Live Pterosaurs

Names for Live Pterosaurs

2011-12-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

From natives of Papua New Guinea to Westerners like Americans, Europeans, and Australians, we find that apparent living pterosaurs have many names.

Demon Flyer

On Umboi Island, at least some of the villagers have a different perspective on the concept of spiritual beings, at least different from many Americans. An intelligent being need not be either 100% spirit or 100% physical. The ropen of Umboi, according to Darius (who recited native traditions to the American explorer Paul Nation, in 2002), is like a spirit but also like a man. It flies around at night and sometimes comes down from a mountain to hunt game animals. To many islanders, this being may appear to be both spiritual (flying) and human (hunting animals for food).
In addition, natives may have a more complex concept of spirits than most Westerners have. A spirit, to them, need not be either 100% good or 100% bad. In that sense, at least, “demon flyer” seems a poor translation for a word that probably does not have a purely negative connotation for them.

Ropen

Duane Hodgkinson . . . in 1944 was stationed near Finschhafen, in what was then called New Guinea. After he and his buddy walked into a clearing, they were amazed as a large creature flew up into the air. The men soon realized that it was no bird that started to circle the clearing. It had a tail “at least ten to fifteen feet long,” (book Searching for Ropens, 2007) and a long appendage at the back of its head: apparently, a live pterosaur.

Kor

The nocturnal flying creatures that he described to me [around northern islands of Papua New Guinea]–I believe they are ropens–were common and were dangerous to local fishermen previous to the early 1940′s, when their numbers declined. In these northern islands, the creature is called “kor.”

Pterodactyl

The word "pterodactyl" is often used by Americans when they really mean "pterosaur."

Live Pterosaurs in America now in Third Edition

2011-11-17T04:53:00.000-08:00

Amazon has recently made available the third edition of my nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America. This new expanded edition has an important new sighting report: Patty Carson's encounter with the "dinosaur" when she was a child at the U. S. military station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1965.

Introduction (first paragraph)

This book might make a few Americans uneasy to walk alone at night; my intention, however, is not to frighten but to enlighten as many readers as possible to know about live-pterosaur investigations. Those who’ve been shocked at the sight of a flying creature that “should” be extinct—those eyewitnesses, more numerous than most Americans would guess, need no longer be afraid that everyone will think them crazy, and no longer need they feel alone. Those of us who’ve listened to the American eyewitnesses, we who have interviewed them, we now believe. So, if you will, consider the experiences of these ordinary persons (I’ve interviewed most of them myself) and accept whatever enlightenment you may.

Page 22 (part of a sighting report: Southern California)

I asked her if she was sure and she said they weren’t lights exactly, but that the wings had a glow or reflection. I wasn’t sure what to make of that so when I got to work today I begin my search for “flying creature” on Google. One link led to another and eventually I discovered something known as a Ropen. That was it! The description matched exactly what we saw, down to the glow. This isn’t a hoax, we really saw something strange last night and after finding your website by following Wikipedia, I had to let you know. The time was approximately 10:30 pm and the nearest cross streets were Burbank Blvd & Woodman in the city of Sherman Oaks, CA (Los Angeles County).

Cryptozoology Book Now Available

I couldn’t put this book down. It is absolutely fascinating to read about eyewitness accounts of the people who have seen these creatures. To learn about these testimonies from such an open minded perspective is refreshing in the extreme! . . . I highly recommend this book to anyone! People should know the truth about what is going on. No one ever hears anything about this unless they conduct extremely specific internet searches, even then, information is minimal. Jonathan Whitcomb needs to write more books! [from "StrangeDream" - Oct 11, 2011 review on Amazon]

Polish Language page on Live Pterosaurs: "zyc pterozaura" - język polski

W 2004 roku Jonathan Whitcomb zbadać wyspę. Umboi Island ma zwierzę latające. Nazywa się "ropen." Większość świadków widać tylko światła latające. Kilku świadków było bliżej do zwierząt, że leci.

Live Dragons

2011-10-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

Of course we use the word "pterosaur," for it's more scientific sounding than "dragon." But with the assumption that many sightings, in modern times, of apparent living pterosaurs, add up to the present existence of at least one species of pterosaur, some "dragon" stories in earlier human history were from sightings of pterosaurs. I believe some dragons of history were pterosaurs.

A Live Dragon

Patty Carson was only a child when she and her brother saw the “dinosaur” at the U. S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, in 1965. But the children froze as they watched the flying creature that was only thirty feet away. Patty had the time to gain a clear memory of details. But the two children were not alone as eyewitnesses of a pterosaur in Cuba. [Eskin Kuhn and others also saw this kind of flying creature at Guantanamo Bay.]

Sightings of Apparent Pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea

Before the ship arrived on Umboi (Siassi), Luke and I met an old sailor who knew something about what we were seeking. "You want to catch Wawanar?" he asked. I assured him that we only wanted to get a "photo" of the flying animal. The old man told us that the dragon Wawanar is said to own the land and the sea; nobody can catch Wawanar.

I was not surprised that a native of Papua New Guinea would use the label "dragon," for that large flying creature of the night was famous for its mysterious glow and its giant size. I was also not surprised that natives of Pilio Island (the old sailor's original home) have their own name for the creature. But I had not expected to hear a story about it before the ship arrived at Umboi Island.

Can Flamingos be Misidentified?

2011-08-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

Is it possible for somebody to see a flying flamingo and misidentify it for a pterosaur? If the eyewitness had never before seen a flamingo, yes it could be misidentified as such, especially if the person was concentrating on the feet of that bird, for it may resemble a Rhamphorhynchoid (long-tailed pterosaur) tail vane. For somebody who had seen a flamingo, however, such a misidentification is unlikely.

But the Gitmo pterosaur seen by the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn, in 1971, and by Patty Carson, in 1965, is nothing like any flamingo. Their encounters, both of which were at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, deserve attention.

While Kuhn was observing the two pterosaurs, he concentrated on details, so that he could sketch them accurately (he is a talented artist), including "the bony vertebrae of the back that were clearly defined." Other details that he told me include the following:

. . . the bony crest at the back of the head that had a scythe-like shape instead of a pick-like shape; the long strands of hair in a tuft at the end of the tail (a brush.., not flesh covered as the rest)... and that detail has become muted by the many copies of the drawing . . .

In Kuhn's sketch, the length of the head dwarfs the length of the neck. In a flamingo, the opposite is true, and to a greater degree: A flamingo's neck makes the head look extremely short. That alone makes this case for the Gitmo Pterosaur.

Now to the sighting by Patty Carson. She told me, "The skin was a leathery, brownish reddish color. It had little teeth, a LOT of them." She examined the sketch drawn by Kuhn and told me that it was of the same creature that she had seen, even though she offered some minor-adjustment suggestions ("the proportions of the head are very good, and the body and the hind legs are exactly as I remember."). Obviously Patty Carson did not see a flamingo with leathery skin and teeth.

The point? We must not let flamingo legs and feet distract us from the obvious differences between those feathered birds and the featherless Gitmo Pterosaur.

Searching for Dragons Book

2011-07-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

The third edition of Searching for Ropens I will retitle "Searching for Dragons," but the changes and additions will be much deeper than just the title. It will be in true cryptozoology genre, with little reference to religion. It will also have more eyewitness sighting reports. I hope that it will be published before Christmas, but it could be early in 2012.

From the Acknowledgements:

How could I have dared travel to Papua New Guinea alone, to search for living pterosaurs in a remote jungle, without detailed guidance from Paul Nation, who instructed me where to go on Umboi Island, whom to meet, what to say, what village to avoid, and what gifts to give to particular islanders? He made my expedition possible.

How could Paul Nation have dared to return to Papua New Guinea so many times, without support from a number of friends and family members? The dangers could not hold him back, although he contracted serious infection twice, on two of his four expeditions.

Live Pterosaurs in Washington

2011-07-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

No, I don't mean vulture-politicians in Washington, D.C., but the strange flying creatures, often reported as featherless, in the state of Washington.

Reports of Live Pterosaurs in the State of Washington
Daylight Sighting Around 1987, in a Rural Area

“I was 15 yrs old [when] I saw two ropens together sitting on a fence. I was riding my bike home from a friend’s house around 5 pm in [a town in southwest Washington state]. I lived in the country with my parents . . . on a wood plank fence were two of the biggest bird-like creatures I could ever imagine! I almost crashed my bike! They were about 50 ft from me; the first thing I noticed was their heads, then I thought this can’t be! Could they be dinosaurs? . . ."

Bat-Winged Creature Seen by Family in Washington State

In the first email, the witness reported:

We live in the Pacific Northwest on many acres of mostly tree covered land with a creek. We have seen and heard a strange nocturnal, bat-like creature. This thing is huge, light grey, skin with no fur, feathers or scales. It silently swoops down at you with giant bat wings. It makes a sound like a jungle monkey or bird, thus we refer to it as the monkey bird. . . .

There were two of them together and they seemed fearless of me when they swooped down at me more than once and returned way up to the top of the highest trees. I couldn’t get a look at the faces or eyes, mainly the huge grey bat-wings approximately 4′ span .are what I could see. They seem to show up every summer always after dusk anytime through the night. Locals don’t seem to know about them. . . .

The witness reported back:

Thank you for checking with your colleague. Are the owl wings shaped like bat wings? Do they cling to the sides of the trees? Do they make a sound like “Hooooowhahhhhhh, aaahooooowahhhh! with the wah like the rolling of your tongue? Also the skin on the chest and wings was grey, mottled with some brownish color like a Mexican hairless dogs skin, and it had like visible blood veins kind of like protruding on the skin area.

Live Pterosaurs in New Mexico

2011-06-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

Considering the rather low human population of the state of New Mexico, a respectable number of pterosaur sightings have been reported, and a television news show included at least one of those sightings.

Giant Pterosaur in New Mexico

“I live in central N.M.. Fourteen years ago, in [Socorro], N.M., me and a close friend . . . were hiking during the midday . . . and something blocked the sun . . . We both looked up to see . . . a large flying animal.

“It had a 20-30 foot wingspan and was about the same length long. It had a long tail with [a] seeming spike at the end. Its head was very pterodactyl shape with a fluted back pointy head. It glided at about 700 feet . . . and [it landed] somewhere on the southern expanse of Magdalena Mountains.”

Another Eyewitness of Pterosaur in New Mexico

A report attributed to the cryptozoologist Phillip O'Donnell (whether or not he interviewed this eyewitness) involves a pterosaur in New Mexico:

"Ron Monteleone was driving near Maxwell, New Mexico, early one morning in June of 1972 . . . Suddenly he saw a twenty-five to thirty-foot pteranodon-like creature fly out a ravine.”

That "pterdanodon," if the sighting is genuine, may be the same type of pterosaur seen by an eyewitness in a Southern California desert.

Pterosaur in the Anza Borrago State Park, California

"We were sitting in the late afternoon shade of a ridge . . . enjoying the solitude and peace and quiet of the desert when it passed over. . . . It was soaring along the side of a plateau not far from us. . . . I remember saying ‘. . . that looks just like a Taradactyl!’ . . . it had to have been [a] lot larger than an eagle, maybe three times larger. . . . the face . . . seemed to be narrow and mostly beak. . . . It did not have a tail. But it did have a nub where a tail would be."

