ELUCIDATING THE TWO 'CIVIL WAR PTERODACTYL' THUNDERBIRD PHOTOGRAPHS

 

The two so-called Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photographs: the PTP photo (top) and the AP photo (bottom) (both photos © FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20^th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Over the years, I have documented on ShukerNature a number of alleged thunderbird photographs (some of them even being claimed on various online sites to be THE infamous, missing thunderbird photograph – click here for the latter's fascinating if highly frustrating history), and I have exposed each one of them either as an intentionally deceiving hoax perpetrated by creator(s) unknown, or as a pastiche deliberately intended as a tribute to the missing thunderbird photo that has been openly and unequivocally identified as a pastiche by its creator(s). Click here, here, here, and here to access these cases. Yet the photographs from this particular cryptozoological category that have elicited the most queries sent to me by readers, and continue to do so, are the two that form the subject of this first ShukerNature blog article of mine in 2021 – namely, the so-called Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photos.

Before I go any further, however, I must point out that their full details were first revealed online elsewhere (see later for a clickable link to that source). Consequently, this present concise article of mine is intended merely as a summary, an elucidation, for anyone who has not seen that very comprehensive original coverage and is therefore checking ShukerNature for information concerning them instead.

First and foremost, setting the scene: as my article's title and opening illustrations clearly demonstrate, there is not just one Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photograph (as is sometimes mistakenly assumed), but two. Although superficially similar, each depicting a group of men in American Civil War uniforms standing around a large seemingly-killed pterodactyl-like mystery beast lying on the ground, and therefore corresponding with some claimed recollections of the missing thunderbird photo (in turn explaining why they have been popularly dubbed the Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photos), a closer look readily shows that the two beasts are in fact quite different, as are the men.

Both photos look very old and tattered, their existence ostensibly indicating that at some stage during the American Civil War (1861-1865), a group of soldiers somehow managed to kill a living, modern-day pterodactyl, or something extraordinarily like one. As a result, the two images have variously appeared separately and together on many online sites and elsewhere as evidence that these winged reptiles did not become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period approximately 65 million years ago as currently indicated by the fossil record, but have somehow survived into the present age, at least in North America.

In fact, the reality is very different. As will be seen, both Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photographs have the same origin, and are completely artificial, but were created for two very different, entirely separate purposes.

One of these photos is commonly dubbed the PTP Photo online, and sometimes even the PTP Pterodactyl Photo, although the latter is decidedly tautological, bearing in mind that PTP is short for Pterosaur Photo (and as pterodactyls constitute a major taxonomic group of pterosaurs, this means that if referred to in full it would be the Pterosaur Photo Pterodactyl Photo!). Here it is:

 

The PTP Photo (© FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20^th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The other photo does not seem to have a specific name. Consequently, for reasons that will shortly become obvious, I shall refer to it hereafter as the AP Photo, with AP being short for Advance Publicity. Here it is:

 

The AP Photo (© FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20^th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Originally screened from October 2000 until June 2001, FreakyLinks was a single-season, 13-episode science fiction TV show originating in the USA. It was created by American film producer Gregg Hale (best known for producing the movie The Blair Witch Project) and David S. Hoyer (an American film-maker, novelist, and comic book writer, with many superhero movie screenplays to his name, most notably those for the trilogy of Blade movies and the Dark Knight trilogy of Batman movies). The production companies responsible for bringing FreakyLinks to the small screen were Haxan Films, Regency Television, and 20^th Century Fox Television

The focus of FreakyLinks is a mysteries-obsessed geek named Derek Barnes (played by Ethan Embry), who has a website entitled FreakyLinks through which he channels his investigations and findings relating to a wide range of unexplained phenomena, and he is assisted in his endeavours to uncover the truth by a couple of friends. Each episode deals with a different case investigated by them, and the subject of Episode 4, which is entitled 'Coelacanth This!', is a series of recent attacks upon people by some huge winged mystery beast. Derek believes that this may be a living pterodactyl (i.e. a prehistoric survivor, hence the coelacanth reference in this episode's title) and, in turn, the origin of cryptozoological thunderbird reports dating back more than a century.

