fiery flying serpent – Page 2 – The Bible and Modern Pterosaurs

September 19, 2013November 3, 2014

New Pterosaur Book on Ropens

front cover of the fourth edition of this nonfiction book

I hope that the third edition of my first book will be finished next month. [It was published in April of 2014, but the fourth edition was published October 31, 2014.] The revised title is Searching for Ropens and Finding God. Those last two words should solve a problem that came up with the first edition, when a few vocal readers railed against it because they were offended by any promotion of religious values; they wanted a book only about cryptozoology.

Much of this third edition with relate to cryptozoology, although the book is not quite in that genre. It’s also not a book about religion, although the values and beliefs of Christian explorers is explained. Is it a true-life adventure? Almost. It’s more like all of the above: cross-genre.

Here is part of the introduction, although it is subject to more editing and revising:

Introduction

Expect answers in this book: why my associates and I traveled to a remote tropical island to search for living pterosaurs and why so few professors have given us any hope that they still live. What about adventures, with danger, failure, and success? Yes, expect those, but I hope that readers will discover more than adventure—a purpose in life—as worthy a purpose as I have found, even if without “flying dinosaurs.” This is not an instruction manual for finding God, yet I suggest that the spiritual quest gives the highest reward.

After reading this book, if one person finds a reason to live and abandons thoughts of suicide, what a reward for all of us involved! This is not a textbook for preventing suicide, yet I suggest each of us can find ways to bring meaning into the lives of persons around us, motivating all of us to keep living and learning.

Is this a tool for promoting Biblical Creation and ridiculing evolution? Clear thinking we need, without fear, allowing us to discover both truth and error in whatever camp we find ourselves, entrenched or visiting, at the moment. I suggest we beware of simplistic labels. That said, expect explanations for why my associates and I have rejected extreme naturalism philosophy and Darwin’s unlimited common ancestry, what some call the General Theory of Evolution.

This is not propaganda for any human philosophy, yet I extoll the accomplishments of those Young Earth Creationists who have been my associates for many years. I suggest we allow ourselves to find literal truth in the Bible, regardless of whatever passages are mainly symbolic. For those who think that pill too bitter, at least avoid ridiculing those labeled “creationist.”

Some of you have read the first or second edition of Searching for Ropens, so the first paragraph of the first chapter, quoted below, will be no surprise. Additional paragraphs have been added, however, to better explain how event in my childhood may have related to the extraordinary opportunities that I received, and grabbed onto, in my older years:

Chapter One: Awakenings

It looked like a dead pterodactyl, not fossil bones but with skin, like it had died recently. Could those creatures, non-extinct, still fly? Although I never verified the authenticity of the photograph in the soon-forgotten book, the idea behind that image would be awakened four decades later, to plunge me into the most dramatic adventure of my life: exploring a remote tropical island, searching for giant living pterosaurs.

My first exposure to a remote tropical island with a giant reptile—when my younger sister Cindy and I were infants—came from Mommy reading Peter Pan. When I was four, the new sister was born, not to the name chosen by Cindy and me, “Captain Hook,” but to a name chosen by compromising parents: “Wendy.”

I came to regard the Peter Pan story a practical fiction, useful in more than just providing names for new babies. Each character had a role; the crocodile, however, at first puzzled me. In time, it resolved into both good and bad: useful to Peter Pan as true enemy to Hook but dangerous when out of place. Perhaps that was the seed of my understanding that a general principal can be complex, both true and false, useful sometimes but false when out of place, even dangerous.

The existence of life I credited to God, from childhood respecting the Bible as nonfiction. When I was ten, my father, psychologist for the San Bernardino School District in California, showed me the largest collection of bird eggs in the Western United States, in the museum in our own little town of Bloomington. The variety of eggs and birds, all dead, fascinated me; but non-birds becoming birds discomforted me, for each form of life appeared to have a role in its own basic form.

New nonfiction book, fourth edition: Searching for Ropens and Finding God

Mount Bel, northeast of Gomlongon Village on Umboi Island (image by J. Whitcomb)

Cryptozoology Book

Third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, by Jonathan David Whitcomb

January 27, 2012January 27, 2012

Pterodactyl Attacks in British Columbia

The ancient Israelites, at the time of Moses, were terrified by the fiery flying serpent that caused many human deaths. Recent investigations suggest the fiery flying serpent of the Old Testament was not actually a snake but a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur. Even more recently, “pterodactyl attacks” against humans in Canada have been reported in a nonfiction cryptozoology book, Bird From Hell, by Gerald McIsaac. This author believes that many human deaths may have been caused by attacks from what some Native Americans in British Columbia call the “devil bird.”

