radio | Live Pterosaur

January 24, 2013December 20, 2014

Part two of Radio Podcast Interview

A few months after his expedition in Papua New Guinea, Garth Guessman interviewed eyewitness Duane Hodgkinson near Livingston, Montana

See Part One of Whitcomb-Syrett radio interview. This continues quoting from the interview I had last year, over the phone, with Richard Syrett.

Richard Syrett:

Jonathan Whitcomb has been to Papua New Guinea and talked to the aboriginals there, and others who claimed to have seen what they call (it goes by a number of names) . . . the “ropen,” a flying cryptid which bears a striking resemblance to a creature we’ve all told become extinct some sixty million years ago: pterosaurs. And, as he says, there’s been a recent sighting in Southern California, and we’ll get some more details on that, although I understand details are a little scarce at this time, but we will discuss that.

Jonathan, back to Papua New Guinea and Duane Hodgkinson, back in 1944: Who was he and what did he see?

Jonathan Whitcomb:

He was a farm boy in his teenage years in Ohio, and he was in the . . . World War II in 1944, he was in Finschhafen area. (At that time, the Japanese had already moved on . . .) And he [Hodgkinson] and his army buddy, they decided go visit a village . . . [west of Finschhafen]

They were in a jungle clearing, in the middle of the day, clear weather, no obstruction to what they saw, and when they were in this jungle clearing, which was about 100 feet across (in diameter) . . . a wild pig ran through there, and it startled them for a moment, until they realized it was just a pig.

And then what happened was astonishing, because something began flying up out of the clearing . . . running at first, and they were astonished because at first they thought it was a bird or something and they realized it was much too big, and as it got airborne, it flew right over the clearing. And they were astonished and thinking it was gone.

And then it came back over the clearing, the opposite direction, . . . it had a head crest . . . like a pterosaur, and a very long tail. Hodgkinson estimated the tail at ten to fifteen feet at least . . . in length.

Syrett:

And the wingspan?

Whitcomb:

About twenty-nine feet . . . and the two men and the animal were in the same clearing, which was 100 feet across, so there’s no reasonable way that they could have misunderstood the size of it. And they weren’t expecting anything like that; they thought it was, at first, just a bird, but it was just far too big.

Syrett:

And did this creature have feathers?

Whitcomb:

. . . He didn’t notice any. Now this is an interesting point: He said he saw no feathers, but he was not adamant saying there couldn’t possibly be any feather on the whole creature, because he was concentrating on the head.

But basically we know from that the type of head it was; he got a very clear view of the head, and we believe it was a giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur.

Syrett:

And I guess the obvious question the skeptic would ask is, “Why should we believe Duane Hodgkinson? How do we know he’s not just pulling our collective leg?”

Whitcomb:

Yea, there are a number of reasons for that. He’s a flight instructor for many years now; he has many thousands . . . of hours of flight time, and he teaches people how to fly. He wouldn’t be conducting a hoax for sixty years, with the possibility that people could just mistrust him and not become clients.

There’s other reasons too. He’s not alone . . . in 1971 there’s Brian Hennessy, an Australian; he saw a similar creature, quite similar, because I gave him a test similar to Hodgkinson’s in identifying sketches and comparing lengths of the head crest, and so on. He saw the same species, I believe, [as Hodgkinson] in New Guinea, but on an island to the east—Bougainville Island— . . . I believe is the same species.

Syrett:

We should point out, Jonathan, that . . . your vocation is an independent forensic videographer for attorney firms.

Whitcomb:

I’ve been doing that for many years except for recent years when I’ve been much too busy writing and investigating these creatures.

To be continued

Garth Guessman (left) interviewed the eyewitness Duane Hodgkinson (right) in 2005, near Livingston, Montana — See Youtube video Pterodactyl Eyewitness

Podcast-Radio Interview: Whitcomb & Syrett (Part One)

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 . . .

Listen to the interview between Jonathan Whitcomb and Richard Syrett

Richard speaks with cryptozoologist, Jonathan Whitcomb, who specializes in living-pterosaur investigations. He has traveled to Papua New Guinea in an attempt to verify sightings of this creature by the local indigenous people. . . .

January 22, 2013December 20, 2014

Podcast-Radio Interview: Whitcomb & Syrett, part one

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

Whitcomb on Radio Talk Show in Australia

On September 25th [2012], I was interviewed, by telephone, by Aaron Wright of Mysterious Universe, in Australia.

Flying Dinosaur

[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 . . .

October 3, 2012December 20, 2014

Whitcomb on Radio Talk Show in Australia

On September 25th, I was interviewed, by telephone, by Aaron Wright of Mysterious Universe, in Australia. It was not a live radio show but was audio-edited and broadcast (or published) on a podcast around September 28th.

The interview lasted about an hour, as I remember, but because of audio problems only a fraction of it was used in the podcast (online radio broadcast). Here is part of the beginning:

Aaron: Joining me today is Jonathan David Whitcomb, author of Live Pterosaurs in America and a new book which has just come out: Live Pterosaurs in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Thanks for joining us, Jonathan; how are you today?

Jonathan: Oh, great! Thanks very much for inviting me.

Aaron: Oh, you’re very welcome. So let’s just talk about ropens . . . and pterosaurs. What are these creatures? I thought they were extinct.

Jonathan: Most species of pterosaurs have become extinct at some time in the past . . . What we’re trying to portray to the world is that we’ve discovered a large number of eyewitnesses, from different parts of the world, who testify of something that couldn’t be anything other than one or more species of living pterosaur.

I’ll give you an example. In Papua New Guinea, some of the villagers, the language that they speak, they have a word called “ropen,” and that designates a large nocturnal flying creature. And we know from eyewitnesses that it has a long tail, and it has a bioluminescent capacity. It glows for a few seconds at a time at night, as it’s flying.

Aaron: So how large are these creatures?

Jonathan: The largest ones are very rare. But they’re so large that they cannot be mistaken if a person sees one. I’ll give you an example. In Perth, Australia, (I believe the year was 1997), it was in December, a couple was taking a walk. . . . They saw a creature flying up, and eventually they came to the conclusion that it could be as large as fifty-foot wingspan, from tip-to-tip of the wings.

Aaron: Fifty foot!

Jonathan: But we have a number of other sightings across the southwest Pacific and in other parts of the world, including California in the United States, in which there are rare cases of a very large creature being sited in the daytime.

Just a few years ago, a man was driving in the daylight, in clear daylight, in Orange County, in Southern California, and he was startled to see this creature fly up from the marshy area on his left. It flew over the road—it’s . . not too far above the road in front of him. And he says that the length from the nose (the front of the beak or whatever it was) to the end of the tail was the same as the width of the road. Now I went out there and I measured it: It was thirty feet. And he said about sixteen feet of that length was tail.

Jonathan Whitcomb Interviewed for Canadian Television Show

For many years my associates and I have searched for living pterosaurs and interviewed many eyewitnesses. . . . Those who believe in modern pterosaurs have been ridiculed for years, with no end in sight for the ridicule. But cutting down ridicule by cutting down one of these amazing animals [shooting an animal for evidence] would be wrong. We need to protect precious life, not destroy it.