This is where the two Civil War Pterodactyl photos come in, because the PTP Photo had been created specifically (and digitally) by a VFX company hired by the production design team at FreakyLinks to appear (as indeed it did) in 'Coelacanth This!', which was first screened on 27 October 2000. At the time of my writing and uploading this blog article of mine onto ShukerNature, 'Coelacanth This!' can be watched for free here on YouTube, so you can readily confirm for yourself that the PTP Photo does indeed appear in this episode. Moreover, below are three screen shots of this photo's presence in it that reveal precisely when it first appears (it does so more than once in this episode – see the end of this present article for a screen shot of its reappearance).

 

Three screen shots of the PTP photo's first appearance in 'Coelacanth This!' – Episode 4 of FreakyLinks - please click each one to enlarge it for viewing pueposes (© FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20^th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The PTP photo should not be (but very often is) confused with an earlier, visually inferior Civil War pterodactyl photo. This latter picture is none other than the AP Photo, which features different actors as the Civil War soldiers, plus a different pterodactyl, in the form of a physical model. The AP Photo had also been created for FreakyLinks but, crucially, was used by them solely for advance publicity purposes, being included (together with a specially-created back story for it) in their FreakyLinks website (which in turn had been launched two years prior to the show's actual screening in order to promote it), but never actually appearing onscreen in the show itself.

Two decades later finds the FreakyLinks website now archived within the website of Haxan Films, but if you click here you can still access the page from it containing the AP Photo. Moreover, the pterodactyl model from the AP Photo is now housed at veteran cryptozoologist Loren Coleman's famous International Cryptozoology Museum at Portland, in Maine, USA.

 

Screen shot of the relevant section of the page from the original FreakyLinks website (now archived within the site of Haxan Films) that contains the AP photo - please click it to enlarge for reading purposes (© FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20^th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But why do two different Civil War Pterodactyl photos associated with FreakyLinks exist? Why wasn't just one created, to appear both onscreen in the show itself and online in its publicity website? The reason is as follows.

The AP Photo was created first, but apparently there was subsequently a problem in obtaining talent releases for the actors featured in it, which would be needed if it were indeed to be shown onscreen in the episode. Also, the show's production designer allegedly didn't think that the AP Photo's pterodactyl was very impressive.

So Haxan Films hired the visual-effects company E=MC² Digital to create a second, more spectacular Civil War Pterodactyl photo (which would then be shown in the episode), and signed up new actors to appear in it. The result was the PTP photo, with the pterodactyl in it being a digitally-added image this time, as far as I'm aware, rather than a physical model.

So, to reiterate the key fact here: it was the PTP photo that was used onscreen in the actual FreakyLinks episode, not the AP Photo, which appeared instead in the show's online publicity website.

All of this and more concerning the two different FreakyLinks Civil War Pterodactyl photos was first revealed by Brian Dunning in a fascinating Skeptoid podcast and accompanying online transcript of 9 January 2018 that finally and comprehensively dispelled the confusion that had hitherto enshrouded these two images for so long online. Consequently, I strongly recommend that you click here to listen to his podcast and/or read his transcript for full details concerning this now fully-resolved but still very interesting cryptozoological case. (A detailed analysis of the PTP photo within the context of putative living pterosaurs can also be accessed here.)

