Live Pterosaur Media Center Live Pterosaur Media Center Fruit Bats and Pterosaurs After mentioning the pterosaur-interpretation, Wikipedia says that “others  suggest that the Ropen is a misidentified bat e.g. flying foxes, which are  large fruit bats than can have wingspans up to two metres (six feet) . . . .”  The problem with the fruit bat misidentification idea, however, becomes  obvious when details of sighting reports are examined, for the Flying Fox  fruit bat has almost no visible tail.   For example, when the Umboi native Jonah Jim was interviewed by Garth  Guessman and David Woetzel, in 2004, he was shown a page of silhouettes  of various species of birds, bats, and pterosaurs. From those thirty-four  images, Jonah Jim chose number thirteen, which was of a Sordes Pilosus, a  Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur. In addition, he saw that the flying creature  was glowing, and he estimated the tail length at two-and-a-half to three  meters (8-9 feet long), eliminating the bat-misidentification idea.     The American World War II veteran Duane Hodgkinson estimated the tail of  the flying creature he had seen: “at least” ten or fifteen feet long. It was no  fruit bat that he and his army buddy had seen in 1944 in New Guinea.  The Australian Brian Hennessy has been a psychologist working in China  for years. In 1971, he saw a “prehistoric” flying creature on Bougainville  Island, New Guinea. It had a “longish narrow tail” and something like a  “horn” coming out the back of its head: far different from a fruit bat.                                                           ### The opinions expressed are those of Jonathan David Whitcomb. Media professionals may use these paragraphs in whole or in part for news distribution. All of the images on this page may also be used by the news media. Misidentification? No. Whitcomb Expedition on Umboi Island, 2004 Eskin Kuhn’s sketch of one of the two flying creatures he saw in Cuba Jonathan Whitcomb interviewed many  natives, including Gideon Koro  Flying Fox Fruit Bat Mariana Fruit Bat Public domain photo by Ann Hudgins, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The Flying Fox fruit bat is not found in Cuba, so this was not a misidentified Megabat of that general type The eyewitness of this flying creature sketched what she saw in eastern Cuba (Patty Carson, more recently a nurse living in Riverside, California) According to J. D. Whitcomb, the main  reason some persons assume pterosaur  sightings are misidentified fruit bats is  simple: Those persons have not studied  the details of the eyewitness reports but  only react to the generalities like “big  flying creatures with no feathers.”