The “pterodactyl attacks” do not seem to come just from the imagination of the author of Bird From Hell, although he displays a keen sense of imagination in his writing (not necessarily in any negative sense of “imagination”). He reports quite a few cases in which residents of a sparsely-populated area of British Columbia have been attacked at night by a large flying creature.

From the Book “Bird From Hell”

(From page 23)

This horse was not killed by a bear, a wolf, or a cougar. . . . None of these animals carries part of their dinner to the top of nearby trees, and they certainly have no reason to break branches on those trees.

Page 52 tells of an encounter between a “Devil Bird” and a “large” girl who thought that another kid was sneaking up to tease her one night:

She charged over to the misguided soul who was irritating her. As soon as she got close, she realized her mistake. It was not one of the boys, but it was her worst nightmare, a devil bird. She realized she was attacking what she feared the most. She was not the only one who was scared. The devil bird [feeling it was under attack] decided to retreat, and it did in a manner that left the girl astounded. [It] released a cloud of smoke, flapped its wings, and flew away.

After reading that page with “released a cloud of smoke,” I phoned the author and told him something of what I knew about that behavior. The mist (“cloud of smoke”) is not to hide the flying creature; it is a poisonous vapor that is very harmful if inhaled, probably used in both defense and attack. It may be the main tool the creatures have for overcoming animals (or humans) that are much heavier than they are.

How could the author have known about that behavior of some of the modern flying cryptids that investigators believe are living pterosaurs? I have written more about apparent living pterosaurs, in the past eight years, than any other cryptozoologist in the world, to the best of my knowledge, with over a thousand web pages and blog posts and several editions of two books, yet I have almost never, if ever, mentioned “smoke” or “vapor” or “mist.” Until a couple of weeks ago, I had rarely mentioned this obscure detail to anybody, and a researcher, using Google searches, could have searched for a year, doing not much else besides Google searching, without finding any reference to a modern living pterosaur ejecting a poisonous vapor (either for defense or offense). To the best of my knowledge and memory, the world’s leading expert on that narrow subject has not yet published anything on it and he still remains anonymous (I will not reveal his name). Years ago I had the privilege of talking with him face to face and listening to what he had learned from his research. During my phone conversation with Gerald McIsaac, however, I learned that the (anonymous) researcher had also spoken with McIsaac by phone (probably after reading that same page in Bird From Hell, like I had done). The “Devil Bird” may be more dangerous than McIsaac had imagined, and I told the author just that.

Pterodactyl Attacks

I hope that no pterosaur was responsible for any of the human deaths in British Columbia, Canada, along the 500-mile stretch of highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert . . . we now face a present danger, a warning from Gerald McIsaac, author of Bird From Hell, who believes that “most of the hitchhikers [on this highway at night] who disappear have been killed by this animal. It is also my opinion that many of the people who have disappeared have not been reported.”

April 26, 2011August 24, 2011

Fiery Flying Serpent and Marfa Lights

What about the Fiery Flying Serpent? For Moses, when the Israelites needed to be healed from venom, what would have been the worst possible choice of an animal image to use as a symbol, to strengthen the faith of the people of God? How obvious! Use anything except the image of a snake, for that animal relates to Satan in the Garden of Eden.

What about a modern interpretation: a venomous snake that strikes so fast that it seems to “fly” through the air, causing a burning sensation in the wound of the victim? What a problem that would have been for Moses! He could not put the image of a snake on a pole; he could not ask the Israelites to look up to an image associated with Satan. But the scriptures say he did put up an image of the animal that caused death among those ancient people. So what is the answer to this dilema? No snake was involved.

I’ve written much about my investigations over the past eight years, much of it concerning the testimonies of eyewitnesses whom I have interviewed (more recently concerning conjectures about Marfa Lights). From various countries, various languages, various cultures, and various religions, these common persons simply tell me about their encounters with flying creatures that have various names. Most of the flying creatures are described with long tails, and most eyewitnesses have various degrees of certainty about the absence of feathers. Those two factors alone suggest living pterosaurs. A prominent head crest and a tail vane (eyewitnesses use various words for those biological structures) increases the certainty of living pterosaurs. But how does that relate to the Fiery Flying Serpent? It’s in the pterosaurs that glow.