 

A screen shot showing the reappearance of the PTP Photo near the end of the 'Coelacanth This!' episode of FreakyLinks (© FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20^th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

EXPOSING A TRULY BATTY EXAMPLE OF A FAKE THUNDERBIRD PHOTOGRAPH

The fake thunderbird photograph exposed in this present ShukerNature article (photo-manipulator(s) unknown to me – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The case of the missing thunderbird photograph is unquestionably one of the most tantalizing – and tormenting – cryptozoological cases on file. I have already documented it in detail here on ShukerNature as well as in my two prehistoric survivors books, which should all be consulted for comprehensive coverage. However, serving to set the scene for this present article's subject, here is a concise quote from my afore-mentioned ShukerNature account of this elusive (or illusive?) image:

It all (allegedly) began back in 1886, when an Arizona newspaper called the Tombstone Epitaph supposedly published a very striking photograph, which depicted a huge dead pterodactyl-like bird with open beak and enormous outstretched wings, nailed to a barn and flanked by some men. This bird was reputed to be a thunderbird, and judging from the size scale provided by the height of the men standing alongside it, its wingspan appeared to be an awesome 36 ft! In other words, it was three times greater than that of the wandering albatross Diomedea exulans - the bird species currently holding the record for the world's biggest modern-day wingspan.

Since then, countless people claim to have seen this same photo in various magazines published some time during the 1960s or early 1970s, but no-one can remember precisely where. Those publications thought to be likely sources of such a picture include Saga, True, Argosy, and various of the many Western-type magazines in existence during this period in America, but searches through runs of these publications have failed to uncover any evidence of it.

Nor has anyone come forward with a copy of this photo as published elsewhere, and the archives of the Tombstone Epitaph do not have any copy of it either.

A number of photos claimed to be this evanescent, iconic image have been aired over the years, especially online, but these have all been exposed as hoaxes.

I should also point out here that some people have claimed that the ostensibly-vanished photo seen by them actually portrayed a bona fide pterodactyl, not merely a pterodactyl-like bird. However, just a few years after the thunderbird photo was supposedly first published, another story of a huge winged wonder began circulating, and in the same geographical region. This one concerned a huge bona fide pterodactyl having been shot in an American desert, i.e. a totally separate storyline but which has subsequently been conflated with the missing thunderbird photo's storyline, especially in online accounts. Consequently, this may explain those eyewitness reports of having seen a photo of a dead pterodactyl, rather than of a dead bird, pinned with wings outstretched to a barn door.

As will be seen if you search my ShukerNature blog, I have personally exposed a number of hoax thunderbird photos, because I feel that it is very necessary to remove from further consideration such fakes, as they serve only to confuse and detract from serious investigations being made by various researchers (myself included) regarding the original, genuine thunderbird photograph, if indeed such a picture really does exist. And now, yet another fake thunderbird photo has emerged, but one that I was able to expose very quickly, as now fully revealed here.

During the early hours of yesterday morning (12 October 2020), longstanding Facebook friend Randi MacDonald (aka Randi Mosasaur) brought to my attention via a private message on FB the following photograph that she had found on Pinterest, but with no details concerning its origin. I reproduced it at the opening of this present ShukerNature article of mine, but here it is again:

The fake thunderbird photograph found on Pinterest by Randi (photo manipulator(s) unknown to me – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As seen, it has the outward appearance of being a very old, sepia photograph depicting what looks initially like a dead pterodactylian pterosaur pinned with wings outstretched to the front of a barn, in front of which are standing a number of human figures that may conceivably be cowboys or soldiers, or some of each. In short, it closely matches verbal descriptions that have been given by those people claiming to have seen the original, missing thunderbird photograph but alleging that the creature in question was a pterodactyl or at least a pterodactyl-like entity rather than an unequivocal (albeit extremely large!) feathered bird.

However, even the most cursory of glances at this photograph revealed straight away to me that it was a hoax, due to the unambiguously fraudulent nature of the thunderbird portrayed in it. Even if we choose to ignore the scarcely inconsiderable fact that the most recent pterodactyls known from the current fossil record are at least 65 million years old, with no scientifically-confirmed modern-day living example known, thereby rendering as decidedly remote the likelihood of the thunderbird in this photo being genuine, the latter entity is instantly recognizable as a fake, because of its readily visible composite nature. For whereas it sports the crested, beaked head of a Pteranodon-like pterodactyl, the bone structure of its wings as seen through the wing membranes is diagnostically that of a bat!

