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Giant “Pterodactyl” of 1944

Popular Youtube Video

The Youtube video “Ropen-Pterodactyl American Eyewitness” has had over 275,000 views, but far more astonishing is the view that Duane Hodgkinson had of the giant flying creature he saw near the city of Finschhafen, New Guinea, during a lull in fighting with the Japanese military (World War II).

I have interviewed Duane several times since mid-2004. The Youtube video, however, I edited from footage recorded by Garth Guessman (a living-pterosaur investigator associate of mine), who visited the old veteran in Montana in 2005. Many who view the online video are impressed with the credibility of the eyewitness.

Hodgkinson Sighting, in Summary

He and his army buddy had stopped on a trail, just west of the coastal city of Finschhafen, in 1944. Something took off into the air; Hogkinson assumed, at first, it was a bird. But he soon realized that the size was all wrong: about the wingspan of a small private airplane. The tail he later estimated to be at least ten or fifteen feet long. But what caught his attention was an appendage coming out the back of the head; it reminded him of the “pterodactyl” in the Alley Oop newspaper cartoon strip.