A Glowing Ropen in New Mexico

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Flying in the face of the Wikipedia deletion of “ropen” last month, an apparent bioluminescent pterosaur flew into the eyepiece view of the telescope of Michael Slack of southeastern New Mexico. Apparently, self-appointed Wikipedia editors and judges failed to exterminate the ropen itself. It was flying along quite well, and glowing, on the night of September 1, 2014, just days after the “ropen” page on Wikipedia was removed, supposedly because of a lack of input from supporters of traditional points of view. That has not deterred actual ropens.

The moon had already gone behind the trees, by the middle of that night a week ago Monday, so Mr. Slack and his buddy searched the sky for the Andromeda Nebula. This required using a low-magnification eyepiece, fortunately, to locate that galaxy, allowing the amateur astronomer to see the flying creature sweep through the field of view.

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Sep 1st, 2014, ropen sighting area

Area of the sky where the creature was seen in New Mexico

I asked the eyewitness, “Did you notice a tail?” He replied:

I thought I noticed “something” trailing not far behind this ‘thing’ although my friend says he did not notice anything. Was there something that attached the trailing ‘thing’ to the main body? No. In my estimation there was about 10′ [feet] between the main body and the little something that trailed it. So to say that I noticed a tail…no sir I can not, in so far as I did not see anything that connected the little glowing “bit” that trailed and followed the main body.

That seems to me to have been a sighting of a bioluminescent glowing ropen, with the end of the tail glowing but the main length of the tail not visible in the dark of night. When there is no glow at all, people often do not see, at night, any tail.

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eyepiece view of ropen in New Mexico in Sep-2014

Sketch by eyewitness Michael Slack: the view through the telescope

Others have reported sightings of huge pterosaurs in New Mexico. From the nonfiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition), we read:

“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. We both looked up to see what did that and saw 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 in a westward direction. . . .”

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El Ropen de Papúa Nueva Guinea

En 2004, viajé de los Estados Unidos a Papúa Nueva Guinea. Encontré a un intérprete en la ciudad de Lae. Mí y mi intérprete viajó, por buque, a la Isla de Umboi. Más tarde, encontramos muchos nativos que habían visto el ropen.

Credibility of ropen eyewitnesses

I interviewed him  in front of the villagers who knew him. After I asked  him the length of the tail of the ropen, he looked away  as if to imagine the tail on the ground. He looked back  and forth at the ground for a few moments and then  he looked back at me and answered emphatically,  “sefan meetuh” (seven meters). He was surely doing  this to get a feel for both what the tail would have  looked like if it were stretched out on the ground,  and to then to estimate the length.

Ropen seen during World War II

Duane Hodgkinson was interviewed, in 2005, near Livingston, Montana. He described the huge “pterodactyl” that he saw fly up from a jungle clearing in New Guinea, in clear daylight. He and his army buddy watched it fly off above the trees, but it soon returned, flying above that clearing but in the opposite direction.

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