Pterosaur wing's bone structure (top) and bat wing's bone structure (bottom) (© National Geographic – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As shown above, a pterosaur's wing only contains a single greatly elongated finger, the 4^th, which runs along its outer edge within the wing membrane. Conversely, a bat's wing contains three greatly elongated fingers. These are the 3^rd, which runs along its outer edge within the wing membrane, plus the 4^th and the 5^th, both of which are contained further down within the wing membrane. In addition, the less elongated 2^nd finger is contained within the wing membrane above the 3^rd finger. This bat wing structure is precisely the version exhibited by the fake thunderbird's wings.

Yet even though within just a few moments of having first seen it I knew categorically that this photo was a fake, I decided to see out of sheer curiosity whether  I could uncover the major original components in it that had been utilized and converted via digital manipulation to yield its image. I began with the barn, and using a combination of search engines I soon discovered the original, unmodified barn photograph that had been used. A full-colour modern-day photo, it appears on numerous websites, of which the earliest that I could find was in a 11 August 2010 post by Texas-based photographer Nancy Wingo Ridley (username = Rustic Images) on the Foundmyself website (please click here to access its site), being one of numerous attractive countryside-themed photographs that this website offers for sale. Please click here to see this photo on the Foundmyself site (where it is described as "Old barn and wagon near Fredricksburg, Tx"); and please click here to see Nancy's Foundmyself page containing her many exquisitely beautiful photographs that are available on this site.

When I compared this genuine full-colour modern-day photo of a barn with the fake thunderbird photo, it was immediately evident that the former had been used by the faker as the basis of the latter, as can be seen here:

Comparison of the fake thunderbird photograph (top) with the genuine full-colour modern-day photo of a barn (bottom) that was digitally manipulated by person(s) unknown to help create the fake thunderbird photo (creator(s) of fake thunderbird photo unknown to me / (© Rustic Photos – reproduced here in low-resolution format on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only; please click here to visit the excellent Rustic Photos page of images where the original full-colour barn photograph is just one of numerous beautiful countryside-themed pictures produced by her that can be purchased)

As can also be seen, only three major changes have been made via digital manipulation to the actual structure of the barn. The barn door has been widened, the wheeled contraption in front of it has been removed, and the triangular section on the lower right-hand side of the barn roof has been digitally raised, i.e. stretched vertically, so that its outer edge is now tucked just underneath that of the barn roof's upper right-hand side. The effect of this is to make the barn horizontally wider at that particular point – but why would the faker choose to do this? The answer is quite simple – to make the barn wide enough at that particular point for the right-hand wingtip of the wings-outstretched pterodactyl to fit fully on it and thereby match the descriptions of claimed eyewitnesses of the original missing thunderbird photo. Had the faker not done this and had simply used the original full-colour barn photo unmodified, the pterodactyl's right-hand wingtip would have projected quite a way over the edge of the barn roof's lower right-hand edge instead of being contained entirely within it.

Added to the very decent job that the faker has done in converting the modern-day colour barn photo into an aged-looking, purposefully slightly blurry, sepia-tinted photo that one might indeed assume to be 150-or-so years old (as the original, missing thunderbird photo will be by now if it truly exists), this digital widening of the barn in order to make the pterodactyl fit upon it was, I felt, was a clever, well thought-out additional modification of the original full-colour barn photograph – or it would have been, were it not for one massive oversight that again instantly exposed the thunderbird photo to me as a hoax.

Enlarge the two photos, look at the trees surrounding the barn in the original full-colour barn photo, then look at them surrounding the barn in the thunderbird photo. As you will see, they are not just similar, they are identical in every way – every leaf, every twig, every angle of foliage in the original full-colour barn photo is duplicated exactly in the thunderbird photo! An exact match in every way.