***************************************************************************

How are sightings in the United States related to those in the southwest Pacific? How do some apparent nocturnal pterosaurs pertain to bats, and how are bats irrelevant? How could modern living pterosaurs have escaped scientific notice? These mysteries have slept in the dark, beyond the knowledge of almost all Americans, even beyond our wildest dreams (although the reality of some pterosaurs is a living nightmare to some bats). These mysteries have slept . . . until now.

Buy your own copy of the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America.

A nonfiction cryptozoology book

Pterosaur in Australia

2011-05-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2010, I received an email from a lady in Australia. After doing some online research, Kathy was surprised at how many eyewitnesses had seen what she had seen: a giant pterosaur.

Mount Coolum National Park is north of Brisbane, Queensland (east coast of Australia).

We saw it at Mt Coolum Sunshine Coast . . . I was [driving] towards the ocean . . . . We heard . . . the swoosh noise. (It is a modern car; the windows were up, so that is a loud sound) . . . [we saw] a black shape coming from the trees; the next thing we saw was one wing over the windscreen. It crossed our path . . . I couldn't see the road for a moment, just wing covering the entire windscreen. The body was over the car and it's other wing, over the back . . . we could not see the body . . . [only] the wing: bat like leather, veins and leather stretched over a bone structure. That was dinosaur era.

This thing was bigger than us in every way. I was happy to have my 13 year old daughter home safely, I can tell you.!!! When we told my brother the story, we both moved our arms the same. We saw it flap it's wing once: swoosh . . . I have looked around Mt Coolum for it's home. I believe that is where its home is . . . It was heading from Coolum to the Mountain, like bats do at night. It was around 8.30 at night when we saw it.

This encounter may have been with a flying creature similar to the one seen in Perth, Australia, in 1997, even though the sightings were on opposite sides of the continent. Both apparent pterosaurs were huge, large enough to be considered potentially dangerous to humans. Neither the Perth flying creature nor the Queensland flying creature could reasonably be construed to have been any bird or bat classified by modern Western science.

Giant Pterosaurs in Australia (East Coast: Queensland)

During his farm chores, between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., he [a boy of about twelve years old] forgot something and had to backtrack. . . . he saw a large creature with wings . . . on the roof of the shed, just above the door where he had recently been standing.

. . . the boy had a brief view of the body and wings of the creature. It was larger than an average man six feet tall, with wings that folded to the side and back, reminiscent of bat wings.

Dragons or Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaurs

Many citizens in developed nations of Europe and North America would assume that traditional beliefs in universal extinction are valid for all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs; but the eyewitnesses know better.

Response to Dale Drinnon

2011-05-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

In a post by Dale Drinnon, I was glad to see specific details in critical reports of apparent pterosaurs (Frontiers of Zoology, March 3, 2011, post), but I was a little surprised at how he emphasized an idea about how a modern pterosaur should not appear. In "Ropens, Pterosaurian Sightings And Manta Rays," Drinnon said, "There is a problem in all of these sightings . . . in that the body conformation is NOT what you would expect of a giant Pterosaur." I suggest that insistence on strict conformity with his precise expections are unreasonable. (See the Ropens site on a giant pterosaur.)

Don't confuse two sources of knowledge. The limited knowledge we have of pterosaurs from fossils is not at all the same knowledge that we have from eyewitness reports of modern pterosaurs. If he were more precise, he might say something like this: "Fossils of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs are small, in general, compared with fossils of Pterodactyloid pterosaurs." Of course. Who would disagree with that? But Drinnon has come up with an idea that if pterosaurs were still living, we would expect them to be either non-giants or non-Rhamphorhynchoids, not giant Rhamphoryhynchoids, and that sightings must conform to our expectations. He does not tell us how he arrived at that conclusion, only that "you would not expect" eyewitness reports to be as they are. (See a site about "extinction" and pterosaur fossils)

A serious problem becomes obvious when we consider what he has done with that idea. He uses it to cast doubt on all eyewitness reports that involve a large or giant long-tailed pterosaur or apparent pterosaur. But what would happen to science if all observations were judged by what we had previously expected, and all data involving the unexpected were immediately dismissed? That might appear to be potentially good news for college students at the poverty level, for science textbooks would never again need to be revised, for all scientific knowledge would be declared completed, with no new discoveries allowed.

Modern pterosaurs need not be precisely like what we have so far discovered in fossils. Many species may have lived without leaving any fossils. Many more may have left fossils that we have not yet discovered. Why should those species be exactly like those that have left fossils that we have already discovered? I see no reason for Dale Drinnon to be so dogmatic about what a modern pterosaur might be like.

Another Pterosaur in Cuba

2011-05-06T17:43:00.000-07:00

Until this year, Eskin Kuhn's sighting of two long-tailed pterosaurs in Cuba appeared to be a one-eyewitness encounter; perhaps those giant Rhamphorhynchoids were lost, flying over the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base by accident, being native to Central America, not Cuba. But two days ago I spoke by phone to Patty Carson: Eskin Kuhn is no longer alone in witnessing a long-tailed pterosaur at Guantanamo Bay.

Modern Pterosaur in Cuba

We were walking down near the boat yards, headed home. . . . We were walking from the boat yards toward home, but still closer to the boat yards, to where it was sandy underfoot, sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall . . . We were walking through that scrub area, and suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. The head and upper part of its body, about a third of the wings at the joint (tips still held down) showed. . . . right in front of us about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound . . . and flew to its left and disappeared behind trees and terrain.

Two Pterosaur Sightings in Cuba

Very recently another eyewitness, a lady living in California, has come forward, supporting the U.S. Marine’s testimony with her own sighting report. Patty Carson observed a single pterosaur, about six years before the sighting by Kuhn, but was disbelieved for decades and unaware that anyone else, other than the ones with her at the Guantanamo Bay installation in around 1965, had seen anything similar.

Pterosaurs at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

In our phone conversation, Patty explained to me that . . . the wings were like bat wings, in a way, but not at all transparent. She is sure of the structure at the end of the tail (what I call a “vein” or “flange”) and estimates the “diamond” was about five inches long and about three inches wide.

There appears to me to be no coincidence that both Patty Carson and Eskin Kuhn saw a long-tailed pterosaur at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the middle of the twentieth century. Patty told me that the sketch drawn by Kuhn was very similar to what she had seen, especially the head and body. She did feel that the tail might have been drawn shorter and the wings larger, however.

Ghost Lights

2011-04-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

What causes ghost lights? With no clear definition, any strange light seen at night could be labeled "ghost light." We need to examine specific sightings and do so with open minds.

This post is not about ghosts or beliefs in spirits that may haunt various location in this world; the subject is still "live pterosaurs." I don't suggest most reports of spook lights are sightings of featherless flying creatures that are not bats; I suggest some of them, perhaps a small percentage, are probably precisely that. We need to examine each sighting of a "ghost light" and each sighting of an apparent live pterosaur, for truth resides in the individual encounters experienced by individual humans.

A recent sighting involved two women who, on one night, saw two pterosaurs in the Caribbean, during their ocean cruise (no drinking was involved). The two creatures were flying together, and both were glowing. Is such a thing possible in the Caribbean, in modern times? Well, Eskin Kuhn saw two pterosaurs flying together at the Guantanamo Bay military station in 1971, and that U.S. Marine has maintained, for decades, the truthfulness of his report. That earlier sighting was in clear daylight, with no glowing, but it does support the idea that two "pterodactyls" can fly together in the Caribbean.

A recent sightings involved an apparent Pteranodon. The late Scott Norman (a cryptozoologist who recently passed away from naturnal causes) testified that he had seen the large flying creature late at night as it flew nearby. The head of the creature was at least five feet long, and he compared it with that of a Pteranodon. How does that relate to ghost lights? He was searching the sky where many reports indicate glowing flying creatures often fly, apparently catching the bats that are much more common in this secret location in the United States.

I have written a book (Searching for Ropens) about the glowing ropen of Papua New Guinea, a flying creature I believe to be a giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur. Some natives, in some of the cultures in this southwest Pacific area, associate this large flying creature with the idea that it is both physical and a spirit. Even in this remote part of the world, some people associate the bioluminescent glow of a live pterosaur with a story of a ghost or spirit.

In southwest Texas, the Marfa Lights are sometimes called "dancing devils," for they sometimes appear to dance, with indications that some kind of intelligence is involved. Sightings of live pterosaurs are relatively common in Texas. An example is in order.

Pterosaur in Texas

“I was outside my apartment building . . . talking to my brother. . . . on several occasions, noticed bats flying right near our heads . . . Neither my brother or I was prone to being scared by anything outside at night. This night was different. . . . We noticed something flying around across the road . . . the creature was flying just above the phone lines. It would go one direction, turn, and swoop back. The shape was wrong for any large bird of the area, and the size was much too large to be any bat . . . The wingspan was huge, anywhere from 6-10 feet across."

That sighting of an apparent live pterosaur in Texas did not involve any glowing, but it illustrates the point: It is one of many sighting reports supporting the hypothesis that nocturnal pterosaurs live in Texas.

Marfa Lights and Temperature

2011-04-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

The CE-III Marfa Lights, according to years of research and observations by James Bunnell, are more likely to be seen on nights that are not cold, especially when the temperature is above fifty degrees Fahrenheit, not that they always avoid the cold, for on winter nights they occasionally come out when it's below freezing.

How does a preference for non-cold weather relate to flying predators in Texas? In this high desert area of southwest Texas, it's probably easier for the predators to catch food when it's not very cold, for small animals are more likely to be underground when the temperature drops below freezing at night.

Marfa Lights Like Warmer Nights

That coorelates well with nocturnal hunting by predators that prefer reasonable temperatures, obviously. Could this be related to ground temperature in a way supporting some kind of energy from the earth? Bunnell’s data does not smile on that conjecture, for when the total sightings are subtotaled by season of the year it shows 43% in the Spring, hardly a season to be noted for high ground temperature. By comparison, only 19% of the sightings were in the summer.

The truly mysterious mystery lights of Marfa, labeled "ML" by Bunnell, show themselves only a few times a year; they have been photographed by his automatic cameras only 52 times in eight years, and some of those sightings involved more than one per night. Therefore, we are not likely to be able to learn much from breaking down data annually, comparing one year with another. Nevertheless, the overall data fits perfectly well with the hypothesis that the CE Marfa Lights are caused by bioluminescent flying predators that intelligently hunt as a group and usually visit different areas of southwest Texas on different nights: We would expect intelligent predators to move around from night to night, for their prey (be it bats, snakes, rabbits, mice, or all of the above) may be scattered across a large area of high desert.

How much we owe to James Bunnell for accumulating so much data over so many years!

Marfa Lights and James Bunnell

Although Mr. Bunnell may not yet have accepted the possibility that CE-III mystery lights near Marfa, Texas, are from bioluminescent flying predators, his enormous contributions, documented in his recent book, have made a wonderful contribution.

