Creation versus Evolution
Did Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs Live with Humans?
Commenting on the construction of the Creation Museum near Petersburg, Kentucky, an Associate Press news article mentioned the conflict between Creation and Evolution. On the subject of humans living alongside dinosaurs, the article says that the idea is “contradicted by science.” It would have been more accurate (and more objective) to state that the idea is contradicted by science text books.
Soon after the article came out, another article appeared (not from the Asso-ciated Press) about apparent living pterosaurs, not living in the time of Adam and Eve, but living now, in the time of science.
Later came a news release about a psychologist who saw a very big “prehistoric” or prehistoric-looking creature without any sign of feathers.
In Papua New Guinea, creatures resembling pterosaurs are visible not just to “superstitious” natives.
Of course there’s an explanation. Anything that contradicts accepted scientific opinion can be explained away, can it not? It could be a mis-identification of a large fruit bat or a legend of a dragon, for fruit bats are known to “science” and dragons are fictional, are they not? Anything that squares not with the popular beliefs
can be dismissed or proven wrong.
Or can it?
Mr. Glen Kuban has criticized living-pterosaur investigations, suggesting, “It's likely that at least some southern hemisphere sightings of ‘pterosaurs’ are explained by fruit bats.” But he ignores the best evidence.
The problem is that the creature that is believed by the investigators to be a living pterosaur is very different from a Flying Fox bat. It does not hang upside down like a respectable bat but holds itself upright on tree trunks. It does not eat fruit but fish. Perhaps most telling is its long tail that has a “diamond.”
Then a dragon legend it must be, right? The problem is that the investigators interviewed more than natives of Papua New Guinea: They interviewed an American World War II veteran who has maintained that he saw a giant long-tailed “pterodactyl” in 1944. In addi-tion, an Australian couple (Perth) has maintained that they saw a giant pterosaur-like creature (with a long tail) in 1997. It seems there’s a real living pterosaur-like species of creature living in the Southwest Pacific.
How could pterosaurs still be living when “science” declares that creatures like dinosaurs and pterosaurs never lived in the time of humans? In reality, that declaration is not “science” but an assumption commonly mentioned in science textbooks. It is an axiom, not proven.
The ropen of Umboi Island cannot be dismissed simply as a dragon legend. Eyewitnesses do not report anything magical or superstitious. Most of them see a low-altitude horizontally-moving light at night. Sometimes it flies over a reef, soon returning to a mountain; sometimes, from one mountain to another, usually just above the tree canopy.
Investigators attribute the light to bioluminescence. On rare occasions,
a native will get a close view of the ropen; that’s when it resembles a pterosaur (and resembles descriptions by Westerners).
(Some web pages contain what is probably a mistake: “duah” is not a native word; it is probably a distortion of the word “duwas” (or duah) which is generally synonymous with “ropen.”
(http://www.ropens.com/duah-ropen)
There are many names, in the South-West Pacific, for the pterosaur-like creatures: glikioik, kundua, wawanar, seklo-bali, ahool, and orang-bati. Some of these names seem to relate to the same kind of creature: a large flying creature not officially classified.
Indirectly related:
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
The documentary movie about the
persecution heaped on those who
have written about Intelligent
Design within the scientific
community or academia
Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea
The major port-village on Umboi Island is Lab Lab;
but it’s in the inland and northern villages where
most eyewitnesses report the bioluminescent ropen.
(not primarily in any village influenced by tourism).
See also “Books on Living Dinosaurs” and
The Mesozoic objection (the idea that pterosaurs should not still be living because none of their fossils are found above the Mesozoic strata) is invalid because one of the principle methods of dating strata is in determining the kinds of fossils it contains. See:
www.livepterosaur.com/livedinos-links
for an explanation of the inappro-priateness of the Mesozoic objection, as well as links to many web pages related to living pterosaurs.
A detailed explanation of how these pterosaur reports relate to Creation and the General Theory of Evolution is found in the appendix of the non-fiction book Searching for Ropens, by Jonathan Whitcomb.
Related material:
“When objectively comparing the General Theory of Evolution with creation science concepts, it's easy to see that modern living pterodactyls fit better with creationism than with standard macro-evolution.”
“Late in 2006, Garth Guessman, a living-pterosaur investigator, interviewed three Americans who had worked in or visited a medical mission in Central New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea. The three had separate sightings of what may be Pterodactyloids.”