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New Indava Expedition Planned

Late in 2006, Paul Nation was interviewed in his home by Jonathan Whitcomb, just days after Paul completed his expedition in Papua New Guinea

A new expedition is awaiting funding, with a possible commencement-date in October, 2013. Paul Nation is planning his fifth expedition in Papua New Guinea, and it will be his third one in the deep interior of the mainland; but he needs the funds, so donations are very welcome (use link above on “new expedition”).

Late in 2006, Paul Nation was interviewed in his home by Jonathan Whitcomb, just days after Paul completed his expedition in Papua New Guinea

Paul Nation was interviewed at his home, by Jonathan Whitcomb, soon after Paul’s 2006 indava expedition in which he videotaped two indava lights

The following are excerpts from the second edition of Searching for Ropens:

Although Paul had been absent from Papua New Guinea since 2002, his advice had supported both 2004 expeditions, and the first edition of my book rekindled his desire to find a ropen. He learned that Jacob Kepas had seen similar creatures on the mainland, on Easter Sunday of 2005, as the creatures flew toward the remote village of Tawa. In October, Paul set out for what became the most productive living-pterosaur search in modern history, observing more ropen-lights than all previous explorers put together and videotaping two of the lights . . .

I learned of Paul’s successes through his November 18th email: “After several days of rain Saturday cleared off and we were able to hike higher up the mountain to the ‘high garden site.’ There the national [pastor] from Bianu Village had his garden huts and we were able to set up an observation post and look into two valleys for a long distance.” . . .

. . . Jacob Kepas was in radio contact with Joseph one day, as a few men climbed up to where they could see a giant indava. Jacob recounted Joseph’s experience: “When they finished using the [binoculars] and the video camera, Joseph asked the guide there, and said, ‘What is this?’ and he said, ‘[It] normally [flies] in and out of the cave.’ When they finished getting the of the cave, they . . . . called me [Jacob] on the radio and said they want me to go up and get the video camera again. . . . We walk up the mountain. . . . meet them . . . I [took the] video camera from Joseph, and I started to get a . . . of the cave . . . I saw something: I saw the creature sleep across, but it’s not moving . . . just go slow, so I don’t know; maybe that’s the real creature or just the other thing; I don’t know, but we have to keep watching.”

Later Jacob added, “When I used my binoculars, I saw . . . it had something like a wing [wings] on both sides . . . like [hiding] its head under his wing . . . and a . . . tail . . . but we cannot see really clear because it’s . . . [many] meters away; we struggled to see it clear, but it’s really high [sharp angle looking up]”

Later, Paul Nation told me that Joseph had climbed up higher and got a better view of the indava, but Jacob was too far below, with too steep an angle for good observation. Sadly, none of the video shots captured any image of the creature . . .

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Pterosaur Sightings in USA

Encounters with “pterodactyls,” or flying creatures like pterosaurs, in North Carolina, California, Washington state, Arkansas, Ohio, and other states in the U.S.A.

Cheesman Lights and Marfa Lights

How are strange flying lights seen in New Guinea, in the 1930′s, related to strange flying lights seen recently near Marfa, Texas? Many of the CE-III Marfa Lights . . . fly horizontally at low altitude; the lights observed by the British biologist Evelyn Cheesman, deep in the interior of the mainland of what is now Papua New Guinea, were seen in a horizontal line.

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Front cover of the second edition of the nonfiction cryptozoology book "Searching for Ropens" by Jonathan Whitcomb

Searching for Ropens, second edition, by Whitcomb

On July 20, 2013, this nonfiction cryptozoology book was ranked #26 for the following kinds of books on Amazon:

Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Dinosaurs

The first chapter of the second edition, opening paragraph:

It looked like a dead pterodactyl: not fossil bones but with skin, like it had died recently. Could these creatures, non-extinct, still fly? Although I never verified the authenticity of the photograph in the soon-forgotten library book, this idea—living pterodactyls—would be awakened four decades later, plunging me into the most dramatic adventure of my life: exploring a remote tropical island, searching for giant living pterosaurs.

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Jacob Kepas – Twice a Pterosaur Eyewitness

Jacob Kepas, a Baptist minister and a native of Papua New Guinea, may be the most experienced ropen seeker in his country. But when he was a boy, the glowing creature that he saw fly over his village was not known by his people as “ropen” but as “seklobali.” It would not be the only time in his life that he would see a giant nocturnal flying creature in Papua New Guinea: a pterosaur candidate.

Late in 2006, the American Baptist missionary James Blume, an airplane pilot, took Kepas and American Paul Nation deep into the mountainous interior of the mainland. There, near the village of Tawa, Blume left the two explorers as he flew back. Kepas and Nation talked with the villagers and learned that the local name for the large glowing creature of the night was “indava.”

I have often written about the two indava lights Paul Nation videotaped near the top of a ridge above Tawa Village. Not so often have I written about the daylight sighting of an indava that Jacob Kepas and a local villager observed. It helps verify what local villagers say about the creature.

Paul Nation did not accompany the other two men on this particular daylight hike, but he loaned them his camcorder to. Unfortunately Kepas and the local guide could not get close enough to the sleeping creature that they observed. It appeared to be sleeping on a cliff opposite to the hill that they had climbed. They tried to get a video recording of it but failed, perhaps because of their lack of experience with the camcorder; but it was also just too far away. They reported to Nation that the creature was very large.

During this 2006 expedition, Nation learned from one local villager of another daylight sighting. The man had seen an indava near a river and described the creature in terms of the size of an airplane (Tawa Village is near a small air strip). Nation also learned that indavas sometimes carried away village pigs or children, at some time in the past, but they no longer do so, for the villagers have learned to make noise to scare away the creatures.