When I met Jonah Jim, during my 2004 expedition in Papua New Guinea, I had just finished a dramatic set of interviews with three other native eyewitnesses of Umboi Island, so my fatigue at hiking through a hot humid tropical rain forest forced me to think of rest and drinking water, rather than another interview. Notwithstanding my weakness, Jonah Jim climbed a coconut tree while I sat to rest; he soon chopped open the beverage container with his machete, and I was refreshed with a drink of coconut milk. He told me about his own encounter with the ropen, some years earlier. I quote from my book, the second edition of Searching for Ropens:

During an outdoor family gathering one night, this young man saw the ropen not as a vague, distant light but as a creature—close. In addition to the glow, he saw the long tail. I recorded no notes, for his description resembled Gideon’s, but later I would realize the significance of Jonah Jim’s testimony: The glow that flies around at night is the same kind of long-tailed creature seen by Gideon and his friends.

Jonah Jim saw clearly both the giant wings of the ropen and its glow. That is the point: Some eyewitnesses see glowing pterosaurs, notwithstanding many Westerners insist on the nonexistance of living creatures that “should” be extinct.

Another point comes up in those ropens that are unfriendly to humans: Sometimes a human will die, not like death from a crocodile attack but with either burns or convulsions. I have not yet interviewed someone who was closely related or a friend to a victim, but secondhand accounts make this clear: These large flying creatures, at least some of them, when they attack a human, sometimes do damage by something like a chemical or venom.

How does all this relate to Marfa Lights of southwest Texas? (I know of no accounts of anyone being attacked by Marfa Lights.) They behave more like a group of intelligent flying predators, and their glowing would be likened to the glow of fire, to anyone who lived in a time and place where terrestrial light at night is usually associated with fire.

April 1, 2011

Real Dragons?

The English word “dragon” has been used for many old stories and legends, from languages around the world. But regardless of what word was translated into “dragon,” the stories themselves may give us clues about what people encountered long ago. Some critics of live-dinosaur and live-pterosaur ideas suggest that ancient people may have found fossils and then invented stories, pure fiction, about dragons, based on the old bones they had found. That may sound logical on the surface, but where is the evidence for such a speculation? I have seen no evidence of that. What we have are the stories themselves and something else in addition: the Bible.

Set aside the word “dragon,” for the moment, as we consider the fiery flying serpent of the Old Testament. A common explanation includes a “burning” wound from a venomous bite and a “snake.” But what does the record actually say about “fiery serpent?” Those animals bit many of the Israelites and many died from those bites. What scripture makes a direct reference to any detail about any bite or detail about those bites in general? I have never seen any such scripture. “Fiery” is used for the animal, not for the bite on a victim. Why should anyone object to the suggestion that bioluminescence was involved, with small long-tailed winged creatures that glowed while they flew at night? Many accounts suggest bioluminescent Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs still live, albeit nocturnally, in a number of areas in this modern world.

Marfa Lights, Dragons, and Pterosaurs

Dragons in southwest Texas? If a new conjecture about Marfa Lights is correct, a group of bioluminescent flying predators may live in these mountains, visiting the Marfa area every few weeks, as part of a large area that the predators cover in their hunting. One part of their diet may be the Big Brown Bat, although scavenging for dead animals, at night, may be a part of their mysterious nocturnal behavior.

Seklo-bali Dragon

Some investigators believe that this creature [the seklo-bali] is similar to or the same as the wawanar (dragon) around the Pilio Islands or the ropen of Umboi Island. It could also be the same as the indava. The bioluminescent glow at night probably inspired at least some of the dragon legends in some areas of the world.

December 20, 2010December 21, 2010

Missionaries and Monsters

William Gibbon’s nonfiction cryptozoology book Missionaries and Monsters has a chapter on “Winged Wonders” (with reference to the Biblical “fiery flying serpent”). Before getting into details about living pterosaurs, here is part of the publisher’s information:

Bill [Gibbons] collects reports of mystery animals from missionaries and others, with chapters on lake monsters, sea serpents, unknown apes, and the possibility of living dinosaurs. Some of these cryptids look like species from the fossil record, while others (like the “Nepal Dragon” sighted in 1980) don’t resemble known species at all.

