In June of 2012, I was interviewed by phone, by Richard Syrett of the Canadian “Conspiracy Show.” That podcast production is not to be confused with the Canadian television show by that same name, for which I was interviewed and videotaped a few weeks earlier. The following is a small part of the podcast.
Richard Syrett:
Listen, we have an interesting program for you tonight, coming up in the second hour, [death of the King of Pop] . . . Now we’re going to talk about something entirely different, something in the sky, something that has been . . . recently seen in Southern California: could be, some are saying, a living pterosaur. That’s right, a pterosaur. Those are dinosaurs, folks, or from the dinosaur family, I guess, and they’re supposed to have been extinct some sixty million years, however my next guest is a field researcher, author of the book Searching for Ropens, and he has traveled to places as far flung as Papua New Guinea in an attempt to verify sightings of this creature by the local indigenous people in New Guinea.
This nocturnal winged creature goes by several names, including the “ropen.” It’s a flying cryptid allegedly . . . in this vicinity . . . and [elsewhere] in the southwest Pacific. Perhaps we’ll find out.
And we’re happy to have Jonathan Whitcomb, here on the Conspiracy Show, AM 740. Jonathan, how are you tonight?
Jonathan Whitcomb:
Oh, great, Richard. Thank you very much for having me on.
Syrett:
And it was great meeting you down in . . . Long Beach, California, several months ago. [a few weeks previous]
Whitcomb:
Yea, that was a delight. Thank you very much.
Syrett:
Now, first of all, let’s identify what we’re talking about here . . . A pterosaur. Would that include pterodactyls?
Whitcomb:
Most people call it “pterodactyl,” in Western countries like United States, Canada. They say “pterodactyl.” What they actually mean is what the scientists call a “pterosaur.” Some people call it a “flying dinosaur” . . . associated with dinosaurs; but it’s basically a usually large type of a flying creature that are not bats.
Syrett:
So in other words, a pterodactyl would be one type of pterosaur?
Whitcomb:
Well . . . I don’t get into technical details . . . the scientists use the word totally differently . . . [when] you hear somebody on the street say “pterodactyl,” I just take it they mean a pterosaur . . . They [scientists] . . . mean a specific species of pterosaur, but that’s not the common usage.
Syrett:
OK, now what do they look like? What do we know about them from the fossil record? . . .
Whitcomb:
We first had fossils that were discovered in Western science . . . in 1780’s . . . about the time that George Washington became president. . . . Since then, scientists have continuously discovered new fossils . . . delicate kind of bones, so a lot of times they’re just crushed . . . difficult to decipher things . . . originally, in the late 1700’s, they were thought to be like aquatic, oceanic, creatures that used their flippers for swimming, and then, about 1801 or so, the scientists [began thinking] . . . these are more likely to be flying creatures. So that’s what we have: a lot of fossils now.
Syrett:
What type of wingspan are we talking about? I’m guessing there would be a range depending on the specific species.
Whitcomb:
There’s a huge range . . . from very few feet to . . . over thirty feet . . . We have reports from around the world that vary tremendously . . . The variety is so great that I’ve used that as evidence that there’s no hoax, in general, involved . . .
I’ll give you an example just from recently . . . a sighting in California . . . one wingspan estimated at five and a half feet, . . . observed in the day time at close range, so that’s a fair estimate. . . .
Syrett:
Now a five foot wingspan wouldn’t be that unusual. I would think something like the California Condor would have a wingspan perhaps in that range, but when you talk about wingspans of, you know, twenty feet, or thereabouts, I mean we are talking about obviously something . . . there’s no mistaking that. That’s not a condor; that’s not a pelican, not a stork . . .
Whitcomb:
When you have a sighting that’s way over twenty feet, it’s obviously not a Flying Fox fruit bat, not a bird like an eagle. And we do have sightings [with] very high credibility . . .
For example, Duane Hodgkinson, in 1944, in Papua New Guinea, which then was called “New Guinea.” . . . Finschhafen on the mainland, and that was estimated wingspan like that of a Piper Tri-Pacer airplane, which is about twenty-nine feet. That’s definitely not a bird.
Syrett:
When we come back, we’ll get into the Hodgkinson sighting, back in 1944 in New Guinea, and we’ll discuss exactly what he says he saw . . . .
To be continued – Part Two of Interview
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Whitcomb on Radio Talk Show in Australia
On September 25th [2012], I was interviewed, by telephone, by Aaron Wright of Mysterious Universe, in Australia.
[Quoting from the book Searching for Ropens] One night, in April of 1993, near the northwest coast of Umboi Island [Papua New Guinea], after a large funeral procession arrived at the burial location, a creature with a glowing red tail came from the sea . . .