Pteranodon Quotes

The Hebrew word owph, that we normally translate as “bird” in Genesis 1 and Genesis 7, means creatures with wings. This obviously includes birds (the predominant type here) but also other winged creatures — such as bats, flightless birds, flying reptiles, etc. For example, ostriches and bats are included under this word owph in Leviticus 11. Most commentators recognize that Genesis 7:3 (see above), “seven each of the birds of the air,” is tied to the backdrop of clean creatures in Genesis 7:2 (see above). Verse 2 lists all animals coming onboard the ark in two categories — clean and unclean — and how many of each. When verse 3 immediately after that lists 7, it is discussing a subgroup of the clean animals, otherwise, verse 2 is in error. However, contextually, this doesn’t mean all winged/flying creatures came by 7 but instead limited to 7 of the clean ones. Pteranodons and pterodactyls are not among the clean creatures defined per the Bible (Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14). For instance, Leupold writes: In v. 3 the idea of “the birds of the heavens” must, of course, be supplemented by the adjective “clean,” according to the principle laid down in v. 2.24 Likewise, Dr. John Gill, who agrees when discussing the birds, writes: That is, of such as were clean; seven couple of these were to be brought into the ark, for the like use as of the clean beasts, and those under the law.

A heron swoops the water. A princely, primitive bird, each of its enormous slate-blue wings unfolds effortlessly as a chaise longue. The heron foot-drags the stream. Then it sails aloft and, turning, reveals the silhouette of a pteranodon. I like to divine the lasting essence of this place. I like to feel intimations of something akin to those tutelary spirits—near at hand, beyond spectrum of the visible—to whom Celts built menhirs and dolmens; spirits the pagan Romans called genii loci. Thracian shepherds would have known Duck Run inhabited by potamids, nymphs of rivers and streams. Shinto worshippers in Japan paid homage to divine spirits of leaves, to sacred life coursing through roots and bodies of trees, the kami spirits of wind and water. I like to feel what they felt. I like to hear what they heard: the land improvising always—in zephyr, in freshet—its oracular speech, its earth-jazz, its wild glossolalia.

It was the monster of all winged dinosaurs, the pteranodon.

Pteranodon

I was not surprised that my species had so efficiently destroyed, in two generations, an animal that had lived under the winged shadows of pteranodons.