Marfa Light News in Texas

2011-04-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

New research strengthens the interpretation that the more mysterious lights flying around southwest Texas (and called "Marfa Lights" although other lights have been so called) are made by glowing predators that fly near Marfa. Here are some sources giving details.

Marfa Lights in Texas

The cryptozoological possibility seems weird, but there are similarities with the ropen lights of Papua New Guinea, and there the lights are said to be nocturnal flying creatures described like giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs: long-tailed ropens.

Marfa Ghost Lights, Creatures of Habit

How are nocturnal Marfa Lights (in particular the CE mystery lights described by James Bunnell in his book Hunting Marfa Lights) like creatures of habit? In the limited area where Bunnell’s cameras record them, they usually remain absent for many weeks, sometimes many months, before returning. If one or more of the cameras records them on a Monday, for example, they will not be seen on the following Thursday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday . . . But the exceptions, those nights in which they do not stay away for many days or weeks or months, are astonishing, for sometimes the cameras record them on successive nights, and sometimes at about the same time of night.

Intelligent Marfa Lights

Hiking in this part of Texas, a college professor got lost late one afternoon. Being lightly dressed, he realized the danger of being stranded in the cold high desert at night. Soon after sunset, he saw a light, and assuming it was a ranch light, followed it for awhile, until he found that it had led him back to his truck. Then the light went out.

A Scientific Look at Marfa Lights

To be brief, the group of bioluminescent predators probably had a successful hunt on the night of July 14th, so they left their sleeping quarters (perhaps a cave) at the same time on July 15th, soon after sunset, and flew to the same general area where they had success the previous night. Fortunately Bunnell’s camera recorded the activity on both those nights.

Marfa Lights - Pterosaur Connection

According to Jonathan Whitcomb, a cryptozoology author in Long Beach, California, when one of the bioluminescent predators has been glowing for awhile, not far above the ground, it will be joined by another of its kind, which will then turn on its own glow. After insects have been attracted to that area, the two creatures will separate, which appears to distant human observers to be one light splitting into two.

Occam's Razor Cuts Living Pterosaurs Critics

2011-04-06T05:20:00.000-07:00

How does Occam's Razor relate to theory and hypothesis, and how does it relate to living pterosaurs? Norman Huntington (in his post "Occam's Razor and Marfa Lights") explains:

Isaac Newton said that "we are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." Perhaps a definition more popular to modern scientists would be something like this: “when comparing two competing theories or hypotheses that make the same predictions, the simpler one is given priority.” That does not mean we should automatically flush down the loser. We simply give more time and attention to the winner.

James Bunnell (author of Hunting Marfa Lights) makes it clear that the CE lights are nothing like car headlights, even when the well-publicized night mirage effects are taken into account. In particular, the CE-III lights have sometimes been triangulated and tracked: They travel just above the bushes (I prefer the word "fly") where there is no road or highway, in one instance in a straight line for eleven miles. Car headlights differ so greatly from CE lights that they do not even deserve a place in the competition: They have been eliminated in the preliminary round. (Unfortunately, some blog writers and commenters who enjoy ridicule, like Richard Connelly, are oblivious to this.)

So how does Occam's Razor cut critics of investigations of living pterosaurs? One case involves interpretations of Marfa Lights, in particular the ones that have caught the attention of scientists like James Bunnell and Edson Hendricks, the truly mysterious CE-III flying lights. Huntington's long post on this subject is worth a brief summary here:

Of the four hypotheses offered by Bunnell, the best is number four: Electromagnetic Vortexes. The other hypotheses have too many problems or a problem that is too serious. The problem with the fourth relates to Occam's Razor: It is too complex, requiring two simultaneous things that are both questionable; it's quite possible that neither one exists in a way that would cause those strange lights, yet both must be present. Newton would scoff.

Compare that hypothesis by Bunnell (the best one that he mentioned in his book, and by the way, he admits the speculative nature of it) with my hypothesis of a group of bioluminescent flying predators. It also involves two elements: those flying predators and their prey. But mice, bats, snakes, and other small animals are well known in southwest Texas. There is only one questionable element: nocturnal glowing predators that are unclassified in biology. In that sense, at least, Occam's Razor cuts down the Electromagnetic-Vortexes hypothesis, for both of those parts are questionable.

Who's Who Investigating Living Pterosaurs

2011-03-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

I just noticed a comment on Facebook's "Living Pterosaurs."

"Pretty interesting. Why can't we really prove if they are really 'ALIVE.' They can't be so elusive, can they?" (from Bob Bc)

To answer that, we need to delve into specifics. But I feel a need to delve only an inch into answering this question, for we need to understand who has been involved in living-pterosaur investigations and how they have been involved and who else needs to become involved. That will answer what this commenter really needs to know.

How Elusive?

Well, Bob Bc, how elusive is "so elusive?" We now have eyewitnesses from around the world, persons from various languages, various cultures, and various religious beliefs. I now have reports of modern pterosaurs from five continents; in many cases I have personally interviewed eyewitnesses (though often by email rather than the preferred in-person or by-phone). And live pterosaurs have been observed by more eyewitnesses than just those who have come to my attention, no doubt. I would ask, "Why, in Western countries, are eyewitnesses of live pterosaurs so elusive, in that few reports reach the major media?" The answers are obvious, but this is getting too far off the subject.

Who Has Done What?

Who are the active investigators of living pterosaurs? Let's consider the obvious names, and what those men have done so far.

Paul Nation has gone on more living-pterosaur expeditions in Papua New Guinea than anyone else (four times), with the possible exception of about one or two investigators who live in that remote tropical wilderness. His 2006 expedition, deep in the mainland, resulted in video footage of the apparent bioluminescence of two indavas. Nation is an explorer who has actively searched for ropens and indavas.

Garth Guessman has been to Papua New Guinea at least twice, searching for living pterosaurs. He has also conducted important interviews with eyewitnesses, including Jim Blume and Duane Hodgkinson. He has also given lectures for creationist organizations.

David Woetzel accompanied Guessman on the second 2004 expedition on Umboi Island (a few weeks after my expedition there). He has also written a paper for a scientific journal, an article about living pterosaurs in history and in the present. He has accompanied exploreres on an expedition in central Africa, as they searched for the dinosaur Mokele-Mbembe.

Jim Blume, a Baptist missionary and small-plane pilot in Papua New Guinea, has spoken with many natives who know of the large flying creatures that the investigators feel sure are living pterosaurs. He has also assisted the cryptozoologists in expeditions from the 1990's into the early twenty-first century. His help with interpreting between languages, flying explorers to remote areas, and interviewing eyewitnesses has made a wonderful contribution to these investigations.

I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have less direct-experience in Papua New Guinea than some of my associates, with only one expedition, which I led in 2004. My work mostly involves writing about the encounters eyewitnesses have had with living pterosaurs. I have written two nonfiction books (each published in two editions, with more books on the way), one paper in a scientific journal, and hundreds of web pages and blog posts, not to mention comments on others' blogs. On rare occasions I may visit the location of a sighting.

A few investigators remain anonymous, with some of them searching for living pterosaurs in recent years and with exciting success. A few of these cryptozoologists have succeeded in observing the form and wing-shape of what we feel sure are nocturnal living pterosaurs, notwithstanding clear photographs and video footage are more elusive than the flying creatures. Nevertheless, we have now reached the stage in which at least some of those who search for living pterosaurs find and observe them for brief moments, at night. The location or locations are secret; even the names of a country or countries are unreported. But progress continues, and I feel sure the day will come when details can be revealed and proof of living pterosaurs, provided.

Let each of us do our part

How does this relate to the comment by Bob Bc? To those of us most actively involved, the reality of living pterosaurs has pretty much been proven, for we no longer have any significant doubt. But the less people become involved, the more they can doubt. Get involved.

I don't suggest readers of my books and blog posts rush off to a jungle. But each person needs to put to use the human mind, that gift each individual is given. Trust no dogmatic proclamation of universal extinction without evidence for that extreme idea. Pterosaurs of the past lived in many species, and only one or two species living in the present shoots down the "universal" part of extinction.

So who else should become involved? You, even if it is only in reading more eyewitness reports, and thinking more carefully and with an open mind to more truth, even if it means allowing yourself to become convinced, and admit that conviction, that at least one species of pterosaur is still living.

Marfa Lights in Summary

2011-03-03T21:35:00.000-08:00

With so many recent posts and pages about the predator-conjecture for Marfa Lights, it's now timely to summarize them.

Satire and Marfa Lights

Prompted by a press release about a new interpretation of the Marfa Lights of Texas, and the publication of a nonfiction cryptozoology book with a chapter devoted to those strange ghost lights, the blogger ridiculed the idea that the source of those lights are bioluminescent flying predators that may even be living pterosaurs. I wrote both the press release and the book it promotes.

Marfa Lights, Pterodactyls, and Other Lights

Evelyn Cheesman, a British biologist who is now known as the first woman to be a curator at the Regent's Park Zoo in London, witnessed strange lights during one of her expeditions in the southwest Pacific. She wrote about them in her 1935 book The Two Roads of Papua. But in her lifetime she never realized the potential significance of those lights to biology. In the early twenty-first century, a few cryptozoologists began suggesting the "Cheesman Lights" were made by flying creatures related to the ropen of Papua New Guinea.

Now the Marfa Lights are being evaluated for their potential as flying predators, and bioluminescent ones at that, similar to the ropen lights. All of them, including the Cheesman Lights, are probably bioluminescent flying predators, and eyewitness sightings in daylight indicate at least some of them are large living pterosaurs, called by some Americans "pterodactyls."

Marfa Lights and Car Headlights

There is adequate studies to make this clear: Night mirages of car headlights can sometimes appear mysterious. But that is not the point. Other lights that occasionally fly around this part of southwest Texas appear quite different; they are not mirages of car headlights.

Dunning, in his post "The Marfa Lights: A Real American Mystery," falters in two ways when he sells car headlights or exchanges them for mysterious Marfa Lights. . . .

Monster is Frigate Bird? Really Absurd!

2011-02-21T08:44:00.000-08:00

In July of 2007, I wrote a short Living-Pterosaur Newsletter article about a Youtube video of a Frigate bird that was suggested as an image of a ropen of Papua New Guinea. I believed and still believe that this mistaken identification of a Frigate bird for a ropen is detrimental to serious living-pterosaur investigations. I have tried to make this point known: Those birds have very little resemblance to the ropen.

More recently, I noticed a post on Ghost Theory (August 13, 2010) that confirmed my concern, for the writer brings up both Wikipedia's "ropen" information and that Youtube video, and most of the commenters on that Ghost Theory post seemed to think that recognition of the Frigate bird on that video disproves, or discredits the idea, that a pterosaur-like ropen exists.

I'll examine one of those comments (by "PNG Wantok") after referencing another post:

Frigate Birds and Freak-Like Nerds

On the Ghost Theory blog, in the post “Caught on Video: Dinosaur or Common Bird?” Youtube videos of an obvious Frigate bird are displayed as if new evidence. It is neither new nor detrimental to objective evaluation of serious investigations of reports of living pterosaurs.

As to the comment by "PNG Wantok," I'll first explain his pen name: In Papua New Guinea (PNG) one of the three national languages is Tok Pisin; in that language, a common word is "wantok," which means something like "those who speak my language."

