Sighting in Papua New Guinea – Page 3 – The Bible and Modern Pterosaurs

August 22, 2014

Ropen – Is it a Myth or Fantasy?

Gitmo Pterosaur of Cuba - eyewitness and artist Patty Carson

Why do critics of these investigations proclaim so ardently the religious beliefs of cryptozoologists who interview eyewitnesses of apparent pterosaurs? The latest skeptic to join in criticizing online reports of ropens and other non-bat featherless flying creatures—that appears to be a biology professor in Minnesota, although I will not mention his name here. His blog post he titled “There are no living pterosaurs, and ‘ropen’ is a stupid fantasy.”

That professor made many mistakes in his post, including the end of his first paragraph: “There’s just one fanatic.” He was referring to me, Jonathan David Whitcomb. Nothing is said about the following brave cryptozoologists who have explored remote jungles in Papua New Guinea, putting their health in jeopardy, perhaps even risking their lives:

Garth Guessman
David Woetzel
Paul Nation
Jacob Kepas

Other names could be mentioned, but the above explorers have searched for living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea during the past ten years, and each of them is a dedicated believer in the Bible and in literal understanding of important passages in Genesis. I too believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans on this planet, with no non-human parents before them (meaning NO ape-like ancestors of humans), and I too believe in a literal worldwide flood. In addition, we all believe that the ropen is a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur, NOT a myth or fantasy. Ropens are for real.

So why was I singled out by that biology professor in Minnesota? Three of my associates (Guessman, Nation, and Kepas) have explored in Papua New Guinea more than I have. I will not go into details about my gospel faith here, but one religious principle of which I am often aware is this: “Where much is given, much is required.” I have been given a great deal, including the time, health, and opportunities to write blog posts (and traditional web pages), books, and one scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal of science. Because of those generous gifts from God, I have been able to write well over a thousand blog posts, in the past eleven years, about many aspects of modern pterosaur investigations. The quantity of my online writings can catch the attention of a critic.

I feel it’s time to quote what I’ve already written in my nonfiction books:

Last paragraph of the introduction in Searching for Ropens and Finding God

Believe what you will about modern dragons, about living pterosaurs, about giant glowing ropens. But the power of the testimonies of the eyewitnesses I’ve encountered, over the past ten years, including many credible natives I met on Umboi Island, makes that flying creature as real to me, almost, as if I had stared a ropen in the face. How can I deny the credibility of the eyewitnesses I have interviewed? With no other reasonable explanation, I now believe in modern dragons, in living pterosaurs, in giant glowing ropens.

Title Page of Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition)

Since the two ropen expeditions of 2004, in Papua New Guinea, more Americans have learned of the living-pterosaur investigations and the many resulting eyewitness interviews. Many web pages have sprung up, many of them by explorers themselves. But despite other web pages, by scornful critics who never went anywhere and never interviewed anyone, those two expeditions, and those that preceded and followed them, are causing an awakening, opening human minds in the birth of a new perspective: Universal pterosaur extinction has been an assumption; some pterosaur species are still living.

From the preface of Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea

I believe in living pterosaurs and hope they will soon be officially discovered. More important, I believe in you, that you can soar above dogmatic assumptions about extinctions. I hope that you already understand that we are more than a by-product of culture: Our existence transcends the boundaries of the human cultural assumptions that have shaped our beliefs.

Now is the time for us to listen carefully, to think clearly, and to act accordingly rather than simply react when a cultural belief is contradicted: now, not after the official scientific discovery of modern living pterosaurs.

Some of the Americans who have helped in the ropen searching and investigations in Papua New Guinea, since 2003 – Thank you to them and to their families and friends who supported them

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Pterosaurs, “No Evidence,” and Poop in the Freezer

One critic, a biology professor in Minnesota, insists there is “no evidence,” in my writings, for any living pterosaur. What does he mean? . . . If I were to respond, in one posting, to all his negative comments about my writings, my religion, and my personal motivations, it would be a long posting indeed.

“Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth” – a Reply

Notice the Smithsonian blog post by Brian Switek, dated August 16, 2010: not one reference to an eyewitness sighting report. Switek says “such anecdotes,” without mentioning what he is talking about. He says much about the religious beliefs of Blume and Woetzel, as if that counts against their ideas, but why does he say nothing about what caused those expeditions: eyewitness reports?

Ropen – Is it a Pterosaur?

How often we’ve been taught that all dinosaurs and pterosaurs became extinct millions of years ago, as if that were proven! But what if some are still living? Before you dismiss the concept of a modern pterosaur (in particular, of a long-tailed featherless Rhamphorhynchoid), consider the many eyewitness testimonies of those flying creatures.

