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.