He says, "Knowing the hunting prowess of the Papuan people, if there was any animal out there they could shoot or trap, they would have by now and there would be plenty of bones available as evidence." But there are major problems with his reasoning that there is no such creature as a ropen.

Starting with "bones available as evidence," how are new species discovered deep in the interior of the island of New Guinea? (Keep in mind, this is one of the largest islands in the world, and one of the least explored areas in the world.) If I understand correctly, scientists do not first examine bones given them by natives and then search for the creatures, finding living ones; at least that has not been the pattern in recent years when new species of frogs and other small animals are discovered.

But a critical problem lies in the assumption that an animal like the ropen must be something the natives "could shoot or trap." Years of cryptozoological expeditions in Papua New Guinea have revealed much about this nocturnal creature and about the natives who talk about it: This creature is not hunted but feared, and some accounts involve humans being killed and carried away, not necessarily in that order.

And how would bones of ropens ever get into the hands of Western scientists if those creatures were both reclusive and uncommon? Even if natives in some remote village could get their hands on the bones, how would those bones come to the notice of Westerners? Many of those villagers have little or no contact with the outside world, and even if they did, how would they know which bones would be of special interest to outsiders?

Marfa Lights and James Bunnell

2011-02-16T11:58:00.000-08:00

It seems odd to me that Wikipedia makes almost no mention of the name "James Bunnell" under the heading of "Marfa Lights." What scientist has done more research and conducted more searching for Marfa Lights than he has, with at least two nonfiction books on the subject? What other investigator of ghost lights in southwest Texas has been granted permission to set up remote automatic cameras on the private property of ranchers?

Bunnell's recent book, Hunting Marfa Lights, deserves attention here, with a quotation from Amazon:

Hunting Marfa Lights reports the results of an eight-year investigation (2001-2009) into mysterious lights seen near Marfa, a small West Texas town. This is, to date, the only long-term, extensive study of these phenomena. Reports of unusual lights east of Marfa extend back to the 1800s. Based on data collected, the author finds that while most of the observed lights in this area can be explained, about 3 percent are truly mysterious and of unknown origin. In addition to frequent on-site observations and photography, the author installed three automated monitoring stations equipped with a total of nine cameras, to collect nightly video records. Included in this 311-page book are 34 firsthand accounts from eyewitnesses and more than 120 illustrations and photographs. Of particular interest are compelling stories told by people, including the author, who have encountered these mysterious lights and have been astonished and amazed by the experience.

Although Mr. Bunnell may not yet have accepted the possibility that CE-III mystery lights near Marfa, Texas, are from bioluminescent flying predators, his enormous contributions, documented in his recent book, have made a wonderful contribution. That said, much has been written, online, about the pterosaur possibility:

Bats and Bioluminescent Predators

. . . when one of the bioluminescent predators has been glowing for awhile, not far above the ground, it will be joined by another of its kind, which will then turn on its own glow. After insects have been attracted to that area, the two creatures will separate, which appears to distant human observers to be one light splitting into two. The predators will fly away from each other for some distance, then turn back and fly together. During the separation, bats may begin feeding on the concentration of insects before being caught from two sides by the larger predators.

Are Marfa Lights Headlights?

To the best of my knowledge, no scientist who has studied or researched or observed any lights around Marfa, Texas, (including James Bunnell, Edson Hendricks, and Norman Huntington) objects to the idea that some spectators at the Marfa Lights Viewing Platform sometimes observe car headlights and have assumed that they had seen "Marfa Lights." . . . But that is not the point. Other lights that occasionally fly around this part of southwest Texas appear quite different; they are not mirages of car headlights.

Marfa Lights of Texas

The cryptozoological possibility seems weird, but there are similarities with the ropen lights of Papua New Guinea, and there the lights are said to be nocturnal flying creatures described like giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs: ropens.

"Marfa Lights Solved" - Is it a Giant Bird?

Did those students of the University of Texas at Dallas really solve a controversial mystery? I think not. Ask the right question in the beginning, for it can lead us into enlightenment; asking the wrong question (even if answered correctly) can lead us into ignorance. This appears to be a critical error that doomed those students to failure, for they seemed to have formulated a question like, “Can car headlights near Marfa, Texas, appear mysterious?”

Marfa Light Madness?

Leaning heavily on sarcasm does more than guarantee a writer's work will be forgotten. It puts the writer's opinion in doubt, for reasoning should come first. The person who wrote the above critism may have had something worthwhile in mind, before writing; but the comment itself throws the possibility of deep thinking into doubt.

The overall evidences, from the truly mysterious (and somewhat rare) Marfa Lights (not the night-mirages of car headlights, which are common) suggest intelligent nocturnal predators, bioluminescent, and possibly related to the ropen or indava of Papua New Guinea.

Are Marfa Lights Headlights?

2011-01-29T10:01:00.000-08:00

A recent post on Modern Pterosaur ("Scientific Skepticism and Marfa Lights" by Norman Huntington) mentions only briefly the car-headlights explanation for the mystery lights of southwest Texas. That post was in response to another post, one by Brian Dunning, on Skeptoid ("The Marfa Lights: A Real American Mystery"). I recommend the first post, not the one by Dunning.

To the best of my knowledge, no scientist who has studied or researched or observed any lights around Marfa, Texas, (including James Bunnell, Edson Hendricks, and Norman Huntington) object to the idea that some spectators at the Marfa Lights Viewing Platform sometimes observe car headlights and have assumed that they had seen "Marfa Lights." There is adequate studies to make this clear: Night mirages of car headlights can sometimes appear mysterious. But that is not the point. Other lights that occasionally fly around this part of southwest Texas appear quite different; they are not mirages of car headlights.

Dunning, in his post "The Marfa Lights: A Real American Mystery," falters in two ways when he sells car headlights or exchanges them for mysterious Marfa Lights. But his double trip-up can be overlooked for the moment, for the research of James Bunnell calls for a closer look. What about the strange lights that greatly differ from car headlights?

On pages 168-169 of Bunnell's book Hunting Marfa Lights (available at a discount on Amazon), we find the definition of "CE ML." They "exhibit chemical or combustion-like properties with electromagnetic attributes." Bunnell says that those Mystery Lights (ML) "are truly mysterious and do not fit into Mirage . . . categories." He should know about chemical and combustion-like properties, being literally a rocket scientist.

Bunnell's remote automatic cameras have recorded amazing flying light behaviors, including one flight at low altitude for eleven miles. This kind of ML he classifies as "CE-III." Some flights have been obviously unrelated to any automobiles, traveling where there are no roads or highways. But also telling is the nature of the light from these flying things, for a series of explosions seems to be involved, whether or not it relates to propulsion (which I discount). Not just flight directions or explosive characteristics distinguish these lights from car headlights, however; CE-III's can fly around in colors nothing like any car headlights.

Now back to Dunning. How did he falter regarding car headlights? First, he assumed that if strange lights existed around Marfa before the advent of cars, somebody would have written about it in some permanent form before any cars appeared. He seems to be confused about the significance of various kinds of evidence. If somebody had written, in a book, before there were any cars, about mysterious lights around Marfa, it would be clear evidence against the car headlight hypothesis. But the absence of an old written record does not make second-hand reports of nineteen-century sightings of mysterious lights worthless; it just makes it less decisive against car headlights. Evidence is rarely considered either proof positive or worthless; most evidence is somewhere between those extremes.

Dunning also trips up on a brief study (much briefer than Bunnell's investigations) by a group of physics students. Their conclusion was not that all lights ever seen as mysterious around Marfa are from car headlights. They concluded that the lights that they had personally seen were car headlights. But the CE-III and similar non-mirage lights seen by Bunnell and other scientists do not appear every night like the predictable car traffic on a nearby highway; they appear only a few times each year. Apparently, the CE-III lights did not show up when the college students were looking at car headlights on those two or three nights: unlucky for the students, but they were apparently unaware of their bad luck.

See also the post about Marfa Lights and Pterodactyls

See also Ropens (live pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea)

See also Marfa Lights in the Houston Chronicle

See also Marfa Lights not Car Headlights in Texas

Are Marfa Lights "Pterodactyl" Lights?

2011-01-13T16:29:00.000-08:00

On the blog post "Ghost Lights Versus Science?" it says, "It may seem like science is pitted against the mystery of those Marfa Lights of southwest Texas, but in truth scientific investigations are making progress in unraveling the mystery, notwithstanding one hypothesis that makes the result appear to be science fiction." It then tells us about the research and searches of James Bunnell, a scientist who has been unable, after years of work, to explain what is happening with those mysterious lights in southwest Texas.

Other scientists have tried to tackle the mystery, with no success, notwithstanding their many conjectures about things like earth lights and geologic features that have some kind of energy release. Some of those lights fly around together in ways so strange and complex that local ranchers and others refer to them as "dancing devils" or "ghost lights." They behave in ways suggesting some general intelligent cause or individual purpose for each light in a group.

Evelyn Cheesman, a British biologist who is now known as the first woman to be a curator at the Regent's Park Zoo in London, witnessed strange lights during one of her expeditions in the southwest Pacific. She wrote about them in her 1935 book The Two Roads of Papua. But in her lifetime she never realized the potential significance of those lights to biology. In the early twenty-first century, a few cryptozoologists began suggesting the "Cheesman Lights" were made by flying creatures related to the ropen of Papua New Guinea.

Now the Marfa Lights are being evaluated for their potential as flying predators, and bioluminescent ones at that, similar to the ropen lights. All of them, including the Cheesman Lights, are probably bioluminescent flying predators, and eyewitness sightings in daylight indicate at least some of them are large living pterosaurs, called by some Americans "pterodactyls."

Marfa Lights Keep Flying

2011-01-08T17:30:00.000-08:00

Comparing Marfa Lights with ropen lights may be speculative, but the potential for a dramatic scientific discovery is thrilling. What at potential! Living bioluminescent pterosaurs in Texas! Even if the flying creatures turn out to be something other than pterosaurs, it would be a wonderful discovery of such incredible glowing flying predators.

Headlights and Hard Heads Knocking Marfa Lights

So why do some blog writers and blog-post commenters still insist that all mysterious lights seen around Marfa are from car headlights? What could it be other than careless thinking? For those who would like to really learn the truth about what is known and about the possibility (however probable or improbable) of Marfa Lights coming from large bioluminescent flying predators, read one or both of these nonfiction books: Hunting Marfa Lights by James Bunnell and Live Pterosaurs in America, second edition, by Jonathan David Whitcomb. Both books are the result of years of research and investigation.

Science and Marfa Lights

. . . scientists have tried to know and understand Marfa Lights: observing, testing photographing, and theorizing. Interesting ideas have emerged; none but one, however, seems to come close to adequately explaining the apparent intellegence associated with those flying lights, the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas.

Ropen Chasing Ropen in Marfa, Texas

I'll call it the "Huntington Hypothesis" (HH), this conjecture that the May 8, 2003, sighting by James Bunnell involved one flying predator that was chasing another one for many miles. Consider this carefully; I see no problem with this hypothesis. It involves a male flying predator chasing off a rival male, in a chase that lasted eleven miles.