One can only assume that either the faker had been careless and had not thought to modify digitally the trees and their foliage in the thunderbird photo so that they were visually distinct from those in the original barn photo, or had chosen simply to ignore this aspect of the photos in the hope that their identical nature would not be spotted (or perhaps the faker did try but found the process too difficult, so decided to leave this aspect alone?).

How long has this fake thunderbird photo been in existence? By using a combination of different search engines once again, the earliest instance of its presence online that I could find was 27 March 2017, on the website tunepk.me (but a link to it no longer operates), which was thrown up by the search engine TinEye. Here is a screenshot of that latter result:

Earliest search result for the fake thunderbird photo discovered by me, thrown up by TinEye (© TinEye – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

In contrast, its 11 August 2010 appearance on the Foundmyself website for Rustic Images is the earliest appearance online that I could find for the full-colour barn photo, i.e. a full seven years before the fake thunderbird photo.

Turning my attention away from the barn and its surroundings to the composite pterodactyl-headed bat-winged thunderbird, I then decided to see if I could trace online the original photo from where the latter's wings had been obtained by the faker. This again proved surprisingly easy – I soon found a photo of a fruit bat in flight whose wings were identical to the thunderbird's, as readily revealed when this bat photo was simply rotated so that the orientation of the bat's wings lined up with that of the thunderbird's wings in order to make easier direct comparisons of the two images.

Of particular note is that a small notch, presumably the result of some injury, can be discerned at the edge of the section of membrane extending between the very elongated 4^th and 5^th fingers of the bat's dark brown right-hand wing. It shows up very well in the bat photo because of the pale blue sky visible through it. When these dark brown bat wings were added by the faker to the thunderbird photo, however, the notch is no longer so readily spotted because now it is the dark brown barn that is showing through it (rather than the much more contrasting pale blue sky in the original bat photo), but if you enlarge the thunderbird photo you can then detect the notch.

Here for comparison purposes is the fake thunderbird photo alongside the bat photo, the latter having been rotated by me so that its wing orientation corresponds with that of the bat-winged pterodactyl-headed thunderbird in order for direct visual comparisons to be more easily made:

Fake thunderbird photo (top) and bat photo (bottom) (photo-manipulator(s) unknown to me / (© 945ontwerp/cdc.gov – reproduced here in low-resolution format on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

I discovered that this bat photo had been snapped by a photographer with the screen name 945ontwerp, who had first uploaded it onto a Getty Images website named iStock on 5 June 2007 (please click here to browse through his portfolio of spectacular photos available for purchase), but it has since appeared in numerous online publications. In particular, it opens an article written by Linda McIntosh and entitled 'Meet bats, creepy night critters' that appeared on the same day, 18 October 2016, in a number of different American newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune (click here to access it) as well as the Morning Call, San Diego Union-Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and New York Daily News (and in which the photo, oddly, is credited to cdc.gov).

Finally: the feet of the bat in the bat photo do not match those of the thunderbird, indicating that a separate photographic source was used by the faker to yield these. Sure enough, while seeking the photographic source of the bat wings, I actually came across several different bat photos in each of which the depicted bat's feet were sufficiently similar to those of the thunderbird that some only very minor digital modification and enlargement would be needed in order to create the latter appendages. Incidentally, after some consideration I decided not to expend any additional time on this photo, as would be required were I to seek out the original image sources for the men standing in front of the thunderbird, because as can clearly be seen here, I have already presented more than sufficient evidence to confirm that this photo is a fake. However, if anyone reading this ShukerNature blog article of mine does have the time and the patience to do so, I'd certainly be very interested to learn if you succeed in tracing them online.

Another cryptozoological fake conclusively exposed, Case solved.

My sincere thanks to Randi MacDonald/Mosasaur for kindly bringing this fake thunderbird photograph to my attention.

An extensive documentation of alleged modern-day sightings and encounters with thunderbirds can be found in my book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.

Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

 

 

 

SCRUTINIZING THE SHOEBILL – THE BIRD WORLD'S INCREDIBLE WHALE-HEADED KING

A close-up of a taxiderm shoebill's head, highlighting its extraordinary beak (left) and a vintage portrayal of a shoebill first published in 1901 (right) (© Dr Karl Shuker / public domain)

One of the bird world's oddest-looking species is unquestionably Balaeniceps rex, whose scientific name translates as 'whale-headed king' – but as its head bears little resemblance to a whale, this is a somewhat strange name, even for as strange a bird as Balaeniceps. Standing up to 5 ft tall, its general appearance is that of a large, round-shouldered stork with slaty blue-grey plumage and an untidy crest, but distinguishing it instantly from any genuine stork is its enormous, grotesque beak.

Roughly 8 in long, with a sharply hooked tip, this incongruous structure greatly resembles a clog-like shoe, earning Balaeniceps a much more apt and more commonly used name - shoebill. Similarly, the Arabs call this bird Abu-markub, 'Father of the shoe'.

Vintage illustration of the shoebill's head (top) and a shoebill skull readily demonstrating its beak's disproportionately huge size compared to the rest of its skull (bottom) (© Huub Veldhuijzen van Zanten/Naturalis Biodiversity Center – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

A peculiar but characteristic behavioural attribute of the shoebill is its tendency to stand perfectly still for lengthy periods of times. Recalling this, several years ago a correspondent informed me that when she was a child visiting her first zoo, she saw what she initially assumed to be a statue of some strange dinosaur-bird, because it was completely immobile. Fascinated, she stood and looked at it unsuspectingly for a time - until, without warning and in best Talos tradition (fans of the classic Ray Harryhausen film Jason and the Argonauts from 1963 will know exactly what I mean here!), this 'statue' slowly turned its head until it was staring directly at her! Its steely gaze peering down its huge beak into her face totally petrified the poor little girl, who was convinced that she was about to be torn apart and devoured!

Happily, the shoebill is in reality a shy, inoffensive species, inhabiting the relatively inaccessible papyrus marshes and floating swamps of the Upper Nile and its central East African tributaries, where it uses its massive beak to catch and extract prey such as fish, water snakes, and frogs (possibly even small mammals, and young crocodiles too) from the surrounding vegetation. It was once believed that its shoe-like shape was a specific adaptation for scooping lungfishes out of the mud, but as lungfishes do not form this species' principal diet, that idea seems unfounded - just as unfounded, it would appear, as many of the assumptions put forward over the years regarding this species' taxonomic affinity to other birds.

Section from an 1870s chromatolithograph depicting a pair of shoebills in their natural swampland habitat (public domain)

Science first became aware of the shoebill in the early 1840s. In his Expedition to Discover the Sources of the White Nile, in the Years 1840, 1841 (1849), German explorer Ferdinand Werne reported that on 15 December 1840 his party saw a remarkable bird that seemed to them to be as large as a young camel, with a huge pelican-like beak, but lacking the pelican's characteristic pouch. This was undoubtedly a shoebill; sadly, Werne was asleep at the time and his party was unwilling to wake him, so he never observed it himself.

Eight years later, however, German ornithologist-explorer Baron Johann W. von Müller was more fortunate, catching sight of two shoebills. Moreover, upon his return to base at Khartoum, Sudan, he saw a pair of dead specimens for sale offered by a slave-dealer. The price that he was asking was too high to interest Baron von Müller, but not long afterwards they were purchased by a traveller from Nottingham named Mansfield Parkyns, who brought them back to England when he returned with various other animal specimens collected during his African sojourn. These were studied by the eminent bird painter John Gould, who prepared a formal scientific description of the shoebill, presented on 14 January 1851 at a meeting of London's Zoological Society and published later that year in its Proceedings. And in 1860, Britain's first pair of living shoebills arrived at London Zoo, courtesy of Welsh traveller John Petherick.

