Copyright 2008 Sandra Paradise (sketch drawn by the eyewitness)

First two Sightings (from third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America)

She told me a bit about Winder and about her commute, which is about twenty-five miles through a partially forested area.

[Sandra Paradise] drove to work on August 27, 2008. She had woken up early and could not get back to sleep, so she left her house at 6:45 a.m., with the sky still overcast from the last remnants of the storm. I believe this weather disturbance may relate to her daylight encounter with an animal I believe to be nocturnal.

. . . an animal suddenly flew from the right, just over the front of her car. Although alone, she yelled, “What the — what — what is that?” She was stunned. . . . she looked up at a “very long” tail that had a strange shape at the end.

“Dive-bombing my car,” is how she described the flight path, as it crossed the highway in front of and slightly above her. “Curved, like a hammer,” is how she described the head, which had a crest that she thought was “solid, not feathery at all.”

“The thing made perfect sense as it flew;” other eyewitness have also been struck by the gracefulness of flight [of modern pterosaurs].

[She] looked at the online page her friend had recommended and searched through online photos of herons and other birds . . . Negative. Everything about the bird photos was wrong, including the color and shape. Her friend later asked about planes; she pointed out that the creature flew under the tree tops.

Two weeks later, the lady had her second sighting: a flying creature similar to the first one only bigger. It was a little later in the morning: obviously not two identical tricks of sunlight striking a bird. Her sightings reminded me of the South Carolina sighting, by Susan Wooten, years earlier.

Hammerhead Ropen in Georgia

“. . . you don’t have to go to New Guinea. Far as I can tell, you can sit on a hill outside the town where I live in the mornings and see them. One sighting was at 7 in the morning, and one was at 9 am. Both days were overcast . . .”

More Sightings in Georgia

From an email I received from Sandra Paradise early in May, 2012

. . . it was around october of the same  year [2008]. I was driving the same road, had just passed the point of my  second sighting. looking ahead and up a hill I saw a flock of crows  cross the road, from right to left, followed by –yep, you guessed  it. The pterosaur was in perfect silouhette, wings outstretched,  distinctive head in full view, pad on the tail. . . .

. . . about a year and a half ago, maybe a little more, I saw what I  believe to be the same animal from directly below, traveling fast,  with a distinctive, quick, 1,2,3 rest (with wings outstretched)  1,2,3, rest wingbeat. Birds don’t do that. The tail is what riveted me, you could see the shape on the end; instead of rippling along, this time it stuck straight out. . . .

With both the third and fourth sightings (above), she tried to drive after the creature, but with no luck. Having a camera on hand does not guarantee that a driver can get a good photograph while driving. Neither will parking near the sighting location cause the creature to fly back to you.

Richard Syrett, host of “The Conspiracy Show” in Canada, asked me, Jonathan Whitcomb, about my opinion on proving the existence of living pterosaurs by shooting one of them. I made it clear that I oppose killing a modern pterosaur for that purpose.

The television show, to be broadcast around October in Canada, is just thirty minutes long, including commercials, and several persons have been interviewed, so I did not go into details on that subject. (Details like that would probably be cut out in editing.)

But since I have said little about this before now, I will go into details here.

For many years my associates and I have searched for living pterosaurs and interviewed many eyewitnesses. We still do not yet have a convincing photograph or video that shows any detailed form or features of one. 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 would be wrong. We need to protect precious life, not destroy it.

Sketch of the “Gitmo Pterosaur” observed by the eyewitness Patty Carson, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, around 1965 (Ms Carson herself is the artist)

Creationists are Interviewed for a Canadian Television Show

Living-pterosaur expert Jonathan Whitcomb was interviewed for “The Conspiracy Show” on May 5, 2012, to be broadcast later this year in Canada. Richard Syrett questioned him on reports of pterosaurs or dragons in history and about his expedition in 2004.

