Tag Archives: book

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front cover of Whitcomb's "The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur"

Books by a Mormon Author

By Jonathan Whitcomb, nonfiction crypotozoology writer

Rather than begin by listing my four cryptozoology books, let’s look at what you would like as a reader or at the needs and interests of the reader for which you would give a book as a gift. Check out the following headings and choose one that fits your needs.

How do reports of non-extinct “pterodactyls” relate to LDS beliefs?

As of late-summer, 2017, the best nonfiction book to answer this question is the fourth edition of Searching for Ropens and Finding God. It’s also the longest of my cryptozoology books: 360 pages. Notwithstanding the title words “finding God,” this is more about true-life adventure than religion. Yet a few paragraphs of the early chapters occasionally mention religious belief. The following is from the first chapter:

In my childhood, nobody insisted to me that small simple life must have changed into large complex life long ago. I had read of ideas contrary to the General Theory of Evolution by my mid-teens, after our family had moved to Pasadena, California. But I was brought up to believe or disbelieve what I chose. My own feelings, perspective, and belief in God raised my doubts about Darwin.

From page 44 read:

But it was much more. We were promoting awareness of another survival long ago: the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That in itself deserves countless books, and we need to move on; but be aware, that the driving force behind the ropen expeditions was the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It was more than competing with Darwin’s philosophy, although mostly that, at least at first. My associates and I believe that the fiery flying serpent of the Old Testament was a “basal” pterosaur, perhaps related to the long-tailed ropen of Papua New Guinea. We believe they called it “fiery” because of its glow, which we attribute to bioluminescence. “Flying” is literal, with wings.

 

Nonfiction paperback book about eyewitness sightings of living pterosaurs

Searching for Ropens and Finding God – by LDS author Jonathan Whitcomb

 

What book is a low-cost introduction to living-pterosaur investigations?

I recommend my Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, a free pdf nonfiction cryptozoology book about encounters with these flying creatures in two nations of the southwest Pacific. The first chapter is titled “How can pterosaurs be alive.”

nonfiction cryptozoology book "Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea" by Mormon author Jonathan Whitcomb

Free online cryptozoology book

 

Is there a book especially about pterosaur sightings in the USA?

Look into the third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America. Here’s what a satisfied reader wrote for the Amazon page of this cryptozoology book:

This book is one of the best books that I have ever read! It reminds us to have an open mind and that the things we have all been taught as fact ….may not be fact at all.This is a very interesting and educational book and may change the way you see the world around you.

nonfiction "Live Pterosaurs in America" by LDS author Jonathan Whitcomb

Third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America (by an LDS author)

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Does any nonfiction book have photographic proof of a non-extinct pterosaur?

Updated November 26, 2018, by Jonathan Whitcomb

From early 2017 until early in November of 2018, I believed that the greater weight of evidence regarding the Ptp photo was this: that it showed a genuine image of a modern pterosaur that resembled a Pteranodon (short-tailed pterosaur). Since I’ve been informed of a portion of an episode of the TV series Walking With Dinosaurs, however, I have decided to withdraw my support for the authenticity of this image:

apparent photo of Civil War soldiers with a modern pterosaur

This apparent 19th century photo of a pterosaur is no longer supported by Whitcomb

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Is there a nonfiction living-pterosaurs book for children or teens?

The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is especially for middle-grade kids and young teenagers. Here is part of the Title Page in this non-fiction cryptozoology book:

This is nonfiction, completely unlike a book that might be titled something like “Dolores the Dinosaur.” This one is about real persons and about animals that appear to be real. The author has no doubt that the animals that are seen are what they appear to be: not made up and not mistakes that people make when they see birds or bats. This book is about ordinary persons who have seen extraordinary flying creatures. The author believes what those persons have told him. You, the reader, decide what you want to believe.

front cover of Whitcomb's "The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur"

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This nonfiction book is for readers from about eight to fourteen years old. It contains nothing about the Bible except for one quotation: “Seek and ye shall find.” It says nothing about the Book of Mormon or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is a nonfiction cryptozoology book for young readers, and that’s it.