Another pair of shoebills in their natural habitat, this time painted by okapi discoverer Sir Harry Johnston and published in 1902 (public domain)

Meanwhile, the controversy concerning this species' relationship to other birds had begun in earnest. Gould had classified it as an aberrant, long-legged pelican; but other ornithologists did not agree with that, and tended to ally it either with the herons or with the storks. Today, the shoebill is generally categorised as the sole living occupant of its own family, discrete from both the herons and the storks. The reason for the phenomenal difficulty in satisfactorily classifying this bird rests with its anatomy and behaviour, which embrace a perplexing potpourri of features drawn from at least three different bird families - and two different orders.

Powder-downs are pairs of strange feathers that are never shed, but perpetually fray at their tips to yield a powder that the bird rubs into its other feathers. Herons have three pairs, and the shoebill has a single pair, but storks have none. Also in common with herons, the shoebill's rear toe is held at the same level as its three forward-pointing toes (the rear toe is raised in storks); and when it flies, the shoebill tucks its head and neck backwards, like herons once again.

And a smile on the face of the shoebill? (photo by Sengkang - copyrighted free use)

Even so, whereas in herons the stapes (birds' only middle-ear bone) is primitive in form, avian evolutionist Dr Alan Feduccia showed that it has an identical derived shape in the storks and the shoebill (Nature, 21 April 1977). Also agreeing with the storks: the shoebill's middle toe is less than half the length of the tarsus (heel-bone), and it has no webbing between its toes (herons have a partial web between 2-3 of theirs). It displays the storks' beak-clattering behaviour too.

Yet as if all of this were not already sufficient to demonstrate the shoebill's transitional form and conduct, its skull exhibits certain features similar to those of a completely separate order of birds – Pelecaniformes, the pelicans. Furthermore, in true pelican style, it flies with its large beak resting on its breast. Indeed, in 1957 the detailed skeletal studies undertaken by former British Museum ornithologist Dr Patricia A. Cottam on the shoebill convinced her that Gould had been correct all along, that this enigmatic species really was most closely related to the pelicans. However, other researchers (notably Dr Joel Cracraft in the ornithological journal Auk, 1985) dismissed its similarities as examples of convergence, i.e. they reasoned that because the shoebill and the pelicans exist in similar habitats and have similar lifestyles, they have evolved into similar forms, even though they originate from separate ancestral stocks.

An exquisite engraving from 1860 depicting a pair of shoebills (public domain)

Then in February 1986 after having directly compared the shoebill's DNA with that of herons, storks, and pelicans, researchers Drs Charles G. Sibley and Jon E. Ahlquist announced in Scientific American that, contrary to all expectations, the shoebill's DNA most closely matched that of the pelicans! They published further data in support of their finds during the 1990s. In 2001, extensive research involving DNA hybridisation as well as nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence analyses by a team headed by Dr Marcel van Tuinen added further support for the pelicans, the shoebill, and another enigmatic species called the hammerhead or hamerkop Scopus umbretta being of monophyletic (common) origin.

Comparable results were also obtained from a comprehensive osteological study by Frankfurt-based ornithologist Dr Gerald Mayr, published in 2003. Modern studies thus offer persuasive evidence for believing, as Gould had proposed over 160 years ago, that the shoebill is basically an aberrant pelican, and that its cranial affinities with pelicans signify direct kinship rather than deceptive evolutionary convergence.

Shoebills – not singular storks but peculiar pelicans, relatively speaking; painting by Joseph Wolf, 1862 (public domain)

In recent years, the shoebill's classification has also attracted attention because the results of more detailed genetic comparisons (notably the extensive phylogenomic study by Dr Shannon J. Hackett and a large team of co-workers - Science, 12 July 2008), involving many different avian genera and families, have required taxonomists to carry out a major overhaul of the contents of the avian orders Ciconiiformes and Pelecaniformes. These changes can be summarised as follows.