Sumatra’s Last Tigers

A National Geographic production broadcast on ABC Nightline looks at a spate of tiger attacks on humans in 2009, and asks why such attacks might be happening. According to conservationists like Joe Walston, WCS Executive Director for Asia programs, hungry tigers will occasionally turn to people out of desperation, as their forest homes and prey dwindle.

Mount Sual (Umboi Island), where the ropen light sometimes flies

For years, I have advocated multiple species of pterosaurs living in various parts of the world. Even for glowing lights in Papua New Guinea, multiple species may be involved, even when only two mountain ranges separate them. But for now, let’s consider why one species seems to be responsible for flying lights in two areas of that tropical country.

Let’s compare the words of four witnesses: three natives on Umboi Island and one British biologist on the mainland of New Guinea. Each describes flying lights: on two sides of Umboi and on the mainland to the west of Umboi.

Evelyn Cheeseman

The British biologist and explorer Lucy Evelyn Cheesman was the first woman ever hired as a curator at the Regent’s Park Zoo, in London. She traveled in the south Pacific prior to World War II, discovering a number of new species of small creatures and writing several books. But the discovery she made near Mondo, on the mainland of New Guinea, would support cryptozoological investigations many decades later.

In her book The Two Roads of Papua (1935 – London: Jarrolds), she described the flying lights:

While at Mondo I witnessed a most curious phenomenon which I could not understand; nor could I later hit upon any satisfactory explanation for it.

[One night] I spent much in time leaning over the veranda, and gazing across at the . . . jumbled hills against a purple sky. When suddenly I saw a flash of light somewhere below the horizon. It was rather a slow flash, and might have been made with an electric torch [flashlight] by someone with a finger on the switch to prolong it perhaps four seconds. . . . in a moment it came again, and this time I counted; yes about four or five seconds . . . flashes continued at intervals.

Many lights appeared like the first one, and they were strung out in a horizontal line for quite a distance, just below the top of a mountain ridge. The natives would not answer Cheesman’s questions about them so she relied on her own powers of reasoning.

But after careful observations and careful pondering, she gave up trying to explain the phenomenon. It could not have been from many natives with flashlights: The flying lights were slightly above the tree canopy, and even if natives had access to many flashlights, why would they use them in that fashion, on a long horizontal line? She became convinced that the lights were not from any human origin. But what were they?

Lucy Evelyn Cheesman, biologist

First 2004 Ropen Expedition

When I explored part of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, in 2004, I had no knowledge of Cheesman’s observations seven decades earlier. I was following up on the findings of other cryptozoologists, including Paul Nation (who had instructed me in how to conduct my expedition). I interviewed native eyewitnesses of the flying light and eyewitnesses of a large flying creature they call “ropen.” Natives think of them as the same thing, and my findings verified that idea.

I interviewed David Moke, a village leader, who told me about his encounter with a bright light that appeared over his head while he was fishing one night, months earlier, over a reef off the southern coast of Umboi Island. The brilliant light lasted about “five seconds.”

About a week later, I talked with another native. William Gima told me about the bright light that lit up Aupwel Village, a few weeks earlier, on the northern side of Umboi. That light lasted about “five seconds.”

Second 2004 Ropen Expedition

A few weeks after I completed my expedition, two other American cryptozoologists were exploring Umboi: Garth Guessman and David Woetzel. Many of their interviews were with islanders I had not met, in villages I had not visited.

The school teacher of Arot Village, Gibson Kuvurio, told the Americans about the ropen light:

When ropen flies, its body glows maybe around five or six seconds, but the light never glows beyond this time.

Coincidence or Bioluminescence?

Many observations of flying lights that last 4-6 seconds—those are not likely by coincidence, especially when some areas of Papua New Guinea have reports of large nocturnal flying creatures that glow as they fly. This phenomenon deserves serious scientific study, not just by cryptozoologists but by biologists.

Indava and Ropen of Umboi Island

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.