Pterodactyls in Texas (including Marfa)

With mammals the size of houses diving deep under the surface of the oceans, with not-quite-so-large mammals having noses many feet long, with birds that can swim, with spiders that catch small birds, with so many wonderful forms of life on this earth, why not pterodactyls in Texas?

Marfa Light Madness?

2010-12-14T06:14:00.000-08:00

One commenter on a recent blog post responded briefly to my two long comments with, "Dude, you are a certified whack job. Pterodactyls? Fie and pshaw!" He then sarcastically referred to "glow-goblins" as the cause of Marfa Lights. (Houston Press blog post by Richard Connelly, Dec 7, 2010; comment by "Doc")

A timely note before proceeding: Sarcasm is not satire.

Leaning heavily on sarcasm does more than guarantee a writer's work will be forgotten. It puts the writer's opinion in doubt, for reasoning should come first. The person who wrote the above critism may have had something worthwhile in mind, before writing; but the comment itself throws the possibility of deep thinking into doubt.

One definition of "whack job" is this: "an extremely erratic or irrational person." In my two lengthy comments (over fifty lines of comment, much longer than the blog post by Richard Connelly) I said much about Marfa Lights and the work of the scientist James Bunnell. I said little about pterosaurs. But for those who have read much of my writings, it is obvious that I rely on eyewitnesses, for I have never seen anything like a living pterosaur (although I hope and pray to see one before leaving this world). If the writer of sarcasm really believes me to be insane because I believe in the words of persons who declare that they have seen living pterosaurs, what about Brian Hennessy?

Several years ago, this Australian reported to me his 1971 sighting of a "prehistoric" looking flying creature. It had no sign of feathers but a long tail. The long beak and long tail made it very unlike any bat; the lack of feathers made it very unlike any bird. If I am insane for believing him, what about Hennessy? Why believe he is mentally healthy? The problem with labeling this Australian with "whack job" is that Brian Hennessy is a professional psychologist.

See also "Those Mysterious Marfa Lights."

Can Satire Backfire?

2010-12-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

According to Wikipedia, "satire is primarily a literary genre or form" in which "vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement." I suspect that some writers enjoy using satire to be humorous; also, some writers want to make a point without actually reasoning on the point, by using bulverism (whether or not they know the meaning of that word). Although satirical writing is common, satire about new scientific ideas is uncommon.

A recent use of satire in Texas, however, may have backfired, with potential consequences unforseen by the blog writer. Prompted by a press release about a new interpretation of the Marfa Lights of Texas, and the publication of a nonfiction cryptozoology book with a chapter devoted to those strange ghost lights, the blogger ridiculed the idea that the source of those lights are bioluminescent flying predators that may even be living pterosaurs. I wrote both the press release and the book it promotes.

On that blog post by Richard Connelly, I replied with two comments, neither of which referred to bulverism or satire. My comments mostly emphasized the error of assuming there are no strange lights around Marfa (Connelly had assumed car headlights account for all reports of strange lights there). I used that bloggers two links, demonstrating that careful reading of his references result in meanings different from what he had assumed: Those two scientific studies do not support Connelly's assumption.

I said little about pterosaurs in those two comments. After writing books on the subject of living pterosaurs, I have given up on the possibility that even the best-formulated comment or the most thoughtfully prepared article can, by itself, convince all readers that their culture has wrongfully indoctrinated them into the assumption of universal extinctions of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. My best hope is that a single comment or article will awaken most of the readers to the possibility of modern pterosaurs, and Connelly's blog post seems to have done something similar, contrary to his intention.

I am grateful that comments were allowed for that post. I believe that some readers notice the comments, and in this case I have an audience that I would not have had without Connelly's remarks.

For those interested, the blog post of Richard Connelly is not itself the best example of bulverism (it is, however, a clear example of satire); the third comment, by "Doc," is a better example: Referring to me, he said, "Dude, you are a certified whack job." Of course, that commenter's idea is hardly original: that I am a hopeless lunatic; it seems to be a common misconception. But for those who desire to reason on a subject, I suggest actual reasoning, not bulverism.

Pterosaur Extinction . . . or Non-Extinction

2010-11-10T10:02:00.000-08:00

How often are we exposed to the word "extinction" when dinosaurs or pterosaurs are mentioned! Extinction is declared as if it were a scientific fact. Facing into the wind of those declarations, look for yourself at the possibility that pterosaurs, in at least a few species, are still living (dinosaurs set aside for the moment).

There is no scientific evidence for universal extinction of all species of pterosaurs. Not a speck of evidence. Consider only a few eyewitness reports, then decide if you would like to investigate further, looking more deeply into those sightings and other similar sightings. I have been investigating pterosaur sightings for over ten years, and the evidence continues to accumulate, both in quantity and quality. I believe the credible eyewitnesses.

I do not set myself up to be more intelligent than the paleontologists who disagree with me. But investigating reports of living pterosaurs is outside the speciality of paleontology, and I have probably spent more hours on this obscure branch of cryptozoology than all the paleontologists in the world combined. Please, if you doubt that any species of pterosaur could be now living, at least consider the length of my experience, before dismissing this idea outright, and look at the eyewitness accounts that I have analyzed.

We could start with Duane Hodgkinson, but his report has been written about and analyzed for years, so let's just take a brief look here (see other blogs and web pages for more information). Hodgkinson was not drinking---he has never been a drinker---when he saw the giant long-tailed "pterodactyl" in a jungle clearing just west of Finschhafen, New Guinea (now the nation of Papua New Guinea). He was not alone, for his army buddy was with him. It was not an indistinct vision in the dark of night, for it was the middle of the day. It was not too brief to be sure, for the two men saw the creature take off into the air before flying away, and it flew back over that same clearing, allowing the two soldiers to get a second clear view of it. It was not far away, for they were in the same clearing as the creature that took off into the air and that clearing was less than 150 feet across. It was not a bird, for there was no sign of feathers. It was not a fruit bat, for the tail was "at least ten to fifteen feet" long. That creature was a clearly observed Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur, notwithstanding it was a giant size and the fossils we now have of Rhamphorhynchoids are much smaller.

Consider excerpts from the second edition of my second nonfiction book, Live Pterosaurs in America [to be published within the next few weeks, probably before Thanksgiving]

“I was 15 yrs old [when] I saw two ropens together sitting on a fence. . . . on a wood plank fence were two of the biggest bird-like creatures I could ever imagine! I almost crashed my bike! They were about 50 ft from me; the first thing I noticed was their heads . . . I would have to say it [the head] was maybe 4 ft long with the beak . . . the wings looked like black rubber. . . . their wing span was about 20 ft tip to tip . . ." [Washington state]

“Hello, my name is [RA] and I live in central N.M.. Fourteen years ago, in [Socorro], N.M., me and a close friend, who now has a masters in biology, were hiking during the midday sun at [a] box canyon and something blocked the sun for a moment. . . . “It had a 20-30 foot wingspan and was about the same length long. It had a long tail with [a] seeming spike at the end. Its head was very pterodactyl shape . . ." [New Mexico]

So consider this: When a flying creature is clearly seen to resemble a pterosaur, maybe it is a pterosaur.

Flying Fox Misidentifications? No!

2010-10-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

How often, during the past twenty years, has somebody suggested that Flying Fox fruit bats are the cause of live-pterosaur sighting reports! But many details shoot down that fruit-bat idea, and one detail is a long tail.

Both the Australian Brian Hennessy and the American Duane Hodgkinson describe a long tail on the large flying creatures that they observed in New Guinea (the country is now independent and is called "Papua New Guinea). Hodgkinson said that the tail on the "pterodactyl" that he saw was "at least" 10-15 feet long; Hennessy described the tail on the "prehistoric" flying creature as long. Both eyewitnesses seem to have observed the same type of creature, possibly the same species.

I have interviewed both eyewitnesses, giving both of them survey forms to choose the sketches that best correlate with the creatures that they had seen. The composite sketches of the head show striking similarities, completely different from any flying fox fruit bat, completely pterosaur-like, with a thin pointed head crest.

Why then have critics suggested the flying fox for sightings of living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea? It seems that those critics may be completely ignorant of the details in critical eyewitness sighting reports.

See New Guinea Ropen

See also Marfa Lights

Worldwide Sightings of Live Pterosaurs

2010-10-02T14:23:00.000-07:00

Woetzel's Ropen Sighting in Papua New Guinea

David Woetzel led the second ropen expedition on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, late in 2004, accompanied by fellow-American cryptozoologist Garth Guessman. One night . . . Woetzel saw a strange light flying towards the mountains near Lake Pung. Consider this excerpt from my interview with him in 2005:“My sighting was so quick that it was impossible to get a video . . . [The flying light was] almost golden and shimmering around the edges. . . . There was no [meteor tail] and it was flying horizontal from Mt. Barik toward Mt. Tolo [Lake Pung area] . . . The size, color and speed made it immediately stand out as unlike any other thing I’ve ever seen in the sky.”

Near Collision Over Indonesia

The pilot of a small plane reported a large flying creature . . . about 150 miles southeast of Bali, Indonesia, at 6500 feet. Immediately after the near collision, both the pilot and co-pilot said, "pterodactyl!" They are both former navy pilots . . . without any sign of a hoax and without any sign of a predisposition to promote the concept of living pterosaurs. They do not seem inclined to either disparage or promote our investigations. . . . the size of the creature (at first the pilot thought it was another plane) and altitude seem inconsistent with common birds or bats in the southwest Pacific. It could have been a ropen.

See also: Pterodactyl Flies Over Military Ship (It may have been around Indonesia.)

Live Pterosaurs in the Western United States

(Eyewitness was 16 years old)
"I saw two ropens together sitting on a fence. I was riding my bike home [in Washington State] . . . on a wood plank fence were two of the biggest bird-like creatures I could ever imagine! . . . I noticed . . . their heads, then I thought this can’t be! Could they be dinosaurs? . . . They were huge! . . . [Their] heads I would have to say it was maybe 4 ft long with the beak. . . . Their tails were . . . maybe 6 ft long . . . I told my mom and she saw them too . . . if I would have had someone other [than] my mother to talk to about them we would have mentioned it. But my mother was worried no one would believe it. I can tell you I believe their wing span was about 20 ft tip to tip."

Pterosaurs in Georgia and South Carolina

I live in a small town in northeast Georgia . . . On August 27, [2008] I woke up very early in the morning . . . I had driven less than ten miles . . . and suddenly an animal flew out from my right . . . it flew directly in front of my car . . . the shape of the tail . . . was very long with a shape on the end. . . . head that was curved, like a hammer; the head had a crest on the top that was solid, not feathery at all . . . [from the book Live Pterosaurs in America]

[South Carolina sighting] It was huge, as big as a plane . . . a huge pterodactyl looking creature, flying very high in the sky. The strangest thing about the sighting was how slow the wings were flapping and how high it was flying.

Two Pterosaurs Observed in Cuba

As a member of the United States Marine Corps, [Eskin Kuhn] was stationed at Guantanamo, with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Regiment (reinforced), H&S Co., 106mm recoiless rifle platoon. . . . The two creatures were very unlike any bird, for they had no feathers. They could have been strange bats except that the heads were completely wrong and they had long tails. Their flight, the flapping of their wings, was described as graceful.