Pterosaur Experts

. . . Guessman recognized that this relates to the stiffening extension rods of Rhamphorhynchoid vertebrae: all but a few vertebrae are locked into stiffness; the few that are flexible are near where the pterosaur’s tail connects to the body.

May 4, 2013May 20, 2014

Revising a Cryptozoology Book

I’m revising my first book, Searching for Ropens, and expect it will be published before Christmas. [Actually, it was published April 18, 2014, after major additions and editing.] The third edition will differ from the second in two significant ways:

It will have new pterosaur sighting reports and insights, and more about the explorers themselves, including Garth Guessman, David Woetzel, and Paul Nation (and, of course, me: Jonathan Whitcomb). It will also have more details about other expeditions: Destination Truth and the Monsterquest-episode expedition with Guessman.
The genre will still be a mixture of spiritual-religious and cryptozoology-adventure, in that order, but this will be made clear in the promotions; I have no desire to offend any cryptozoologist who would dislike reading about religious beliefs.

The title will also be revised: Searching for Ropens and Finding God.

Anything I would quote from the new edition may be revised before publication, so I now quote from the second edition:

Acknowledgements (previous edition)

A key to successfully exploring a sparsely populated wilderness is, ironically, people-skills. My father and mother inspired others, lifting self-esteem; following their examples, I’ve tried inspiring others, though I’ve usually been the one encouraged or inspired. In particular, the pioneering investigations of Jim Blume, Carl Baugh, and Paul Nation illuminated the path for my own investigation in Papua New Guinea; the 2004 follow-through of Garth Guessman, David Woetzel, and Jacob Kepas filled in the gaps of previous expeditions, amplifying and supplementing the successes of those of us preceding them; the generosity of Alex Aguila made possible the 2006 expedition of Paul Nation, whose exploring of a remote area verified the location of many of the creatures (and he brought back the first visual images to the United States; the veracity of the images and testimonies were proven through the work of two physicists: Clifford Paiva and Harold Slusher); the eyewitness testimonies of natives, Australians, and an American veteran, contributed priceless evidence; the love of my wife and three daughters strengthened me to leave the comforts of home; the prayers of family, friends, and other Americans were answered when I found Luke Kenda, who became my interpreter, bodyguard, and counselor. By the grace of the Father of us all, Luke and I were welcomed like brothers by those we met on Umboi Island, and by accepting the friendship of humble Christians in remote villages, we were sheltered, fed, and led to those who made this book possible: the eyewitnesses. Thank you; tenku tru.

Lake Pung, Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea (where seven native boys had seen the giant ropen around 1994) – photo courtesy of Garth Guessman, one of those on the second expedition of 2004

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Pterosaur Extinction (or not)

In Searching for Ropens, I wrote, “Since no researcher in Europe [when fossils were first being discovered] had any knowledge of living creatures similar to the fossils, it was assumed that they were all extinct. The key word is ‘assumed.’. . if only 1% of the population of Western Europe, in the late 18th Century, had . . . [seen] living pterosaurs, the universal-pterosaur-extinction notion would never have gotten started.”

Cryptozoology Book

Eskin Kuhn was a U.S. Marine, in 1971, when he witnessed two large pterosaurs flying over the navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has maintained his testimony for decades: He saw, in clear daylight, two featherless long-tailed flying creatures with very prominent head crests.

Civil War Soldiers and a Monster Photo

To begin, I do not present Photo #1 as overwhelming evidence for the existence of a huge modern living pterosaur that has a head suggesting a Pteranodon; I interview eyewitnesses, and some of them report sighting details that have convinced me that huge pterosaurs (rare and nocturnal as they may be) live in this modern world of ours.

February 18, 2013

Survey Given to Biology Professors

A few weeks ago, I sent emails to many professors of biology at four major universities in the western United States: a survey form about the ropen of Papua New Guinea. The questions were so controversial that I guaranteed each professor complete anonymity and I’ll not now even divulge the names of the universities. Those university faculty members needed to feel secure that their responses could not be traced to them.

It has been many days since the last email was received from a biology professor (in reply to the survey questions), so we can assume no more responses will come in. The overall response was under 2% of the total professors who were sent the questionnaire.

Not one biologist gave any hint of any prior knowledge of cryptozoological investigations of reports of pterosaur sightings. Half of those responding gave no probability of any species of extant pterosaur; the other half, only a very small probability. The average chance was given to be 1.5%. I believe this would have been much higher if all those surveyed had known about what has been done in the investigations over the past twenty years, even though the work was in the realm of cryptozoology.