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Live Pterosaurs in America — third edition of nonfiction cryptozoology book

From the chapter “Marfa Lights of Texas”

His account of the strange lights of Marfa [Texas] got me thinking. Some accounts, not quite like James’s observations, involve “dancing” behavior. But if the lights are made by ropen-like animals, why would they move like that? Of course ropens in Texas might be hunting bats, but how could dancing help them catch bats? Insects! Of course lights attract insects. After two ropens have glowed in one area long enough to concentrate insects, they separate for awhile to allow the bats to feel safe in catching those insects. Soon the ropens return to catch the bats.

Regarding pterosaurs, the only kind of discovery allowed by the Smithsonian is the fossil kind. Apparently no number of eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs can sway their minds. It’s been many months since Brian Switek’s Smithsonian Magazine online post, “Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth,” but they have not budged from their dogmatic position, unless Switek is the exception with that institution, which I doubt.

The Smithsonian should judge human experience, regarding eyewitness sightings of living pterosaurs, objectively. Instead, with Brian Switek’s poorly conceived blog post, dogmatic assumptions are taken as if fact. But where will science go, how will science progress, if human experiences are kicked out the back door?

Observe the weight of eyewitness testimonies, especially the sightings of Brian Hennessy, Duane Hodgkinson, and Gideon Koro. Each of those sightings carries its own weight independently. The combination of all three makes dogmatic universal extinction proclamations ludicrous, when taken in context with the real history of that assumption of extinction.

Smithsonian Gets “Discovery” but Runs Away From Discovery

David Woetzel has explored in Africa, searching for a living dinosaur, and has explored in Papua New Guinea, searching for a living pterosaur. But Switek takes this as if it makes Woetzel’s position weak, and the point of all of this is that Woetzel is questioning scientific assumptions that Switek has taken for granted. Putting this in the context of a court trial: The defense attorney cannot prove his case by saying that the district attorney cannot be believed because he prosecutes people.

From the book Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition):

The world’s greatest expert on chickens—that’s a fox. The details of that expertise culminate in picking bones, executed differently than, but for the same purpose as, the work of a fossil expert: to make a living. The hope differs: The paleontologist searches for ancient bones somehow protected from the destructive forces of time; the fox, for fresh meat, somehow unprotected by the farmer for a time. Interminable dogmatism keeps both of them searching: one for death anciently; the other, death soon-to-be.

We trust no fox to analyze the automatic switch that turns on the electric fence protecting chickens; why trust a paleontologist to analyze reports of live pterosaurs, for supporters of that idea appear to threaten standard paleontology? Both fox and paleontologist have specialized knowledge, with each specialization tied to its own dogma. Trust neither one outside.

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At first I thought it was something manmade because I thought it might be some type of a remote controlled Pterodactyl glider.  The wing span (again an estimate) seemed to be about 30 (if not more) feet across.  It was light brown in color with canvas like skin and absolutely no feathers. . . . When it passed across to the right of me I then realized it was a living creature because it began to flap its wings and continued to flap its wings several times at about a two second interval between flaps.

One factor that distracts from a model-glider interpretation is the estimated wingspan: “about 30 (if not more) feet across.” In addition, he said, “I continued to watch it fly towards Olomana mountain until it disappeared from sight.  Total time of my sighting was between 20 and 30 seconds.” I doubt if there was any model-pterosaur that could appear like that or fly like that in 1970.

Pterosaur on the Big Island of Hawaii

The same eyewitness knows somebody who knows somebody (yes, very indirect) who reported a “pterodactyl” on the Big Island. I have no idea about that, but I hope to get something more direct on that reported sighting. Something else has come up, however, which needs attention.