Pterodactyls in Texas

2010-09-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

Why not? With mammals the size of houses diving deep under the surface of the oceans, with not-quite-so-large mammals having noses many feet long, with birds that can swim, with spiders that catch small birds, with so many wonderful forms of life on this earth, why not pterodactyls in Texas? After all, we believe in whales, elephants, penguins, bird spiders (big tarantulas), humans.

Getting specific, what some particular eyewitnesses have observed in Texas are not fossils, and the correct general name for the flying creature is "pterosaur," not "pterodactyl," but why could they not live in Texas? With plenty of space to hide in the day, nocturnal flying predators could roam the skies at night, rarely seen by humans, even if the creatures are not extremely rare. But some Texans have seen pterosaurs, and some of the descriptions cannot reasonably be much else except modern living pterosaurs.

Texas Pterosaur in Marion County

. . . he was only eight years old . . . He reported his sighting to me in 2009 (I interviewed him in January, 2010), and that throws light on the reliability of his experience. Why? Childish imaginings do not usually remain misunderstood after a person grows into adulthood; even what is vividly imagined will normally become revealed as imagination as a person matures. My communications with Mr. Tullock revealed no symptom of any abnormality related to potential hallucination or delusion, and I have had adequate experience with those with that kind of problem. I believe that Mr. Tullock observed a flying creature with features basically the same or similar to those that he described to me.

Marfa Lights of Texas

The flying light appeared to have “on and off states as well as occasional bursts to brightness.” He concluded that it had “the appearance of chemical combustion including at least two re-ignitions and step changes in brightness.”

All day, the men searched along the base of the Chinati Mountains . . . where the lights had been. They found no evidence that Indians had been anywhere in the area. No tracks, no doused campfires, no nothing. But the next night and the next after that, they again saw the strange lights. Cowboys kept seeing the lights night after night, week after week, and year after year.

Balls of light sitting in a chico bush, atop a small pile of rocks or on the foundation of a removed radio antenna spitting streamers and shifting color from yellow to purple and red, a few flashes of yellow streamers and the light blinks out. . . . One I really enjoyed watching moved straight up a cliff face and then rested on top of the mountain changing from bright yellow to a dim red then blinked a couple times and was gone.

Marfa Lights, New Insights

. . . one of the lights [was] many miles away . . . flying around in the same general area . . . This light lasted for well over an hour . . . during which time several other lights [closer] appeared to the left. The group of lights here behaved somewhat differently, seeming . . . to interact with each other . . .

Pterosaurs and Texas

What does Texas have to do with extant pterosaurs? A lot. Not only do eyewitnesses report apparent living pterosaurs in Texas, but two Texans are pioneers in this cryptozoological investigation. . . . Recent investigations suggest that some living pterosaurs eat bats and/or birds at night. Pterosaur extinction is for the birds.

Flying Dinosaurs (Actually Pterosaurs)

2010-08-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Those wonderful featherless flying creatures, sometimes called "flying dinosaurs," were actually not dinosaurs; they were pterosaurs. And, contrary to what has often been taught to Western students, not all species of flying dinosaurs (excuse, me: pterosaurs) are extinct.

Let's consider two examples, sighting reports of flying dino . . . pterosaurs.

Flying Creature in San Fernando Valley, California

" . . . flying creature in Sherman Oaks, California, suggests similarities to the ropen of Papua New Guinea. . . . at about 10:30 p.m., on September 21, 2009 . . . very large, winged creature that was gliding maybe 100 yards [above the two eyewitnesses] . . . the wingspan: ten to fifteen feet; the girlfriend estimated twenty feet. The wings appeared more like those of bats than birds, with a greater depth from leading-edge to trailing edge."

Living Pterosaur in Ohio

“A young man was reported to have seen something strange flying over the Maumee River in the summer of 2003.; he described it like a pterosaur, according to a recently-published book, Live Pterosaurs in America. It was reported to be chasing sparrows as it flew over the Route 49 bridge near Antwerp, Ohio.”

Living Pterosaurs, Not Extinct

2010-08-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

How many critics have assumed that eyewitnesses of living pterosaurs must be either mistaken or dishonest! How dogmatic the teachings of universal extinctions! How long we have been indoctrinated! Why have an open mind to someone who talks about seeing a living pterosaur? It is a human experience.

I have interviewed eyewitnesses from many countries, including the United States, England, the Netherlands, Sudan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia. Many of them describe a large flying creature with a long tail; many descriptions include words like "featherless," "head crest," "diamond at the end of the tail," "huge." These people come from different cultures, different native languages, different religious beliefs; yet about 80% or more of the sightings, in any particular part of the world, include "long tail" with a description of a strange flying creature. Consider now that long tail; what does it mean?

A few critics have ridiculed sighting reports as hoaxes because they have mixtures of descriptions that do not coorelate with any particular pterosaur fossil. Those critics, however, fail to take into account a number of important details. Many of the more-credible sightings (true eyewitnesses sometimes report directly to a cryptozoologist who specializes in living pterosaurs; I am one of those investigators) include the same unusual combinations: large size, long tail, head crest. Random hoaxes would not create such a consistant set of descriptions; and why should a modern pterosaur not have those characteristics? Those consistencies would not come from hoaxes; for example, in the United States, decades of movies and television have conditioned any potential hoaxer to think Pterodactyloid rather than Rhamphorhynchoid, but American eyewitnesses, like those in other countries often describe a long tail.

Misidentifications of a giant bat---that is another common criticism. But how do critics explain the long tail, often seen with a Rhamphorhynchoid flange at the end? And how do they explain the behavior of ropens at Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea? There the creature has been seen to hold itself upright on a tree trunk (not upside down like a bat), and to catch fish on the reefs, and to glow with bright bioluminescence. Some eyewitnesses of the ropen give a sure witness of a pointed head crest.

Generalized criticisms of eyewitnesses are also shot down. How can we say "crazy" when one of the eyewitnesses is a psychologist? How can we say "vision problems" when one of the eyewitnesses is a flight instructor (with many thousands of hours of flight experience)? How can we say "unscientific observers" when one of the eyewitnesses is a scientist?

Why assume that all the eyewitnesses must be wrong, as if human experience were secondary to the dogmatic proclamations of fossil experts? Living pterosaurs, not extinct pterosaurs---those are what eyewitnesses see.

###

Cryptozoology book on living pterosaurs in the United States (non-fiction)

"Pterodactyl" Flies Over Military Ship

2010-07-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

With a fellow cryptozoologist, some time ago, I interviewed a man who had been a sailor on the U.S.S. Jouett (guided missle cruiser), CG-29. He told us about the night when he was surprised by an excited shipmate who summoned him out of his bunk. Many sailors had just witnessed a giant "pterodactyl" that had flown directly over the ship. The sailor who went up top to see for himself was too late, for the creature had already flown out of sight. Nevertheless, he was impressed by the sincerity of those sailors who had seen it for themselves.

If anyone has information on this, please send me an email: info [at-sign] livepterosaur.com

Thank you.

Comparing a Paleontologist to a Fox

2010-07-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

In the July 14, 2010, posting on the Live Pterosaur blog, the paleontologist is compared with a fox.

One Monsterquest episode involved an expedition to New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea. On the surface, it appeared to be a search for giant nocturnal flying creatures that some cryptozoologists believe are modern living pterosaurs (in reality, it was a dramatic production project to make an intertaining show; it was not a scientific investigation). Of all the potential explorers to take with them, Monsterquest chose a paleontologist. What’s wrong with that? It’s like inviting a fox to inspect an electric-fence security system for a chicken yard; you know that the fox will advise you to immediately stop wasting electricity on the worthless contraption. Likewise a paleontologist will be totally predictable, regardless of eyewitness evidence that a cryptid is a “living fossil.”

"Living Fossils" in Africa

2010-06-02T04:53:00.000-07:00

Contrary to what one critic said on his web page, I have never led a group of creationists on an expedition in Africa; I went alone to Papua New Guinea (southwest Pacific). But other explorers have searched remote swamps of central Africa, and reports of living dinosaurs and living pterosaurs deserve attention.

David Woetzel in Africa

One of my living-pterosaur-investigator associates, David Woetzel, has explored in part of a tropical wilderness in Cameroon, Africa, searching for an apparent dinosaur. According to one blog post, "David Woetzel, explorer and cryptozoologist:"

Late in 2000, he accompanied the explorer William Gibbons into Cameroon, Africa, where they interviewed many natives. A creature called “li’kela-bembe” is greatly feared in the Likouala swamp region; exploreres believe it is similar or the same animal that is called “Mokele-mbembe,” a large sauropod dinosaur. The swamp itself is huge, about 55,000 square miles, the largest swamp in the world . . .

Although Woetzel did not, apparently, specifically investigate reports of living pterosaurs in central Africa, he did so in 2004, on Umboi Island in Papua New Guinea (a few weeks after my own expedition there).

Pterosaurs, "flying snakes," and bird watching in Africa

Another blog post is about the kongamato and similar flying creatures (apparent pterosaurs) in Africa, "Modern Pterosaurs in Africa:"

. . . perched on the edge of the roof, the creature appeared to be four-to-five feet tall, olive brown, and leathery (no feathers). A “long bone looking thing” stuck out the back of its head . . . [Sudan, Africa]

In 1942, a flying snake like animal swooped down from a cave in the vicinity of a farm near Kirris West sixty miles east of Keetmanshoop, in south-west Namibia. The flying snake, or whatever it was, frightened Michael Esterhuise, a farm hand . . . ["'Flying Snakes' and Pterosaurs"]

The Wikipedia post for “kongamato” includes “the area concerned is advertised as a prime birdwatching site,” bringing up the question of why birdwatchers do not report living pterosaurs in Africa. . . . [but] birdwatchers are watching in daylight, when they can see. The point? . . . living long-tailed pterosaurs . . . fly at night. ["Bird watching sans pterosaurs"]

Read about living pterosaurs sited in two countried in Europe, the Philippines, and Indonesia

Two Pterosaurs Observed in Cuba, in Daylight

2010-05-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

How grateful I am for the privilige of interviewing Eskin Kuhn, by telephone, early in 2010! How delightful that he is a credible eyewitness, passing the test of responding to my surprise call and questions. His sighting was decades ago: 1971.

As a Marine, he was stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when he happened to be looking in the right direction one hot day. He is a talented artist, with a sharp eye for grasing the details of what he sees. Here is part of his report.

I saw Two Pterosaurs . . . flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet, very close . . . from where I was standing . . . I had a perfectly clear view of them. The rythym of their large wings was very graceful, slow . . . yet they were flying and not merely gliding . . . The structure and the texture of the wings appeared to be very similar to that of bats . . . the struts of the wings emanated from a "hand" as fingers would, except that a couple of the fingers were short (as for grasping) and the other ran out to the tip of the wing, others back to the trailing edge of the wing to stretch the wing membrane as a kite would. . . . they had a long tail trailing behind . . . The head was disproportionately large, with a long crest at the back, long bill, long neck with a crook in it.

