“Ropen” is what natives of Umboi Island call the nocturnal flying creature, and legends abound. Most eyewitnesses have only seen it from a distance, at night, and they describe a strange flying light.

David Woetzel led the second ropen expedition on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, late in 2004, accompanied by fellow-American cryptozoologist Garth Guessman. One night, near Arot Village (northern Umboi), Woetzel saw a strange light flying towards the mountains near Lake Pung. Consider this excerpt from my interview with him in 2005:

“My sighting was so quick that it was impossible to get a video—maybe 2 seconds  . . . [The flying light was] almost golden and shimmering around the edges. It looked like an old-fashioned street light in the fog.

“There was no tail and it was flying horizontal from  Mt. Barik toward  Mt. Tolo . . . The size, color and speed made it immediately stand out as unlike any other thing I’ve ever seen in the sky.”

Woetzel estimated the angular-size of the light: about 20%-25% the size of a full moon. With a lack of any meteor tail and horizontal movement, a meteor interpretation is unreasonable. This must have been the same object observed by my interpreter (Luke Kenda) a few weeks earlier and a few kilometers to the east: a horizontally-flying light with a mountain background. I believe that both sightings were of the ropen.

Although this sighting, by itself, obviously does not prove that pterosaurs are still living, it validates the honesty of this cryptozoologist: Woetzel could easily have reported some kind of pterosaur-feature, rather than only a glowing object, were he to have been dishonest. This is one example (among many) of the honesty of the explorers who searched for  living pterosaurs from 1994 through 2004, for they interviewed many eyewitnesses but admitted never observing any pterosaur-like animal themselves. It disproves the careless general accusation (from some critics) that they are dishonest.

*************************************************************

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 this incredible nonfiction book on Amazon or from the publisher—Live Pterosaurs in America.

The peer-reviewed Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ), Volume 45, Number 3, contains the article “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific,” by Jonathan D. Whitcomb.

Included was the eyewitness account of the Umboi Island native Gideon Koro, interviewed in 2004 by Whitcomb:

“In about 1994, at Lake Pung, Umboi, and in daylight, seven boys, aged about eleven to sixteen, saw what three of them (in 2004) told me was a ropen . . . Their testimonies were videotaped during an interview in the Awelkon Village area . . .

“According to Gideon Koro, who speaks some English, a few minutes after they had arrived at the lake, ‘it came down.’ . . . When I asked about the tail length, he pondered, seeming to recall and estimate; then he said, “seven meetuh.” [seven meters or about twenty-two feet]

“Gideon was sure that the creature was a ropen. . . . When I asked about feathers, he at first appeared to be puzzled; his answer and mannerisms then seemed to me to reveal that he was surprised that I should ask that question: ‘There’s no feathers’ . . . I then asked, ‘Was there just skin?’ The Kovai word ‘byung’ came up as did the English term ‘flying fox.’ Gideon agreed that the skin was like that of a fruit bat.”

More: Credibility of the Umboi Island Eyewitnesses

***************************************************************

From Chapter Two of “Live Pterosaurs in America” (nonfiction book on Amazon.com)

“The greatest danger facing innovators, rebels, and those who search for living pterosaurs—that’s a newspaper. National newspapers ignored the success of the Wright Brothers (their December, 1903, successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina). News reporters and editors, many of them, assumed that the controlled powered-flight of two bicycle mechanics was a lie, that it never happened. Even as late as 1908, many newspaper professionals thought the Wright Brothers ‘better liars than flyers.’ After all, a well-funded government-sponsored flying machine had crashed only a few days before the Wright Brothers were said to have first flown. But lack of news reporting and abundance of lie-insinuations can relate to both flying machines and flying pterosaurs.”

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.

The dominance of long tails and head crests has caused skeptics to insinuate that hoaxers are creating a hodge-podge of pterosaur characteristics, taking attributes from different types of pterosaurs and constructing a hoax thereby. Those skeptics, however, fail to carefully examine the hoax hypothesis, for there are numerous problems with the idea that hoaxes played a significant role in the overall eyewitness testimonies.

At least one species of Rhamphorhynchoid (long-tailed pterosaur) known from fossils, the Scaphognathus crassirostris, did have a head crest. The presence of a head crest on a ropen (or modern long-tailed pterosaur) is hardly a sign of a hoax; how many potential hoaxers would know about that fossil? (And how many natives on remote tropical islands would know about any fossils?) Westerners who might consider a pterosaur hoax would most likely use what is well-known in Western culture: stubby-tailed pterosaurs, like those depicted often in movie and television sci-fi. Potential native hoaxers would talk about flying humans that transform themselves into snakes; honest native eyewitnesses talk about a long-tailed feather-less creature, and only some native eyewitnesses have had a good-enough viewing angle to allow them to see the head crest (Gideon Koro, of Umboi Island, was honest enough to admit that he did not have a good view of the head of the giant ropen that flew over Lake Pung around 1994).

The consistency, in eyewitness descriptions from around the world, of the combination of a long tail and a head crest (in a feather-less flying creature) is evidence for a living creature, not a hoax. And why should a modern pterosaur be very much like most pterosaur fossils? Ridicule from skeptics comes from our adopting the obvious interpretation of those eyewitness descriptions: a modern living pterosaur. “Unlike pterosaur fossils” is not just inaccurate: It is irrelevant.