Paul Nation | Live Pterosaur

July 20, 2013December 27, 2013

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”).

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 . . .

###

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.

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.

April 27, 2010April 29, 2010

Cliff Paiva ropen light report, part one

Cliff Paiva, a missile defense physicist, examined the video footage Paul Nation recorded in the late-2006 expedition on the mainland of Papua New Guinea. Paiva conducted his study from December, 2006, until about late February, 2007, and eventually came to a number of conclusions regarding the two lights in the video.

See Pterosaur Sightings in Papua New Guinea, “blur function diameter”

Rather than quote many technical details, here are some conclusions from part of the page-three ropens.com “report” site:

The above processed images (of the two glowing forms videotaped in the remote interior of Papua New Guinea) show that there are indeed two sources of light. Each is about one meter in diameter. . . . They are not fires because the center of the light is less intense (in both lights): very unlike a camp fire. Neither light is moving, so they are not meteors or airplane lights. The lights are not artificial mistakes inside the camera (artifacts): They are real. After sophisticated image-processing and analysis, the video does not appear to be anything produced by a hoax.

The indava lights (probably made by creatures similar to the ropen of Umboi) videotaped by Paul Nation were probably make by the same species as those responsible for the lights seen by Evelyn Cheesman decades earlier. See Ropen Lights Seen By a Biologist.

February 20, 2010January 10, 2017

Indava and ropen of Papua New Guinea

By the living-pterosaur author and expert Jonathan D. Whitcomb

Since Paul Nation’s 2006 video recording of two lights on a ridge deep in the mainland of Papua New Guinea, cryptozoologists have a new name for the ropen: “indava.” It’s not that everything about the glowing indava is identical to ropen lights; indeed, the indava seems to glow for many more seconds than the apparently giant ropen that flies between mountains on Umboi Island. But both creatures have been described, by local natives, as giant flying creatures.

Evelyn Cheesman appeared to have no thought about pterosaurs when she observed the strange glowing objects that flew near the top of a mountain ridge. The British entomologist would surely have been interested in the explanation of “large flying animal” if the local villagers had said anything; but they were reluctant to talk about the lights. Nevertheless, Cheeman wrote about the mystery in her book, The Two Roads of Papua (published in 1935). Her observations were a few mountains to the north of Paul Nation’s later observations. She probably never dreamed that those flying lights were the bioluminescence of large flying creatures that were not classified in Western science.

Since the Cheesman lights were so close to the area where native village call flying lights indava, it’s quite likely that they are of the same species of flying creature. The ropen of Umboi Island, however, may be a related species or the same species but a pterosaur that has a different habit in the use of its intrinsic bioluminescent capacity.

By the way, Paul Nation never saw the form or features of the flying lights he videotaped late in 2006 on the mainland of Papua New Guinea. His video footage, however, was later analyzed by the missile defense physicist Clifford Paiva, and found to be quite unusual. The lights were not a paste-on hoax. Neither were they from common sources:

Not meteors
Not camp fires
Not flash lights
Not car headlights
Not airplane lights

One of the images from Paiva’s analysis of the indava-lights video footage

The British biologist and explorer Evelyn Cheesman

Other Books on Modern Living Pterosaurs

You probably won’t find the phrase “living pterosaur” in Cheesman’s book The Two Roads of Papua; you’re more likely to find a ropen in the middle of the day, taking a sun bath in your backyard. But other nonfiction books do mention modern pterosaurs, and the following are just a sample:

Searching for Ropens and Finding God – with much about the expeditions on Umboi Island
Big Bird – mostly about strange flying creatures in Texas
Bird From Hell – living pterosaurs in one area of British Columbia, Canada
Live Pterosaurs in America – sightings in many states of the USA

###