Read more about the live pterosaurs seen by Eskin Kuhn

Read about how the pterosaurs in Cuba may be similar to a Texas pterosaur

The "Giant Bat" of Papua New Guinea is not really a bat

Nonfiction Cryptozoology Book on Pterosaurs

2010-05-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

Live "pterodactyls!" In the United States of America? Prepare for a shock if you thought all pterosaurs (called "flying dinosaurs") died many millions of years ago. In California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, and many other states, eyewitnesses have been shocked by featherless creatures flying overhead. Many of these living pterosaurs are much larger than any bat; Many have long tails; many have head crests (bats do not). . . . Rare and nocturnal, these strange flying creatures have always lived here, but something other than the darkness of night has hidden them. Enter now the realm of a new branch of cryptozoology, a struggling branch hampered by the dogma of universal extinction. Please consider the words of these ordinary Americans who fear ridicule but have still come forward with their extraordinary experiences: encounters with apparent living pterosaurs.

Purchase your own copy of the new ~~second~~ third edition of this nonfiction book on Amazon.com

Read more about the book on modern pterodactyls in the United States

Read more about this nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America

Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen

2010-05-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

The cryptid seen in New Guinea, by Duane Hodgkinson in 1944 and by Brian Hennessy in 1971, I have named "Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen." Similarities between the descriptions given to me by these two eyewitnesses struck me as too much for coincidence. In each of our interviews (in different years), they both responded to my visual survey-forms, resulting in composite images of the heads of the creatures observed.

Top: Hennessy's sighting; bottom: Hodgkinson's.

As I mentioned in my scientific paper (in The Creation Research Society Quarterly, Volume 45, Number 3, "Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific"), these different lengths of head crest I believe fall within the range of eyewitness error. In other words, the creatures observed by these two men could very well have had the same length of head crest (relative to the size of the head). In addition, I believe that in at least some species of pterosaurs, according to fossil evidence, the head crest grows faster than the rest of the head. Since the crest length is the primary difference between these two sketches, it seems likely that the species is the same for the 1944 and 1971 sightings.

Why would there ever be any question about ropen sightings being of the same species? David Woetzel wrote a scientific paper in The Creation Research Society Quarterly three years before my own paper. (My fellow ropen-seeking cryptozoologist explored Umboi Island, with Garth Guessman and Jacob Kepas, a few weeks after my 2004 expedition) Woetzel concluded that the ropen of Umboi Island is a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur similar to the Dimorphodon, even though two eyewitnesses that he and Guessman had interviewed chose a sketch of a Sordes Pilosus (when shown many silhouettes of pterosaurs, bats, and birds). Although I have much doubt about a Dimorphodon-interpretation of the overall reports from Umboi Island, I admit the possibility that two different species of Rhamphorhynchoids may live in Papua New Guinea. But the creatures seen by Hodgkinson and Hennessy seem very likely to have been of the same species, so I have named this cryptid "Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen."

Please support this investigation by purchasing a copy of the nonfiction book "Live Pterosaurs in America" (on Amazon.com, from late-2009 through early 2010, the best-selling nonfiction book on sightings of living pterosaurs).

See also: David Woetzel's scientific paper on living pterosaurs and the "fiery flying serpent." (The Creation Research Society Quarterly, Volume 42, Number 4, March, 2006)

See also: Home page of Live Pterosaurs in America. Thank you for supporting the investigations. To contact me, Jonathan Whitcomb, use the Live Pterosaur email form.

Objectiveness in Cheesman Sightings

2010-04-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

(This use of "objectiveness" in the title is unrelated to the site "objectiveministries," which seems to be an elaborate farce, probably meant to ridicule creationist living-pterosaur investigations. This cryptozoology site has no relationship with "objectiveministries.")

Evelyn Cheesman, a British entomologist (1881-1969) known for her many years of collecting-expeditions in the South Pacific, was the first woman to be hired as a curator at Regent's Park Zoo, in London. She is less well-known as an observer of strange lights on the mainland of New Guinea. Those lights, in recent years, have been ascribed to the bioluminescent glow of an animal known as "ropen."

Cheesman became puzzled, in the early 1930's, by lights on a ridge near Mondo, New Guinea (the area is now part of what is called the "mainland" of Papua New Guinea). In her book, The Two Roads of Papua, she said that the flash lasted "about four or five seconds, but that flash had been a little distance away from the first. Flashes continued at intervals. . . . a most intriguing mystery; because by no possibility could there be human beings out there using flash-lamps at intervals . . ."

Several explorers, in more recent years, (I am neither the first nor the last of them) have searched for the creatures that we believe create these strange lights. Explorers have included Paul Nation, Garth Guessman, David Woetzel. In addition, James Blume (a missionary for decades in Papua New Guinea) has interviewed many native eyewitnesses over many years. We believe the creatures are bioluminescent pterosaurs.

Where does "objectiveness" come in? Up until a few years ago, two criticisms related to living-pterosaur accounts: the possibility of native superstitions, and bias of religious explorers or cryptozoologists--both were suggested as improperly influencing the reports related to living pterosaurs. Evelyn Cheesman was a scientist, apparently not affiliated with any relevant religious cause, and she was English. Although she may have never learned about the "pterosaur interpretation" possibility of the lights that she observed, she was convinced that they were not created by any human agency. The detailed report of her observations indirectly give credence to the hypothesis that these lights are caused by nocturnal bioluminescent creatures.

See also Pterosaur Interpretation of Cheesman Sightings

See also Searching For Live Pterosaurs (expedition by Jonathan Whitcomb)

See also Objective Ministries NOT (a page of objectiveness.com)

Living Pterosaurs in the United States?

2010-04-15T19:51:00.001-07:00

In recent years, two reality television series (rather paranormal: Destination Truth and Monsterquest) have included living-pterosaur investigation in Papua New Guinea. But flying creatures described like the long-tailed ropen---they are hardly restricted to remote tropical wildernesses. Many Americans have reported apparent pterosaurs in many states: California, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas, Washington State, and other states. Since the two ropen expeditions of 2004, in Papua New Guinea, many reports have drawn our attention to our own country.

How easy for us who live in cities to forget: Most of the United States is uninhabited or sparsely inhabited by people. Rare nocturnal flying creatures that live in caves and hunt bats---they can often avoid human detection. And when somebody, in the United States, sees something like a bat, but that something is bigger than a bat, what can be done? Report a pterodactyl to the police? Report a pterodactyl to the newspaper? Report a pterodactyl to a university biology professor? An eyewitnesses can wait for the story to break, searching the newspaper for something about the creature; but there is no newspaper story. Why? The answer becomes obvious when the eyewitness considers why she herself did not report anything to that newspaper. Who wants to be labeled "crazy?"

Have you ever read a critic's ridicule of the living-pterosaur investigations? It may be something like, "If pterosaurs were still living, they would be obvious; why do we not see them?" A critic may say, "Where are the newspaper headlines?" Sometimes a critic might mention the word "crazy" in regard to those who believe in the eyewitnesses, the cryptozoologists. Regarding the eyewitnesses, when "foolishness" or "insanity" is unmentioned, it is often implied. How destructive is that approach to objective reasoning! It resembles dirty politics more than scientific discussion.

I suggest that we examine the eyewitness accounts of apparent pterosaurs in the United States and compare them with other accounts from around the world. This extraordinary phenomenon deserves an objective examination.

See also Live Pterosaurs in America, the cryptozoology book

See also a book review and comments on Hunting Marfa Lights

See also 1400 American Eyewitnesses of Pterosaurs

See also the unusual "Radar Criticism" of Live Pterosaurs

Tunnel Pterodactyl of 1856

2010-04-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the Illustrated London News carried an article about a "pterodactyl" that workmen discovered while laboring in a tunnel for a railway line, between Saint-Dizier and Nancy, France. The large creature was said to have stumbled out from the limestone, fluttered its wings, made a croaking noise, and dropped dead. I have not myself seen this article, but if my information is correct the story is in the February 9, 1856 issue, page 166.

Much has been made of the obvious signs that this was only a hoax; I agree, it looks like a hoax. But some critics of living-pterosaur investigations have tried to use that to dispute eyewitness sightings in the 20th and 21st Centuries. How shabby that reasoning! Would they propose abolishing all modern governments in the Western Hemisphere because of the 19th Century behavior of Napoleon Bonaparte?

I've seen no name for either an interviewer or eyewitness in the Illustrated London News report. But I have myself interviewed many eyewitnesses of creatures described like living pterosaurs, eyewitnesses from around the world, and I have found much evidence against any hoax-explanation for those accounts as a whole.

Let us give up any idea of a post mortem examination of the "tunnel pterodactyl." Instead, examine the reports that continue to come in, recent reports of living creatures. Let us also set aside the mocking croaks of critics who would bury any eyewitness evidence that might contradict standard dogma about universal pterosaur-extinction. Let recently-opened cases remain open until we have examined them, for only then can we be sure, one way or the other.

British biologist observed strange flying glowing objects (ropen lights)

Searching For Live Pterosaurs

2010-03-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Dreams and Reality

As a teenager, I once daydreamed of exploring a remote jungle to discover a creature like the giant dinosaur said to inhabit the Congo area of Africa (I later learned the name for that cryptid: Mokele-Mbembe). OK, that was my fantasy more than once, for Ivan T. Sanderson's books, nonfiction, about his adventurous expeditions, thrilled me. Even though he was often only on the brink of a discovery, never completely fulfilled, he would keep exploring. Oh, that I could go on a jungle expedition! How I longed to discover a living dinosaur! But I had many unrealistic fantasies; this appeared to be just another daydream.

My passion for jungle exploration was replaced by my zeal for chess competition: tournament after tournament of U.S.C.F. rated events in Southern California in the late 1960's. But by 1971 the reality became undeniable: I lacked the mental talent to ever become a grandmaster; even master level appeared a little out of reach. I needed to be realistic, to be responsible and earn a living.

By 1978, I had accumulated a variety of work experiences: potatoe man at a McDonald's, custodian at a Methodist church, sprinkler-repair assitant on the grounds of California State University at Long Beach. I married a wonderful young lady from Chile, learning a little Spanish while teaching her a lot of English. I soon became a custodian at the university.

In the 1980's my wife and I began to raise our three children. My daydream as a teenager became a shadowy memory; for being a responsible provider for a family does not mix with being a live-dinosaur discoverer . . . not usually. But my cleaning assignment at the old University Theater allowed me to take my breaks at the nearby library (exploring libraries, for me, has been a life-long adventure). Some of the books I checked out would now be labeled "paranormal," although at that time, I would have found that label distasteful: The word might suggest that I myself was rather abnormal. That was when I could still pretend to be normal.

In 1997 I quit work at the university to start my own video production business. By early 2003 I was beginning to become established as a forensic videographer in Southern California, specializing in day-in-the-life and settlement documentaries for attorney firms. I also helped my wife with her childcare business. (I had given up professional wedding videography, although I was grateful for the experience it gave me: thinking on my feet while videotaping events.) My work became centered in videotaping accident victims and in interviewing their care providers while videotaping. I never dreamed how my skills from these experiences would soon be put to use.