The critical point is this: Even without knowing about the investigations into pterosaur sightings, those university biology professors who responded did not give a zero probability for the existence of a modern living pterosaur species.

Peter Beach, Biology Professor

One professor of biology who is well aware of the living-pterosaur investigations is Peter Beach, whose experiences in searching for bioluminescent ropen-like flying creatures is recorded in the third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America:

“I went on a short trip to the Yakima River this summer . . . We were unable to get a picture but we saw many . . . flashing lights. . . . One of the flashes took off from a big tree overhanging the river and made a kind of flashing coma turn. Many flashes were parallel to the river. . . . these things fish at night with bioluminescence.

“At first I thought I was just seeing shooting stars, but they were all parallel to the river and close to the horizon. Next I noticed that when the cloud cover came in, I could still see the flashes. They were under the cloud cover. Whatever they are, I suggest that they are at least unknown to science, night flying, bioluminescent, flying creatures about the size of an eagle or big hawk, with a head knot . . . [appears] to be a “weird bird” as it perched in the tree, according to our confidant in Washington [State] who drives by the tree to work. Says he saw it a couple of times this summer, early in the morning.”

(Peter Beach was not one of the biology professors who received the survey.)

Night scene of a river in Washington State

Not all biology professors are totally convinced all pterosaurs are extinct

A recent survey of biology professors in the USA reveals not all of them are completely convinced that all species of pterosaurs became extinct by 65 million years ago. Although less than 2% of the professors replied to the survey, the response to the question of the possibility of modern living pterosaurs ranged from 0% to 5%, averaging 1.5%.

Not Extinct – Pterosaur Sightings

Although Mr. Kuban does not suggest that all sightings of “modern pterosaurs” in Papua New Guinea are misidentifications of Flying Fox fruit bats, he says, “It’s likely that at least some southern hemisphere sightings of ‘pterosaurs’ are explained by fruit bats.” He then admits, “Of course, no bats are known to be bioluminescent, or that have wing spans of 25 feet.” He then gives no explanation for the creature’s bioluminescence or giant size.

Pterosaur Sighting or What?

If Duane Hodgkinson and his army buddy did not see a “pterodactyl” in that jungle clearing west of Finschhafen, New Guinea, in 1944, what did they see? It could not have been any mechanical toy, for it was too big and sophisticated and too early in history. It could not have been a bird, for it had a wingspan of about thirty feet and a tail at least ten or fifteen feet long, even if it had feathers.

Nocturnal Pterosaur Sighting

The animal I saw had an 8-10 foot wing span, the wings were bat-like in shape, the inside had that wavy type of look. The body was about 5-6 feet in length, the neck about 1-2 feet in length, the head was about four feet in length, and the head was key for me: it has a crest that was about 2 feet in length, fit that of a pteranodon.

January 26, 2013

Ropen Search by Destination Truth

The first-season television broadcast of an episode of Destination Truth (on the SyFy Channel), in 2007, involved a search in a jungle in Papua New Guinea, looking for a dinosaur-like animal that somebody suggested might be an iguanodon. That was on the island of New Britain, just east of the smaller island of Umboi (home of the ropen).

In the first half of the third episode, broadcast in 2007, a Destination Truth team searches for a ropen in Salamaua, Papua New Guinea. I found it interesting that they sometimes used the word “ropen,” even though that word is used by Kovai-speaking natives on the island of Umboi; in other villages in other areas of Papua New Guinea, “ropen” means nothing or something other than a large featherless nocturnal flying creature that glows.

Josh Gates seems to lead all the expeditions, in all seasons of Destination Truth, and he often does well in working through problems that would cause most people to give up entirely. In the ropen episode, the expedition team began searching for a promising cave on the eastern coast of the mainland of Papua New Guinea. At first, they were led up into a jungle by a native guide who eventually admitted that he was not sure where the cave was located: the trees were the wrong size. Josh took charge and led the team out of that jungle, and they discontinued using that guide.

When the explorers did find a cave, Josh led the camera operator in exploring it. They found bones, eventually many human bones, and quickly exited that cave. To their credit, the team then set up four video cameras to continuously monitor what was around the cave, in four directions.

They located a distant flying light, something far beyond the cliff, something quite bright (considering the distance). The video recording of that flying light was later taken back to the United States for analysis. The two video experts found nothing common about the image: not a camera aberration, not anything that would discredit the bioluminescent-flying-animal idea. I praise the Destination Truth team for that successful episode.

During the ropen expedition of 2007, Josh Gates discovers many bones in a cave. They appear to be human bones.