I have communicated with a person who has reported numerous sightings on the Big Island of Hawaii. I hope this is not the person mentioned above (“somebody who know somebody”), and I hope my meaning is not badly misunderstood, but there is a serious problem. I relate the following points only in regard to the detailed proclamations that I have received from a person who will here remain unnamed:

1. There may have been one or more sightings of a genuine pterosaur on the Big Island. I don’t yet know anything for sure about this possibility.
2. The person I have communicated with on more than one occasion over the past few years does not show any obvious sign of playing any hoax. The person seems to be sincere in wanting to help with the cryptozoological investigations.
3. This person may be able to assist us in cryptozoological research, at some time in the future, and I hope this will be the case. But for the present, there are serious problems with at least some of the proclamations made by this person.
4. Over the past eight years, I have been ridiculed for my part in the cryptozoological investigations into reports of living pterosaurs. One of the words used by a few critics is “crazy.” I plead with all who make any comment on this subject: Avoid bulverism. Stick with reasoning on the possibility (or impossibility) of modern living pterosaurs and avoid attacking or ridiculing any person with any word at all like “crazy.”
5. If or when any person enounters any report of a possible living pterosaur on the Big Island of Hawaii, please get in touch with me before publicizing anything about it. I may then report details that would be inappropriate here.

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PEGS – Pterosaur Eyewitness Group Support

I have started organizing the Pterosaur Eyewitness Group Support (PEGS) to encourage open communication between those who have observed apparent “pterodactyls” and those who have only read about or heard about the encounters.

Let’s consider large bats and compare them with modern living pterosaurs.

The bones in the wings of the above bat eliminate a pterosaur interpretation. They radiate from the finger-claw on the leading edge of the wing. The apparent lack of a tail eliminates a bat interpretation for most of the clear daylight sightings that have been reported to me. Bats do not have long tails, whether or not they are “giant bats” (Flying Foxes) or other species.

The illustration above shows more detail in this anatomy of the bat. But eyewitnesses might never get such a clear view of a flying creature that refuses to pause for an examination, so let’s look at photos.

Even when a mother Flying Fox carries a baby during flight, nothing will look like a long tail: not the two feet, not the baby, not anything. The idea that this fruit bat has caused sighting reports of “pterodactyls” in Papua New Guinea now appears ludicrous. I don’t recall even one sighting report that turned out to have been this kind of misidentification.

Why do some skeptics continue to cry “flying fox misidentification” when actual ropen sightings are of long-tailed flying creatures? Part of their problem is this: They continuously fail to consider actual sighting reports. They prefer to mention their imagined typical sighting, not real sightings. Some would call that approach a “straw man argument.”

Let’s examine some of the details from Duane Hodgkinson’s report.

Could he have seen a giant fruit bat and consciously or unconsciously have exaggerated its size and features? This conjecture quickly breaks down, for too many major differences jump out at us.

No exaggeration of any structure on a Flying Fox could make a tail “at least” ten or fifteen feet long, as reported by Hodgkinson. And even if he had seen a giant bat, with a wingspan of six feet, and thought it was twelve feet, this is still much smaller than the wingspan of a Piper Tri-Pacer airplane (about 29 feet).

In addition, the legs of the “pterodactyl,” that he observed running through that jungle clearing in 1944, he estimated to be three to four feet long. On the other hand, the length of the legs of even the largest Flying Fox fruit bat cannot be measured in feet, barely even in inches. And nobody who sees even the largest fruit bat would say that its neck was about three or four feet long; that bat neck appears almost nonexistent.

Giant Bat

If you have seen something flying at night, not like a bird but too big to be a bat, please contact Jonathan Whitcomb to report details about your sighting.

“Dinosaur Bird”

The pterosaur is known by several names in the United States: “dinosaur bird,” “flying dinosaur,” and perhaps the most popular “pterodactyl.”

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.

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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Lakewood – child care cost

Long Beach child care

I have started organizing the Pterosaur Eyewitness Group Support (PEGS) to encourage open communication between those who have observed apparent “pterodactyls” and those who have only read about or heard about the encounters. Posts on that blog may also include responses to skeptics or critics. For now, let’s consider a few eyewitnesses who have given us their names.

Gideon Koro I interviewed on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, in 2004. He had almost no time to prepare for that interview because my guides and I surprised his village by showing up unannounced. His demeanor impressed me; he showed no sign of fabricating any part of his account.

