Book | Live Pterosaur

July 1, 2014April 21, 2021

Don’t get “Strung Along” by the Smithsonian Myth About Ropens

heading to a Smithsonian online newspaper article

This is a reply to “Don’t Get Strung Along by the ‘Ropen’ Myth.” This Smithsonian online post supports the dogma of the universal extinctions of all species of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. I call it a “myth”: the total extinction of all varieties of pterosaurs. My associates and I, in contrast to the author of this Smithsonian article, have researched this subject seriously over many years and declare that regardless of how many species of those amazing flying creatures have become extinct in the past, some species still survive.

So where is the scientific evidence for the universal extinction of all species of pterosaurs? Notice the Smithsonian blog post by Brian Switek*, dated August 16, 2010: not one reference to an eyewitness sighting report. Switek says “such anecdotes,” without mentioning what he is talking about. He says much about the religious beliefs of Blume and Woetzel, as if that counts against their ideas, but why does he say nothing about what caused those expeditions: eyewitness reports? And he says nothing about the fact that the eyewitnesses come from around the world, with no indication of any preponderance of creationists among those eyewitnesses. *( In recent years this online article, “Don’t Get Strung Along by the ‘Ropen’ Myth”, has a different name for the author because of a personal name change: In 2010 he called himself “Brian Switek”.)

Like some paleontologists I have communicated with, Switek says not one word about any scientific test related to the universal-extinction conjecture for pterosaurs. He also mentions no date for any scientific study on the subject, nothing.

Headline of a faulty online article of the Smithsonian Magazine

Mr. Switek writes as if science were on his side, as he emphasizes the religion of those whom he associates with “hucksters.” Yet a deeper look into what he seeks to protect—that reveals that the general extinction idea originated when George Washington was president. Look into history and I believe you’ll find that no scientific study was ever conducted relevant to the extinction of ALL SPECIES of pterosaurs, from the time of George Washington until Mr. Switek wrote his Smithsonian blog post in 2010 . . . with one exception: the work of those whom he ridicules in “Don’t Get Strung Along by the ‘Ropen’ Myth.”

The newspaper article Switek criticizes was indeed seriously flawed. Yet the newspaper writer is not one of those who explored remote jungles, searching for living pterosaurs. Of course a photograph of a Frigate bird is no evidence for a modern pterosaur, but Switek’s writings are also flawed, leaving out the critical eyewitness evidence as if it could not be worth considering.

Note that I do not excuse careless newspaper writings, even when one of them appears to support the work of my associates who have searched for living pterosaurs in remote locations. Careless writing needs to be corrected, preferably before a newspaper article is published. Edit carefully before publishing your writing, but even more important is this: Look deeply into the subject before doing much writing about it.

Back cover of a nonfiction cryptozoology/spiritual book

From Searching for Ropens and Finding God (page beginning on page 294)

He says nothing about me or my associates Garth Guessman and Paul Nation, but does mention David Woetzel and Jim Blume . . . Be aware that the Smithsonian post that portrays the ropen as a myth was a response to a flawed newspaper article written to support the ropen as a possible pterosaur. Both writings have problems.

Brian Switek speaks of extinction in the general sense, as have paleontologists who’ve responded to the living-pterosaur investigations. He seems to take standard models without question, like so many others who have dismissed what me and my associates have proclaimed. I submit that the assumption of universal extinction of dinosaurs and pterosaurs is part of what lies at the root-cause of some of the mistakes they have made.

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Refuting “Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth”

I found it amusing that Mr. Switek, after going to such lengths to demonstrate the foolishness of those who promote the possibility of living pterosaurs, and beat to death any supposed evidence for that concept, finally, near the end of his post, admits an interesting possibility: Maybe a long-tailed pterosaur may still be living.

Don’t Get Strung Along by the Smithsonian

He may have gotten unanimous approval for pointing out that a photo of a frigate bird is not evidence for living pterosaurs, but he got a stern rebuke for mentioning the word “hucksters” for those who search for cryptids many had assumed have been extinct for millions of years, especially those who have searched in Papua New Guinea for the ropen.