Josh finds many bones, possibly human, in the cave

The Destination Truth expedition team videotaped, in Salamaua, Papua New Guinea, a strange flying light

Flying light image from one of the video camera recordings in Salamaua

Destination Truth Ropen Episode

I’m thinking about a particular native who was interviewed by Josh Gates, during the Destination Truth expedition of 2007: Fabian.

Science and Modern Pterosaurs

But what do all those numbers mean? What can we learn? Perhaps the most important is that no hoaxes played any significant role in the sighting reports.

December 28, 2012

Obvious Impossibility

For this, the 100th post on this blog, we’ll take a different perspective on the non-extinction of pterosaurs.

The “Gold Coin Game” of Chess

In a European chess tournament in 1912, the American master Frank Marshall won a short game against the Russian master Stefan Levitsky. Marshall would later receive the honorary title of being one of the five original grandmasters of the early twentieth century, so winning a game against a lower-ranked master would hardly have been news. But the last move of the game made chess history, for Marshall put his queen, the most valuable fighting piece, in danger in three ways.

For those chess spectators with at least moderate forsight, it was obvious that any one of those three ways of capturing Marshall’s queen would lead to losing the game. But to chess beginners who don’t look deeply, it seems like the obviously worst possible move he could have made.

Shallow Thinking Makes it “Impossible”

For skeptics who want an easy way out of deep thinking, I offer three ways to dismiss my declarations about modern pterosaurs:

Giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs living in the southwest Pacific
Pterodactyloid pterosaurs flying regularly in daylight in the interior of New Britain Island
Living pterosaurs flying regularly in the United States of America, sometimes in daylight

For skeptics who would just want to dismiss me (thereby avoiding my declarations), I offer these:

I have no college degree in biology and no credentials in paleontology.
I have never seen (at least up until December 12, 2012) what I declare is alive.
I am associated with explorers and researchers who are Young Earth Creationists.

Skeptics who would only consider some or all of the above, and dismiss eyewitness reports as obviously impossible—those persons are caught in the quagmire of their own shallow thinking; But for those who think more deeply, truth emerges.

Eyewitnesses of various cultural backgrounds have reported the same (or very similar) descriptions of long-tailed flying creatures in the southwest Pacific: Duane Hodgkinson (American), the Perth couple (Australian), Brian Hennessy (Australian), Gideon Koro (of Papua New Guinea), Jonah Jim (of Papua New Guinea), and others. No bird or bat known to science looks like the following:

No sign of feathers
Long tail, as long as 10-15 feet

If a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur species, however, had survived into the present day (regardless of when it had lived in the past), what would be so strange about that species including a few older individuals, creatures that continued to grow until they were huge?

Regarding short-tailed pterosaurs, what is really so strange about Pterodactyloids living deep in the interior of New Britain Island? Try explaining, to someone who has never seen or heard about any sea or ocean, a Blue Whale. You might never get beyond just trying to explain the idea of a sea, for it could be too unbelievable. We need Westerners who are willing to listen with an open mind to the overwhelming eyewitness evidence for living pterosaurs.

Details of the Chess Game

For anyone interested, here is the final move in the “gold coin game” of chess:

diagram of a chess game that was won by the master Frank J. Marshall

It is the black side’s turn to move; what would you do?

If you were playing the black side of this chess game, it might seem obvious that you were in trouble. The black queen is threatened by capture from one of the white rooks and one of the black rooks is threatened by capture from a white pawn. The solution for black may be found by a master but not likely by any chess player of lower ranking.

In this chess game, black's queen can be taken in three ways, each one disasterous

It seems, on the surface, that this could not possibly be the best move, for two white pawns can capture the black queen, and if neither of those would work well, then the white queen can capture the black queen.

Looking deeper, however, either pawn capturing the black queen would result in a checkmate in one or two moves; this is because the black knight would move down towards the white king. But if the white queen captures the black queen, the black knight will move to that same square and capture the white queen on the next move; and the move after that, the black knight will capture one of the white rooks, leaving the player on the black side with a decisive (in master competition) advantage in material.

The game was a real encounter between two chess masters. The legend that arose from the last move is that spectators showered the table with gold coins after comprehending that the move that seemed, on the surface, impossible to be correct was, in reality, a stroke of genius.

Chess Charms

Elephant trap

Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaur in South Carolina

The strange creature flew gracefully over the highway, right in front of the car . . .

November 28, 2012

Flying Creature Identification

I’ve been writing about modern-pterosaur sightings, regarding misidentification potential, for years, with new critics bringing up old objections. Let’s now consider the words of a skeptic who calls himself “Mullerornis.”

“Most pterosaur sightings turned out to be ducks or bats.