His videotaped interview is available on Youtube. One point missing from that video relates to Gideon’s description of the mouth of the ropen: “like a crocodile” (mouth). A few minutes after he had volunteered the word “crocodile,” I drew two sketches in the dirt. Without giving him any clue what I was doing, I gave him an opportunity to choose a crocodile head instead of a pterosaur head: He chose the pterosaur. The only difference was in the eye socket (crocodilians have elevated eyes so that they can see above water when they are mostly submerged). If he had been telling me a lie about observing a large flying creature, he would not likely have passed up the crocodile head after he had described a crocodile mouth. But he chose the non-crocodilian eye immediately. He was extremely credible.

Eskin Kuhn at Guantanamo Bay, 1971

I surprised Eskin Kuhn with a phone call in February of 2010. He answered my questions with high credibility, giving no hint of any hoax involvement. His sketch of the two “pterodactyls” of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, remains an important piece of cryptozoological evidence for modern living pterosaurs. His sighting was in clear daylight in 1971, when he was stationed at Gitmo as a U. S. Marine.

Kuhn saw two pterosaurs in Cuba, in 1971

Eskin Kuhn’s sketch was drawn just minutes after his 1971 sighting, when it was fresh in his mind. A few years earlier, other eyewitnesses had seen strange flying creatures at Gitmo: Patty Carson and her brother.

Brian Hennessy is now a psychologist, usually working in China. In 1971, he was on Bougainville Island, New Guinea, when he observed, one day, a strange flying creature that had not sign of any feathers. The long tail gave him the impression of a “primitive” creature, and the head crest suggested to me a pterosaur like the one observed by Duane Hodgkinson, years earlier, many miles to the west. My email interview with Hennessy impressed me with his credibility.

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Smithsonian Attacks Ropen “Myth”

Switek gives no evidence . . . only mentioning the religious nature of Woetzel’s beliefs, as if that were enough to dismiss his ideas about living pterosaurs. . . . Switek has never thought about Isaac Newton’s relationship to this, for Newton had religious beliefs similar . . .

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From the third edition of the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America:

“With big black eyes, it stared at her, and began to walk towards her. Now the idea of ‘large bird’ was gone, leaving in its place fear of the unknown. Distracted by some noise, fortunately, the creature turned away from the girl, revealing to her another perspective of its head. ‘Pterodactyl’ came into her mind, although it seemed a crazy idea.”

It may enlighten us to review two of those old hoaxes in newspapers, before we review recent newspaper coverage of eyewitness reports, for some of those tall tales, contributing to nineteenth-century subscriptions, may have had a long-term influence. Getting news-media attention to recent pterosaur sightings is as difficult as pulling teeth out of a hungry ropen.

Man-Bat Civilization on the Moon (New York Sun newspaper hoax of 1835)

Understand that Sir John Herschel was an eminent British astronomer of the early nineteenth century and that he did indeed make successful observations with his telescope in South Africa. He just failed, in 1835, to observe bat-winged humanoids on the moon.

The excitement began on the other side of the Atlantic, when readers picked up their copies of the August 25th New York Sun:

“We have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this city that Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope, has made some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description, by means of an immense telescope of an entirely new principle.

The August 28th edition of the newspaper included:

. . . We counted three parties of these creatures, of twelve, nine and fifteen in each, walking erect towards a small wood… Certainly they were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified… About half of the first party had passed beyond our canvas; but of all the others we had perfectly distinct and deliberate view. They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs from the top of the shoulders to the calves of their legs.”

The circulation of the New York Sun reached over 15,000, perhaps close to 20,000, before the newspaper admitted the hoax, later in 1835. Most newspapers in the United States have strictly avoided hoaxes in recent decades.

The 1856 Hoax of the ”Pterodactyl” From Stone

The British newspaper The Illustrated London News carried this story—less fantastic, more pterosauric—in its February 9, 1856, issue, although I have not yet seen the original.