With that said, I, Jonathan Whitcomb, am an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nothing in The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur is contrary to the principles and practices of the Church. I recommend it to middle-grade children and younger teens of all faiths and ask that they use their own judgement and come to their own conclusions about these extraordinary sighting reports from different areas of the world.

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Mormon nonfiction writer Jonathan Whitcomb

“Not all of my books and online publications are about eyewitness reports of apparent pterosaurs, but most of them are. How do doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints relate to the existence of modern pterosaurs? Most of our beliefs don’t relate to them directly, yet those that do—they deserve attention. . . .”

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New Book About Living Pterosaurs

In spite of the title, this nonfiction book is not technically about dinosaurs but about reported sightings of apparent pterosaurs, flying creatures that have long been thought to have all gone extinct long ago.

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Cryptozoology book by Whitcomb

Reports of living pterosaurs or apparent pterosaurs come from Papua New Guinea and Africa, with cryptid names that include “ropen,” “indava,” and “kongamato.” But similar descriptions come from eyewitnesses in the U.S.A.

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Flying dinosaur book for a ten-year-old girl

. . . The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur. I’m not saying that this paperback is the ideal gift for every 10-year-old girl who reads English, of course, but it’s a whole new approach to the “dinosaur bird,” and I wrote it for readers 8-14 years old or thereabouts.

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Excerpts from the writings of Hugh Nibley - LDS nonfiction book

The Essential Nibley

Book Review This nonfiction paperback book is a compilation of some of the writings of Hugh Nibley, a highly-esteemed LDS scholar. Let’s here focus on the eighth chapter of The Essential Nibley, “The Jaradite Epic.” Part One: “The Book of Ether: A Perfect Organic History”

Individually, I find the parallels between the Jaredites and the early Asiatics very impressive, but taken together their value increases as the cube of their number. In the Book of Ether they are woven into a perfect organic whole, a consistent picture of a type of {epic} society the very existence of which has come to be known only in recent years. The only alternative to Joseph Smith’s explanation [of the origin of the Book of Ether and the Book of Mormon] is to assume . . . the existence of a forger who at one moment is so clever and adroit as to imitate the archaic poetry of the desert to perfection and supply us with genuine Egyptian names, and yet so incredibly stupid as to think that the best way to fool people and get money out of them is to write an exceedingly difficult historical epic of six hundred pages. . . . As with the Lehi story, if {the book of Ether} is fiction, it is fiction by one thoroughly familiar with a field of history that nobody in the world knew anything about in 1830. . . .

Part Three: “The Jaredite Epic”

. . .  The book of Ether takes us back thousands of years before Lehi’s time to the dawn of history and the first of the great world migrations. A vivid description of {the} Volkerwanderungszeit concentrates on the migration of a particular party—a large one, moving through the years with their vast flocks and herds across central Asia . . . and then undertaking a terrifying crossing of the North Pacific. Totally unlike the rest of the Book of Mormon, this archaic tale conjures up the “heroic” ages, the “epic milieu” of the great migrations and the “saga time” that follows, describing in detail the customs and usages of a cultural complex that Chadwick was first to describe in our own day.

Part Five: “Fierce and Bloody-Minded men out of Asia”

Though {the Book of Ether} comes to us a digest and an abridgment, stripped and streamlined, it is still as intricate and complex a history as you can find; and in its involved and tragic pages nothing is more challenging than the sinister presence of those fierce and bloody-minded “men out of Asia” known in their day as Jaredites. The whole structure of Jaredite history hangs on a succession of strong men, most of them rather terrible figures. Few annals of equal terseness and brevity are freighted with an equal burden of wickedness. The pages of Ether are dark with intrigue and violence, strictly of the Asiatic brand. . . .

. Excerpts from the writings of Hugh Nibley - LDS nonfiction book

The Essential NIbley

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