I recommend this book for its many eyewitness accounts of cryptids from around the world, some of which suggest living dinosaurs and pterosaurs. I’d rate the book “4.5 stars out of 5.0” and hope to some day research some of the reports in the “Winged Wonders” chapter (those I have not yet researched), and I encourage other cryptozoologists to investigate reports of living pterosaurs in the southwest Pacific.

That said, certain details about the flying creatures called “ropen” and “Duah” I do not recommend be repeated without reference to more recent living-pterosaur investigations in Papua New Guinea, from expeditions more recent than those on which Gibbons has relied.

Before getting into details, from pages 76-78, on which I disagree, let it be known that I agree that different varieties of modern pterosaurs live in Papua New Guinea. And varieties of basic types of classified organisms (the non-cryptids) commonly include different sizes: elephant seals out-weigh harbor seals; anacondas out-length gopher snakes; Goliath beetles out-bug boll weevils. Strange as it sounds to Westerners ignorant of living-pterosaur investigations in Papua New Guinea, I believe (as do at least some of my associates) that different species of pterosaurs, of different sizes, fly over jungles of the southwest Pacific, including more than one species in Papua New Guinea.

Hundreds of isolated villages and hundreds of village languages are scattered across Papua New Guinea. Gibbons seems to have relied on reports from Carl Baugh, perhaps without adequately considering the reports from more recent explorers (Paul Nation, David Woetzel, Garth Guessman, and me). Regardless, general references to words in native languages of Papua New Guinea need to be taken in context with this diversity of languages, and “ropen” and “duwas” (regarding pterosaur-like flying creatures) come from different languages.

“Duah,” to the best of my knowledge, is not a flying-creature word in any village-language in Papua New Guinea (although in Tok Pisin it means “door”). “Duah” probably comes from some American who assumed that “duwas” was a plural for the giant flying creature known in various parts of the country. So when Gibbons refers to the “Duah” and the ropen, it seems that the comparison should actually be between the duwas and the ropen.

But another problem flies up here: The word “ropen,” when used for a featherless flying creature that is not a bat, is the word used in various villages on Umboi Island, where there is probably no other word for any similar creature; likewise, if a researcher were to interview natives in villages where “duwas” refers to a featherless flying creature larger than fuit bats, those natives probably would have no other word for any similar creature. In other words, the difference between a duwas and a ropen is probably only the difference between the spellings of “duwas” and “ropen,” and those different words tell us nothing about size-differences of flying cryptids in Papua New Guinea.

So rejoice in the good news of some apparent diversity in pterosaurs in the southwest Pacific. The bad news? We are still mostly ignorant of many biological details, notwithstanding random references to flying creatures (of various reported-sizes) connected to various words in various languages. How much we have to learn about these amazing non-extinct flying creatures of Papua New Guinea!

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September 20, 2010October 8, 2010

Venomous Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaur?

What Biblical scripture clearly portrays a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur? I’ve never read any with anything like a scientific description of a long-tailed pterosaur. But ancient Israelites neither wrote nor reasoned scientifically. Under the leadership of Moses, they did encounter what seems to have been a venomous creature that they called a “fiery flying serpent.” That may be enough, however, to indicate it was a Rhamphorhynchoid, for no snake can fly and the direct interpretation of “fiery” fits bioluminescence, for a bright bioluminescent glow would cause ancient people to think of fire (some modern eyewitness accounts include descriptions of glowing flying creatures).

This interpretation of the fiery flying serpent has been covered in other writings, but what is the significance? If Rhamphorhynchoids, at least one species, caused human deaths a few thousand years ago, then maybe similar flying creatures may have venomous bites today. This may relate to some of the human deaths in Papua New Guinea during the past few decades.

I know a living-pterosaur investigator (he prefers to remain anonymous) who has explored in Papua New Guinea at least once. He talked with a native on the mainland, years ago, who related how his nephew died after being attacked by a glee-kee-oyk. The injured boy was carried by the uncle some distance, with the glee-kee-oyk following part of the way. Unfortunately, the boy went into convulsions and died before they reached the clinic. There were no significant wounds found on the body.