Pterodactyl Hoax in The Illustrated London News

The French railway-tunnel pterodactyl of 1856 is finally getting its obituary, albeit The Illustrated London News has no such obituary. Not that France is a fairy-tale country or that railway tunnels are figments of the imagination or that all nineteenth-century newspaper articles are always filled with lies; but a pterosaur that survives for ages embedded in rock and then survives . . . [coming] out of that rock . . . well, that pterosaur is fictional.

More Recent Pterosaur Coverage in Newspapers

Sightings in Antwerp, Ohio (Antwerp Bee-Argus weekly newspaper)

. . . two sightings over the Maumee River, Ohio: 2002 and 2003, both in the daylight heat of summer. (More detailed information is in my book Live Pterosaurs in America . . .)

Pterodactyl in Washington State

Witnesses told police he had been driving down Wenatchee Avenue and drifted into the wrong lane, against oncoming traffic. When police asked him what caused the accident, he apparently replied with a single word: “pterodactyl.”

The news was carried by two newspapers in Washington state, on December 31, 2007, and on January 1, 2008.

Purchase your own copy of Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition) and get the full account of the amazing eyewitness encounters with “pterodactyls.”

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How much $ for childcare in Lakewood?

Likewise, when a newspaper publishes an article, in the nineteenth century, about a living pterosaur, and that story is later declared a hoax, that does not mean that everybody, in whatever century, who cries “pterodactyl!” is a hoaxer. How we need clear thinking!

Evelyn Cheesman was a biologist who searched for insects and small animals in remote areas, including New Guinea, in the 1920′s and 1930′s. In fact, some of her discoveries put her name to some of those creatures, including Lipinia cheesmanae—a skink (lizard), and Litoria cheesmani—a treefrog. To biologists, she is less well known for her observations and writing about strange flying lights on the mainland of what is now Papua New Guinea. Those flying lights now, long after Cheesman’s passing, appear to be related to the ropen lights. Nobody suggests Cheesman ever played a hoax.

I explored Umboi Island in 2004 (many miles east of where Cheesman saw strange lights). I interviewed many eyewitnesses, most of whom saw only the strange flying light that they call “ropen.” No form or features were visible in those many sightings (like Cheesman’s observations).

I myself stayed up on some nights, watching the sky with Luke Paina and Mark Kau. Those two men saw the ropen light once during my stay on Umboi Island, but I was asleep in bed at the time and so have never witnessed a ropen light. During the seven years since my expedition, a few skeptics occasionally label me as a liar; I am grateful it is only occasionally. But why would a hoaxer travel to a faraway tropical island and then come back home to proclaim to the world that he saw nothing?

What I encountered on Umboi Island were many eyewitnesses, of few of whom had encountered the ropen at a much closer distance; those few eyewitnesses describe features that make the ropen stand out as a huge flying creature very unlike any bird or bat. My interviews with most of those few critical eyewitnesses were videotaped and those videos are available on YouTube. Why insinuate a hoax? Examine the words of those skeptics and you will find bulverism.

Are Many Pterosaur Sighting Reports From Hoaxes?

I interviewed Hodgkinson sixty years later, by phone, emails, and mail . . . I continued interviewing him, on occasion, and my associate in cryptozoology, Garth Guessman, also interviewed Hodgkinson. Over a period of eight years, we have found no indication of any hoax. Besides that, Hodgkinson has been a flight instructor for years; he would not risk his reputation by playing a live-pterodactyl hoax for decades.

Feathers – no Hoax

“Did hoaxes play any significant role in these many reports?” That question can be answered decisively: “No.” It comes from careful analysis of the data of ninety-eight sighting reports, compiled in late-2011, and it confirms an earlier analysis.

Gideon Koro, on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, told the American cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, “It came down.” He also described the huge flying creature: The tail length Gideon estimated to be seven meters (about 23 feet). It was no fruit bat.