June 24, 2014July 31, 2015

Evolution and Living Pterosaurs

Three knights illustrate the three critical factors in the Evolutionary Boundary

I do not insist that others accept my opinions about various concepts of biological evolution, before we can communicate about modern pterosaurs. In the most recent edition of my first book (Searching for Ropens and Finding God, published in April of 2014), I hope I made it clear in the Introduction:

Is this a tool for promoting Biblical Creation and ridiculing evolution? Clear thinking we need, without fear, allowing us to discover both truth and error in whatever camp we find ourselves, entrenched or visiting, at the moment.

Maybe that does need clarification. The book does not dig deeply into the conflict between literal interpretations of Genesis and strict naturalism philosophy; in fact it says little about evolution. I emphasized our need to think clearly regarding labels, for the book mainly deals with eyewitness evidence for living pterosaurs, with little room for any deep exploration of biological evolution.

Believe what you will about Darwin’s contributions to science, but most of my associates and I have rejected the unlimited-common-ancestry philosophy of Darwin, making it clear that we differentiate between observed biological changes and the “molecules-to-man” assumptions commonly portrayed in much of American media as if “fact.” For several years I have written little on this subject, while some of my associates have emphasized it. It now deserves attention here. My own experience with “An Evolutionary Boundary” has made it clear why natural selection actually prevents small simple organisms from evolving into large complex organisms. It was a mathematical simulation I conducted many years ago, before I became involved in ropen (long-tailed pterosaur) searches. Here is a brief summary:

An Evolutionary Boundary (EB)

Only three basic types of change have any relevance to the macro-evolution imagined by Charles Darwin, although he was probably ignorant of that:

Improved immediate survivability
Progress in development of a new structure
Combination of #1 and #2

A key concept in my EB mathematical simulation is that a clear understanding of the possibility (or impossibility) of molecules-to-man evolution can come from the careful use of math and the detailed examination of what must occur for macro-evolution to take place. Indeed, such a course is far more likely to reveal the truth about life origins than a vague imagining of countless changes in vast periods of time before humans existed on this planet. Vague speculation accomplishes little, if anything, in real science. In my book Searching for Ropens and Finding God, I quoted a well-known scientist:

Lord Kelvin also said that “when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.” Let’s now fly with numbers.

Getting back to the three basic changes, #3 is far less likely to occur than either #1 or #2. Why? It’s like buying two lottery tickets: one for a lottery in California and the other in New Jersey. How unlikely it is to win both lotteries with those two tickets! For an organism to undergo both a change which makes it survive better in the present and a change which makes it more likely to develop what will become a useful biological structure in a future generation—that is the least likely thing to happen, of those three basic types of changes. How critical is #3, for Darwin’s concept of evolution from simple to complex! Yet that is the least likely to occur. So what does that mean? Over a period of time, organisms of a particular type develop sub-populations of various degrees of immediate survivability (IS). Sub-populations with higher IS increase in numbers, compared with the sub-populations having lower IS, by definition. The result? Those with both a better chance for a new structure (#2) and higher IS, in other words #3—those sub-populations must be fewer in number than organisms having only a higher IS. In other words, organisms that survive better but have NO potential for changing into a more complex organism—they out-compete the ones that might otherwise have produced more descendants that would be more complex. Please stay with this for a little longer, for it really does relate to pterosaurs. The above images illustrate the three critical types of change. In the basic simple case, each type is identical except that each has undergone some kind of mutation. The knight on the left can survive better than average because of his sword. The one in the middle has money that can, some day in the distant future, allow his posterity to finish building a castle and live there instead of in the little shack in which they now live. The knight on the right has a combination of the other two. The first two knights were very fortunate to have been given something of great value. The third had the very rare luck to received two great gifts at about the same time. A key concept is this: In a kingdom of countless trillions of knights, #3 is far less common than either #1 or #2. Since the money (that can only be used in a long-term payment to construct a castle) has no short term benefit to survivability, it adds nothing to the daily survival of that knight. In fact, a “baggage” principle plays a part in the Evolutionary Boundary, for it takes a little bit of energy and attention to carry the money around. But even without the baggage principle, #1 knights will multiply faster than #3 knights, by definitions and by common concepts in natural selection. This is because #1 sub-populations immediately begin outnumbering the #3 ones, and this disparity becomes greater in future generations. What about #2 sub-populations? The problem is similar: They compete poorly with #1.