Investigators now believe that both the lights videotaped by Nation and the creature observed by Kepas were modern living pterosaurs.

 

Baptist minister Jacob Kepas being interviewed in Lae, Papua New Guinea

The American cryptozoologist Garth Guessman (lower-left) interviews native Jacob Kepas, with interpretation help from Mary Blume (wife of Jim Blume). This interview was in 2004, just before the Woetzel-Guessman-Kepas expedition on Umboi Island. Kepas tells of his sighting when he was a boy.

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Bioluminescence of Pterosaurs

How do we know that modern pterosaurs, at least some of them, are bioluminescent? Some eyewitnesses see glowing “pterodactyls” or a large or giant flying object that shines where large or giant pterosaurs have been seen to fly. No biology textbook explains anything about pterosaur bioluminescence, at least not yet; but my associates and I believe the day will come when biology textbooks will include that subject. Future discoveries may reveal something about the biological chemistry involved, for it may differ from the bioluminescent of other organisms such as fireflies.

Let’s look at some resources on bioluminescent pterosaurs.

British Biologist Observes Strange Lights

Evelyn Cheesman, a British entomologist, long ago observed strange flying lights deep in the mainland of what is now the nation of Papua New Guinea; just south of that location, in 2006, Paul Nation, of Texas, observed similar lights (called by the local natives “indava”). When native eyewitnesses observe the indavas in daylight, they see large winged-creatures; one native described the size in terms of an airplane . . .

Ropen Bioluminescence

On Umboi Island (Morobe Province), the ropen has a 5-6-second bioluminescent glow that the natives see when the creature is about one hundred meters above the ground (although villagers sometimes see it over a reef).

Marfa Lights Explained

In various parts of the United States, strange flying lights have been observed. Also in various states, apparent living pterosaurs have been observed to fly overhead, very much nonextinct. Less well known, and rarely referred to by the major media (if at all), on occasion, an eyewitness will report a flying pterosaur that glows.

Marfa Lights and Glowing Pterosaurs

This introduces the findings of James Bunnell, regarding the earth’s magnetosphere and solar halos: There is no relationship between years of recordings of major solar eruptions and sightings of valid Marfa Lights.

Bunnell recognized that problem but still hoped that the elongated magnetosphere on the night side might still have some relationship to the only-nocturnal ML’s. We need to remember that Mr. Bunnell is a rocket scientist (literally); he is not a biologist. In addition, he probably has had little or no exposure to eyewitness reports of glowing pterosaurs living in North America and in other parts of the world . . .

Marfa Lights and Min Mins

Much of this may seem a off topic, glowing barn owls as “ghost lights,” but it makes clear the distinction between the flights of bioluminescent owls and ropen-like flying lights.

The dance patterns of Marfa Lights resemble no flock of hunting barn owls. No, our old friend Tyto Alba cannot compete here and it dare not try. But it has illuminated part of the answer to the puzzle. The predators of Southern Texas show greater intelligence than most birds and some of them may be larger than any owl. This cryptid may be related to the ropen of Papua New Guinea (another nocturnal glowing flyer). If so, it will make a story more extraordinary than any headless ghost. Eyewitnesses describe the ropen like a giant long-tailed pterosaur.

Video Footage of 2006 Indava Lights

Late in 2006, Paul Nation, of Texas, was exploring deep in the mainland of Papua New Guinea, around Tawa Village, searching for the indava, a nocturnal flying creature described in ways suggesting it was like the ropen. He had several sightings and videotaped two of the glowing objects before they flew away from the top of a nearby mountain ridge.

After Paul Nation’s return to the United States, I interviewed him in his home in Granbury, Texas. He gave me a digital copy of the video of the two indava lights, which I later sent to Cliff Paiva, a missile defense physicist. Paiva analyzed the video and found those lights to be extraordinary: not from meteors, airplane lights, camp fires, car headlights, etc. This cleared the way for bioluminescence as a plausible cause for those two lights.

A missile defense physicist analyzed the 2006 video footage of indava lights

Cliff Paiva’s ropen-light report, part three

Combustion and Ionization elimination by PaivaAbsence of Fire, Meteor, and Hoax

Image Processing of Paul Nation Video” (continued)

This part of the analysis showed that neither fire nor meteor is likely. Cliff Paiva reported:

Plate 24 A shows in 2D neither combustion plumes (smoke) nor ionized wake trails from meteor, atmospheric penetration. Confirmation is further elaborated in the 3D representation of Plate 24 A in Plate 24 B. Some background emission is present in Plate 24 B’s bottom pixel area. This frame has been extracted at 10 seconds.  Conclusion: Neither fire nor vapor trails are present in the Paul Nation video.

The absence in these plates of pixel intensity blur does not insure the very low spatial frequency presence of combustion plumes or meteor ionization trails, however the frames do indicate a high probability of such absence.  Also apparent in Plate 24 B is the transient intensity increase at the base of the primary intensity spike. In this regard, Plate 28 B further establishes that an addition to the original frame has not taken place.  In effect no image-insertion “pasting” has occurred, and therefore the Paul Nation video is not a result of fabrication.

In addition, this ropen.com page (right-column explanation) includes:

Mr. Paiva also found that Plate 24-B shows that no image-pasting hoax created the two lights. In other words, Paul Nation videotaped these two lights; they were not created separately and then inserted onto the background.

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First edition - Nonfiction book "Live Pterosaurs in America" by Whitcomb

Did you know that living pterosaurs have been reported in North America, even in the United States? Read the many eyewitness sighting reports  by purchasing your own copy of this amazing nonfiction book: on Amazon or from the publisher—Live Pterosaurs in America.