carried in its great jaws a large horse, which I supposed it had swooped down upon while feeding. The horse was badly crushed and mangled.*

*The monster carried its burden into the cave, and we could hear the crunching of its jaws and the cracking of the horse’s bones as the beast devoured its victim. After an hour or so all was so still, and then slipped quietly away in the darkness and returned to our cmap on the eastern shore of the island*'.

## 2001

At 11 o'clock on one fateful night in the Autumn of 2001, three children - including Devon Roberts and his brother Dallin, caught sight of an enormous winged entity as it flew overhead. A living pterosaur investigator named Jonathan D. Whitcomb decided to venture out to Grantsville, Utah to interview the two young men. He eventually came to the conclusion that what they had seen was something very similar to the Ropen from Papau New Guinea. Dallin (12 years old at the time), was the first to see the entity - and apparently described the winged weirdie as a glowing creature emitting light that flashed on and off over a period of minutes. Devon thought that his brother was joking as he was telling him that there was a huge bird '*on fire*' in the sky before he caught sight of the flying phantom himself. The creature seemed to vanish as the glow from its body flashed off, but the report makes it unclear as to how many times it did this. When the creature '*turned on its glow*' again, the farm animals beneath it '*started going beserk*', suggesting that the flying fiend may have been predatory.

## Sources

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/08/winged-monster-ancient-rock-art-debunked-scientists

https://www.modernpterosaur.com/?p=2243

https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2015\_04\_26\_archive.html