Rediscovering Cryptozoology

By mid-2003, I began rediscovering cryptozoological reports, in particular accounts of apparent dinosaurs. Fascinating accounts! The first-hand account by Edward Brian McCleary appeared hard to dismiss, for four of his teenaged friends had died from an attack by a sea monster on March 24, 1962, off Pensacola, Florida.

But eyewitness accounts of apparent living pterosaurs especially fascinated me. I sent an email to a missionary in Venezuala, who confirmed a report of a deep-seated belief that natives had about a "giant bat" that had terrorized their people in the past. In the fall of 2003, I got a phone call from Paul Nation of Texas. He had been informed of my inquiries about expeditions in Papua New Guinea, for he was one of those who had searched for an animal that the natives of Umboi Island call "ropen."

Paul told me about their interviews with native eyewitnesses who described an animal that seemed to be a living pterosaur. I was astonished at the content of the videos Paul soon mailed me, for the eyewitness credibility was convincing: I recognized that the islanders were telling the truth about their experiences. How astonished would be the members of a jury should these witnesses testify in court!

What is a Ropen?

The ropen has been seen by many islanders of Papua New Guinea. Most sightings have been from a distance at night, for it glows brightly while flying, brighter than a thousand fireflies. I realized that the nasty reputation the creature has for robbing human graves gives us something in return: evidence that this is a creature unclassified or unacknowledged by Western science, for nothing in a textbook describes a bioluminescent flying creature that is large enough to carry away a human body. Fireflies are a world apart.

But the appearance of the ropen, its size and description---that came from only a few native eyewitnesses, including a boy named Gideon. During his videotaped interview, he was asked about the size of the creature he had seen flying over Lake Pung; he described the size in terms of a nearby house.

As an expert in the credibility of witnesses being videotaped, I was struck by the way the teenager responded to the interview questions. He was still afraid of what he had seen, still afraid even just to talk about the encounter. It soon became obvious to me that the boy could not have seen a fruit bat flying over a lake: Natives catch this common bat to eat; they do not run from it for fear of being captured and eaten.

Apparently the existence of the ropen had been hidden from the Western world by several factors, including the assumption that natives are talking about superstitions or describing the giant fruit bat called "flying fox."

Active Involvement

Before the end of 2003, I had edited much of the video footage, for Paul and I hoped that we could sell the resulting mini-documentary "Searching for Ropen" to help fund the upcoming expedition in 2004. Sales were disappointing but we kept up hope.

Two other Americans were planning to go to Papua New Guinea with Paul. They would take cameras and much equipment, determined to find at least one ropen.

By early 2004, I began to hope for something that appeared almost too good to imagine. The ideal team on Umboi Island would be made up of two teams, perhaps starting from different sides of the island and meeting later on one of the mountains to continue searching; but two equal teams could mean two-plus-two, and Paul Nation plus David Woetzel plus Garth Guessman equaled only three. In addition, if a critical need was quality video recording, who would be better qualified than a professional videographer? The possibility of videotaping a living pterosaur enfused my imagination. How thrilling!

Paul was willing for me to join the team, but a mid-2004 expedition to Papua New Guinea became unrealistic for him. It was just as well, for I later found that half a year's preparations was barely sufficient for me.

The First Disappointment

But within a few months Paul found that any expedition was out of reach for him in 2004. By that time, I had set my heart on searching for ropens on Umboi Island, but I found another setback. Woetzel had never met me and he was now leading the one expedition; their plans were set and I had no part in them.

Devastating! How close I had been to a wonderful opportunity of discovery! I pondered how I might assist the expedition team through keeping in touch with them during their expedition, for they had a satellite phone. Still, that volunteer desk job appeared to mock fate. How could this be? I was a professional camera operator enthused with a drive to explore Umboi Island and find what has terrified natives and defied modern scientific assumptions. I knew that I had the skills to learn the Tok Pisin language and communicate with the natives. And by this time I was almost sure that the ropen was a living pterosaur.

A Solitary Solution

It was always staring back at me from the mirror, although it appeared at first unthinkable: the solution of going on my own expedition, alone. It appeared, at first, too impractical. I gradually leaked out the idea to Paul Nation, during our email correspondance; he saw nothing insurmountable. I saw unending potential problems, but nothing impossible to solve, for my ignorance was balanced by Paul's knowledge. And my experiences and personality now bolstered my confidence.

For about half a year, Paul sent me detailed instructions while I gathered supplies, filled my mind with facts about Papua New Guinea, and exercised my body. I learned as much of the Tok Pisin language as I could. As I learned more about the reports of eyewitnesses of the ropen, one danger (so I then thought) remained: What if natives accounts were the result of some anomaly related to native thinking? I now had to consider the previously unthinkable: the possibility that previous expeditions had been in vain, caused by some terrible, not-yet-discernable mistake.

Doubt Flees

Fortunately, three non-natives came to my rescue. Duane Hodgkinson, a World War II veteran, told us of his sighting of a "pterodactyl" near Finschhafen (in what was then called "New Guinea") in 1944. I interviewed him by phone (he now lives in Montana) and email and mailed him a questionnaire. His credibility convinced me that we had been correct in believing the natives. He and his army buddy had seen the creature take off into the air on the far side of a clearing.

I also communicated with an Australian couple who saw a giant creature that had flown over Perth, Australia, in 1997. Their answers to my questions convinced me that they also were telling the truth. Like Hodgkinson, they were sure that a giant flying creature had a very long tail.

Giant flying creatures described like Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs---they were seen by Americans and Australians just as well as by natives of Papua New Guinea. With different cultures of eyewitnesses who reported the same creatures, the case for living pterosaurs appeared irrefutable, like a clear chess combination: unstoppable. I was convinced that the ropen was a living pterosaur.

Final Preparations and the Imminent Danger

In my final preparations for the September, 2004, expedition, I learned how dangerous it can be to search for this kind of cryptid in Papua New Guinea. It's not so much the malaria that Paul Nation caught during one of his expeditions; I was determined to take malaria-prevention pills regularly and to use insect repellent. It was not the reports of a few natives who had been killed by large flying creatures in Papua New Guinea; I was determined to avoid getting too close to a ropen. It was not the alarming crime rate in the city of Lae; the hotel (nice but too expensive) is surrounded by a tall fence with barbed wire. For me, it was the imminent danger: finding a way to explain everything to my wife.

Fortunately my wife is a faithful Christian, so I was able to be at peace and leave my family for one month: She understands "Thou shalt not kill." Nevertheless, at a time like this your whole life can flash before your eyes.

My 2004 Expedition

Somehow I survived the most dangerous part of the adventure and prepared to fly to Papua New Guinea. I knew that it could take one week to reach Umboi Island; I would leave California on a Sunday and arrive at Lab Lab, Siasi (Umboi) on the following Sunday. My adventures were many and varied; for details see Whitcomb's ropen expedition.

In brief, I arrived on Umboi with an interpreter, Luke, whom I had found on the mainland. I was still assuming that at least 10-20 ropens live on the island. I also assumed that I would be able to spend adequate time on a mountain and be able to videotape at least one of the creatures. But my assumptions came to resemble those of General Lee's at Gettysburg: Almost everything appeared to go wrong.

At first, our excursion into the jungle was delayed because of a funeral procession that was soon expected; the funeral itself was delayed. When we did leave Gomlongon Village, to head for Lake Pung, we entered the forest before getting permission from village leaders in Tarawe, the recognized land owners; two days later we had to leave, with angry Tarawe villagers refusing us permission to remain in that area and with a rumor that armed bandits were bragging about coming up to get us. Eventually we had a sighting of a ropen from a distance: My interpreter and a local leader saw it briefly one night . . . one hour after I had retired to sleep. After two weeks, I ran out of money and time (the same thing) and had to leave Umboi Island. After interviewing many eyewitnesses, I concluded that only one large ropen lives in the interior of Umboi Island.

I was able to interview many eyewitnesses of the ropen, expecially those who had seen the glow as it flew at night. But three of the eyewitnesses I interviewed had seen the giant creature in daylight. These were three of seven boys (now young men) who had been terrified at the sight of a ropen flying over Lake Pung around 1994; their testimonies and deportment harmonized in a way strongly suggesting that they were telling me the truth.

One man, Mesa Augustin, was still scared to talk about the experience, ten years later; it was obvious that a daylight encounter with a giant ropen can leave a lasting impression on a human. Another man, Gideon, was the same witness I had seen in Paul Nation's video. But now he appeared to be at ease while I questioned him about the ropen. There had been a misunderstanding in the earlier videotaped interview, for Gideon made it clear to me that he had seen only one ropen; I later realized that when the boy had, in the earlier interview, responded to a question that included "ten to twenty," his positive reply was probably in terms of size, not number of creatures (he was sure the tail was seven meters long). My use of Tok Pisin, limited though it was, did help.

I left Papua New Guinea and returned to the United States, having failed to see a living pterosaur. But the reality of the ropen, the truth of its existence, had become deeply impressed on my consciousness. The terror in the face of Mesa Augustin (as he told me about what he had seen in daylight), the sincerity in the face David of Opai (as he told me about the bright flash of light over his head one night), and the credibility of many other eyewitnesses whom I had interviewed---all combined to prove to me that this usually-nocturnal flying creature is not confined to stories: It flies around Umboi Island, from mountain to mountain and to-and-from the reefs surrounding Umboi. (And I was able to videotape the islanders while interviewing them.)

Personal Success

My dream of discovering an amazing creature appeared, at first, to have evaporated, for I took home no video footage of any living pterosaur. The ropen remained a cryptid, living deeply entrenched in the memories of eyewitnesses. But their convictions emerged from their souls, becaming part of my own experience; through them I've seen the ropen.

Since returning home, in October of 2004, I have tried to encourage others to explore Papua New Guinea; I have also tried to inspire those who choose to learn by reading. I have since written countless web pages on the ropen and other similar creatures seen around the world; from 2005 to 2009 I wrote two books on living pterosaurs. I have been interviewed on a few radio talk shows. Two television production companies interviewed me before they undertook their own expeditions in Papua New Guinea, resulting in two entertaining (and sometimes enlightening) episodes. Excerpts from my videotaped interviews of eyewitnesses on Umboi I put onto Youtube. I continue to help my wife with her childcare business, with a new source of material for telling the children dragon stories.

It appears that my dream of becoming like Ivan T. Sanderson, continuously exploring jungles, will remain unfulfilled; the adventure of writing about jungle expeditions, however, I share with him, for I continue to write about those who are still exploring and searching for living pterosaurs. I now dream that something that I have written might inspire someone to stay awake when the interpreter sees a ropen, videotape the clear image of a living pterosaur, and carry this nocturnal creature into the daylight of official discovery.

Whatever part you may play, let me know, please, how I might help you.

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Live Pterosaurs in America

To help support this research into living pterosaurs, please consider purchasing the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America (Book on cryptozoology), which gives many details about the many eyewitness sightings reported in North America for many years.

We have appreciated the donations which helped with two of the expeditions in Papua New Guinea. At this time, it seems that the best way to help is through many purchases of Live Pterosaurs in America, which allows for continued research and for spreading the word.

See also:

New Mokele-mbembe Expedition

Objection to Live Pterosaurs