Ropen of Papua New Guinea
A modern
pterosaur!? How could it be? Extraordinary but true, huge flying creatures, with no feathers yet unlike any bat, live among
us, although they mostly fly at night. In Papua New Guinea, on Umboi Island, the giant long-tailed pterosaur is called "
ropen," although
it has other names elsewhere.
When Carl Baugh, director of the Creation Evidence Museum (in Glen Rose, Texas), visited a remote
island in Papua New Guinea, in 1994, he could hardly have imagined what the next 14 years would bring. He had learned, from
a World War II veteran (
Duane Hodgkinson) about a sighting of a "pterodactyl" near Finschhafen. Baugh interviewed a few natives on
Umboi Island, a little north of Finschhafen, and was impressed by accounts of a large nocturnal glowing cryptid that flies over
their island--obviously no
bat. He returned two years later, but found limited direct evidence. Expeditions by several other
American
Creationists followed: in 2002, 2004 (two), 2006, and 2007. The
one led by Jonathan Whitcomb was the only one with a
forensic videographer.
A "modern pterosaur" is how these Americans classify the ropen, but by the end of 2008 the mysterious
creature was still not classified by science, living within the shadows of
cryptozoology. But an expedition, late in 2006, by Paul
Nation, resulted in video footage of the
bioluminescence, in fact two strange slowly-pulsating lights, on top of a ridge deep in the
mountainous interior of the mainland of Papua New Guinea. Analysis of the video showed the lights to be non-fire, non-lantern, non-car-headlights,
non-meteor: truly strange lights that explorers maintain are created by a
modern pterosaur ("
pterodactyl").
The second edition
of the nonfiction cryptozoology book "Live Pterosaurs in America" should be in print by around late November, 2010. Extraordinary
as
it seems, these giant flying creatures are also seen in North America.
Cryptozoologist Garth Guessman (left) interviewed the eyewitness Duane Hodgkinson (right) in Montana in 2005.