“Indeed, many reports fail spectacularly at pterosaur biology. Pterosaurs didn’t had bat-like leathery wings, for starters.”

Ducks?

I have over a hundred sighting reports compiled in a data base that includes many details (wingspan estimate, surety of featherlessness, location of sighting, time of day, presence or absence of tail, etc); it is still expanding, now with year-2012 reports being entered. Let’s consider the skeptic’s remark about ducks, using the data base, since he gives no examples of any particular sightings.

How many sighting reports were kept out of the data base because they “turned out” to have been misidentified ducks? I believe that number is “zero.” How many entries in the data base “turned out” later to have been misidentified ducks? I believe that number is also “zero.” How many reported sightings does this skeptic give to us, that is . . . specific sightings? Zero. The value of his speculation about ducks that look like pterosaurs? You be the judge.

But I found this critic’s addition of “ducks” to the misidentification possibilities interesting. I did communicate, earlier this year, with a man who had a skull of something that appeared to have teeth (he wondered if it might be the remains of a pterosaur). I eventually concluded it was probably the skull of a duck, after careful investigation and many emails between me and the owner of the skull (the photo reminded me of the pseudo-teeth of some ducks). But there was no sighting associated with that skull. In addition, little (if anything) was written about it in cryptozoology blogs. So why did the critic mention “duck?” It must have been something else.

I remembered the nineteenth century newspaper account of a tunnel out of which a strange winged creature was said to have escaped from stone—the French word for “duck” was included in that newspaper article—but that’s irrelevant, for the story was surely a hoax.

I then remembered a sighting in the United States, in which the flying creature dived down to a pond and caught a duck (or other water fowl) in its mouth before flying off with it. But the flying creature that preyed upon that bird was not itself duck-like, so that sighting is also irrelevant. What are we left with, other than the word of a person who calls himself “Mullerornis,” who insinuates that he might know something about some undisclosed sightings in which ducks looked like pterosaurs?

Bats

How outdated that generalization! Even the Monsterquest television episode “Flying Monsters” (2009) was caught in that intellectual trap, as the producers attempted to pin “bat” on flying-creature sightings that serious investigators know could not have been from any bats. They included the account of the “pterodactyl” seen by the American World War II soldier Duane Hodgkinson; but they failed to disclose his estimate of the length of the tail on that flying creature: “at least” ten or fifteen feet long. [sighting in Papua New Guinea]

“Mullerornis” gives us no particular sighting report, not even a hint of anything specific. His credibility fails to impress me enough to continue writing about the “bat” misidentification speculation. Read any of my three nonfiction books on modern pterosaurs.

Did Pterosaurs Have Bat-Like Leathery Wings?

The skeptic seems to have made the same mistake that I encountered from a paleontologist with whom I was communicating. Beware of the paleontologist who steps outside his field of expertise to speculate about eyewitness accounts. Let’s look into this.

Most flying creatures larger than butterflies we call “birds.” When an eyewitness of an apparent living pterosaur describes it, the word “bat” sometimes comes out. Closer examination, if the skeptic “Mullerornis” had looked closer, reveals why an eyewitness would say “bat-like.” The flying creature appeared to have no feathers. That’s it.

In general, when an eyewitness says something like “bat-like,” details in the description make it obvious that the creature was no bat. But the person viewing the apparent pterosaur did not notice details in the bones in the wings and use the word “bat” because of the fanning out of bat “fingers” in the wings. With few, if any, exceptions, the point is this: lack of feathers. We usually associate that with bats, when the subject is flying creatures (larger than butterflies) living today, so large featherless flyers remind us of bats.

When the word “leather” is used by an eyewitness, we need to remember what happened. The person did not examine a flying creature in a laboratory, like a paleontologist would do with a fossil. It was an observation at a distance, for most sightings involved being more than twenty feet away (on occasion, closer). The combination of lack of feathers and a general color similar to leather could easily cause an eyewitness to say “leathery.” The precise nature of pterosaur skin is irrelevant.

It’s that simple. The proclamations of this critic have no foundation.

Flying Creature

So who do you call? I hope you’ll contact me, Jonathan Whitcomb. As far as I know, I am the only person on earth who has devoted anything like a full-time effort, over years, to interview eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs and promote the concept that these flying creatures are not extinct . . .

Pterosaur Flying Creatures

. . . to document, then analyze, eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs or pterosaur-like creatures and to support expeditions and investigations . . .

Pterodactyl Hoax

The French railway-tunnel pterodactyl of 1856 is finally getting its obituary, albeit The Illustrated London News has no such obituary. [The report appears to have been a hoax.]