Survival of the fittest

Natural selection, applied to this, eventually results in extreme dominance of the #1 types in the overall population. Many near-extinction events may threaten accumulated #2 and #3 types with extinction. Because of high numbers of organisms of #1 types, they are the ones that survive the threats: They can avoid extinction much better. It may not seem obvious in the first generation, but each reproductive cycle increases the disparity: Why is #3 (on the right) shown to have so few descendants, compared with the other two? It is actually representing sub-populations, not an individual organism, in the three larger knights at the top of this image, and #3 has only a small fraction of parents, compared with the others. In other words, the large knight on the upper right represents a small population, compared with the other two large knights; the smaller images of the first-generation descendants represent crude approximations of actual number of descendants.

What About the Real World?

Does this mathematical simulation relate to real-world biology? Survival of the fittest (natural selection) and macro-evolutionary potential (or lack thereof) can be seen in more than just this simulation. Why should simple little organisms ever evolve into large complex organisms? Take a theoretical case: This planet is hit with a disaster so overwhelming that all human life is destroyed. What might be left? Smaller simpler organisms. Why? Small simple life survives better than large complex life. In other words, Darwin was completely wrong about small simple life gradually evolving into large complex life.

Take another case: As planetary travelers, we find a planet that appears capable of supporting life, but none lives there. We sprinkle the planet with countless trillions of microscopic organisms, then return after many millions of years of absence. What do we find? Not a sign of life. The non-living substances survive better than any life, so that’s what is left after all those millions of years of neglect: sand, rocks, water.

So how do living organisms survive on planet earth? They were put here, and preserved, by God, with all the care necessary for their continuation. I know that does not sound scientific, but it explains how such indescribable diversity of life exists on the earth.

What About Pterosaurs?

At about the time of Darwin, many scientists probably believed dinosaurs and pterosaurs were primitive creatures that became extinct long ago because they did not have the survival qualities needed to continue into the present. We now agree that great destructive forces caused many living things to die long ago, although a variety or origin philosophies and belief systems cause divergent opinions about when and why destruction occurred.

Let’s look a little at pterosaurs. What would we expect if all pterosaurs were put here by God, just a few thousand years ago? The Flood of Noah could have destroyed particular types, but the two basic general types could have been preserved when Noah’s family was saved with all the life that they had on the Ark.

What would we expect if all of the countless forms of pterosaurs lived on this earth many millions of years ago? Look at textbooks of Western biology and paleontology: Universal extinction of all their species is taken for granted. If one species survived in a remote little-explored tropical wilderness, that would be expected to be of only one type, most likely Pterodactyloid. What paleontologist would dream that both Rhamphorhynchoid and Pterodactyloid pterosaurs still live on most continents in the twenty-first century? So what kind of eyewitness reports do we have from around the world? Strange to tell, but both Pterodactyloid and Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs appear to live in various areas, although evidence points to many (if not all) of them being nocturnal. How different from what most Western paleontologists would guess could be possible!

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Pterosaur Sighting in Grantsville, Utah

. . . Suddenly as I looked up at the night sky, the farm animals started up again and then I saw it. The ropen. . . . I was awestruck. I began to wonder what type of animal this was. But within minutes higher up in the sky I saw it again and appeared soaring above us and then vanished again.

Evolution, Religion, and Extinction of Pterosaurs

Some skeptics of living-pterosaur investigations (including searches for the ropen), well quite a few of the skeptics, have dismissed our work because they assume that our religious bias makes us incapable of objective scientific investigation. But those skeptics may have their own bias . . .

Ropen – a Modern Pterosaur

The third edition of the nonfiction book “Live Pterosaurs in America” proves this is not a mystery confined to remote tropical rain forests in Papua New Guinea. Ropens continue to shock eyewitnesses around the world, including many common persons in the United States of America.

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Third edition: Searching for Ropens and Finding God (nonfiction)

From the Introduction:

Expect references to the Biblical fiery flying serpent and the Flood of Noah. I added “finding God” to the title of the third edition to avoid offending someone wanting only cryptozoology, a reader who would be offended to find a little religion, however limited; it’s continued in this fourth edition: finding God.

May 1, 2014October 27, 2014

“The Bible of Modern Pterosaurs”

pre-publication version of the front cover of this nonfiction book

Searching for Ropens and Finding God was published on April 18th, the third edition of the book that I started writing, in its first edition, in 2005. It’s the fruit of thousands of hours of research and writing, but why should it be labeled “the Bible of modern pterosaurs?” At 9×6 inches, with 353 printed pages, it covers eyewitness sightings from around the world, including Europe, Africa, North America, and the southwest Pacific (including Australia and Papua New Guinea). New chapters were added to the second edition, including Chapter 21: “Pterosaurs in the USA,” which chapter by itself is 100 pages. Judge the quality of the book for yourself, but it’s much bigger than anything else I’ve written.