Traditionally, Ciconiiformes has contained the following families: Ardeidae (herons, egrets, bitterns), Balaenicipitidae (shoebill), Scopidae (hammerhead), Ciconiidae (storks), Threskiornithidae (ibises and spoonbills), and Phoenicopteridae (flamingos). Pelecaniformes, meanwhile, has contained Phaethontidae (tropic-birds), Fregatidae (frigate-birds), Sulidae (gannets and boobies), Anhingidae (anhingas or darters), Phalacrocoracidae (cormorants and shags), and Pelecanidae (pelicans). However, modern genetic studies have shown fairly convincingly that Pelecaniformes is polyphyletic, i.e. its families do not all originate from a single common ancestor, but in reality seem to constitute three entirely separate evolutionary lineages. One of these lineages consists of the tropic-birds, which therefore are now housed within their own separate order, Phaethontiformes. A second lineage comprises the gannets and boobies, cormorants and shags, anhingas, and frigate-birds. So these have all been grouped together within their own new order too, Suliformes. This means that only one original family remains within Pelecaniformes – the pelicans, constituting a third separate lineage.

Facing up to some taxonomic tribulations (© Leyo/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

However, genetic studies have also shown, somewhat unexpectedly, that within the order Ciconiiformes are certain families – namely, the herons, bitterns, and egrets; the shoebill; the hammerhead; and the ibises and spoonbills – that are more closely related to the pelicans than they are to the remaining ciconiiform families. In short, Ciconiiformes is also polyphyletic. Consequently, these pelican-allied families have now been removed from Ciconiiformes and placed alongside the pelican family within Pelecaniformes. And the flamingos have been allocated their own separate order, Phoenicopteriformes. This means that the only family now remaining in Ciconiiformes is the storks.

Having said that, however, some taxonomists believe that the New World vultures' family, Cathartidae, and the extinct teratorns' family, Teratornithidae, are actually more closely related to the storks than to the Old World vultures or any other birds of prey. Consequently, they have duly included Cathartidae and Teratornithidae alongside the stork family Ciconiidae in Ciconiiformes. Meanwhile, the shoebill is nowadays back to where it began when first formally described during the 1800s, as a member of the pelican order. However, it is seen, along with the hammerhead, as a taxonomic link between Pelecaniformes and Ciconiiformes.

Shoebill showing off its powerful pinions (© Pelican/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

Even the shoebill's fossil antecedents have stimulated taxonomic turmoil. Until its reclassification in 1980 by Dr Pierce Brodkorb as an ancestral shoebill (based upon the finding of a tarsometatarsus that revealed this taxonomic affinity), Goliathia andrewsi had been classed as an aberrant heron. It was first described in 1930 by Hungarian palaeontologist Dr Kálmán Lambrecht, following the discovery of an ulna bone dating from the early Oligocene, which had been obtained in the Jebel Qatrani Formation within Egypt's Fayum Province. The only other widely-accepted fossil relative of the shoebill is Paludavis richae, with remains found in Tunisia and Pakistan, but these are more recent, from the Miocene.

Of cryptozoological interest is the shoebill's implication in a very curious case of mistaken identity. From time to time, reports emerge from various remote regions of Central Africa describing alleged sightings of large, macabre-looking creatures soaring through the skies and bearing an impressive resemblance to those long-extinct flying reptilians, the pterosaurs. However, it is more than likely that many of these involve shoebills, as noted by zoologist Dr Maurice Burton (Animals, 18 February 1964 – click here to read more about his comments on ShukerNature) and subsequently explored in greater detail by me within my books In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995) and Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016) – click here for coverage on ShukerNature of my books' documentation. There is no doubt that this strange bird has a distinctly prehistoric appearance, especially when viewed in flight, and anyone unfamiliar with the striking spectacle of its huge, 8.5-ft wingspan and giant beak could certainly be forgiven for thinking that they had spied an aerial anachronism, a cryptic creature supposedly dead for more than 64 million years.

This ShukerNature blog article is adapted from my book The Menagerie of Marvels.

Awe-inspiring sight of a shoebill in flight (© Tom Tarrant/Wikipedia – CC BY SA.30 licence)