I just received an eyewitness sighting report from somebody in Papua New Guinea. Reports of nocturnal glowing creatures flying near the coast of Manus Island are hardly new; we assume that they are related to the ropen of Umboi Island. Here is part of the recent account:

“I was born and brought up in Manus Island . . . there are lights swooping over fish shoals . . . Two years ago  we took a boat out to investigate and could see the lights soaring over us and heard flapping of wings though we never could make out the actual animal, we observed they did dive into the sea and then erupt out of it with a great flapping sound.”

I am waiting for this eyewitness to answer detailed questions, such as “Did they flash for a few seconds or were they always on?”

At least one reader of my first book, Searching for Ropens, misunderstood my comment about the idea that ancient pterosaurs, sometimes, get caught in a time hole and appear briefly in our modern world. I never believed in anything like that;  it smells of superstition.

I mentioned that idea in my book to show how dogmatically some persons hold onto the idea that pterosaurs lived only many millions of years ago, even imagining time-traveling pterosaurs (to keep ancient extinctions alive.) How much more reasonable to simply believe in modern living animals!

A true-life adventure in cryptozoology–that focus, in the third edition of the non-fiction book Searching for Ropens, will replace the creationist emphasis in previous editions. (A new book will cover religious and philosophical perspectives regarding living pterosaurs.) Traditional book publishing requires clear genre positioning, and the first two editions of SFR (published-on-demand) were mixed, emphasizing both adventure and religion.

The religious perspectives of the explorers will not be hidden in the new edition, for their searches for living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea were inspired by their beliefs. The content of the revision, however, will not be used as a preaching podium to convince readers to become creationists.

The new clarity of genre should increase sales of the book greatly, bringing the news of living-pterosaur investigations to much more of the general public. The publisher should be determined later in 2010.