Herodotus, known as the “father of history,” is reported to have said, “wings are not feathered, but resemble very closely those of the bat,” when he referred to the “winged serpents” known in Egypt and Arabia in his time; yet no mention is made of Herodotus in Searching for Ropens and Finding God, for that historian lived twenty-four centuries ago, and my book really is about modern pterosaurs.

The fiery flying serpent flies through but a few paragraphs, for although Moses lived many centuries ago, featherless long-tailed winged creatures are tied to the real Bible in my “Bible of modern pterosaurs.” Yet many pages promoting disbelief in the General Theory of Evolution were removed from earlier editions of my book. I have assumed that readers of this third edition will already believe in God, with little need for me to provide additional evidences for literal interpretations of the Old Testament, so this book is filled much more with astonishing eyewitness encounters.

Searching for Ropens and Finding God (back cover)

Quoting from page 179 of the book (sighting in Maryland):

On September 15, 2013, I received an email just one hour after the sighting:

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“This may not seem strange to you but it was certainly the first time I have had a sighting of a pterodactyl. It was around 12:30 p.m., sunny skies, cooler temperatures (75 degrees). It was extremely large (way too large to be considered an eagle and there were no feathers). The head was certainly noticeable and the large wing span and tail. The skin was grey (?) in color and wrinkled. Flying alone.

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“Not sure if you are still keeping tract of them but one was spotted in Maryland today, 9/15/2013. Super amazing. . . . I will never forget it.”

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

The fourth edition of this nonfiction paperback on modern pterosaurs is being published around the first week of November, 2014. This supersedes the third edition, with a few new sighting reports and many minor revisions and corrections. Purchase the newer edition, for it’s at the same price.

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Ropen (sighting in Africa, quoting from Searching for Ropens and Finding God)

“It was very large, about 4 or 5 feet in height. It . . . [had] no feathers. It was leathery looking. It had a large long, wide beak and the classic appendage (the long bone looking thing sticking out the back of its head). . . . It had really large black claws and its tail looked like a lion’s tail . . . very long and had a bushy or hairy tip” . . .

April 21, 2014May 14, 2014

Five Eyewitnesses of Pterosaurs in Cuba

Patty points to a tourist attraction on the island of St. Croix. Each of these four children saw a living pterosaur earlier, in Cuba.

I included these five eyewitnesses in my newly published non-fiction book Searching for Ropens and Finding God. Eskin Kuhn and Patty Carson are given much attention, yet more eyewitnesses are mentioned, including three siblings of Carson.

Patty Carson & her two brothers & a sister, in a posed photo unrelated to ropens

In the above photo, the four children of the Carson family are looking at a tourist attraction on the island of St. Croix, in the Caribbean. But not many years earlier, these four kids, in three separate sighting encounters, saw a large flying creature that was most likely the same species as the two that would be seen in 1971 by the U. S. Marine Eskin Kuhn. (Much has been written about his encounter at Guantanamo Bay.)

The youngest child (on the left, with his chin on the rail) has long since forgotten about the animal, but he was with his sister, Patty, when the two of them encountered what has become known, in recent years, as the “Gitmo pterosaur.” The older two children also saw that apparent species, in two other sightings on other days. But all the sightings, including Eskin Kuhn’s, were at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Gitmo Pterosaur

This may actually be the same species as the one labeled “American Hammerhead Ropen.” The following is an excerpt from the book:

I communicated with another eyewitness, in 2011, by emails and phone, about what I’d eventually call the “Gitmo Pterosaur.” Here is some of what I received from Patty Carson, whose father worked at Guantanamo Bay in the mid-1960’s:

“. . . We lived at the end of the road, last house, by the radio tower. We were walking from the boat yards toward home . . . where it was sandy underfoot, sparse scrub vegetation around four feet tall, smelled like tar from the boatyard and sulfur from the sandy flats.

” . . . Suddenly it sat up, as if it had been eating something or resting. The head and upper part of its body [appeared]. . . . right in front of us about thirty feet away. All of us froze for about five seconds, then it leaned to its left and took off with a fwap fwap fwap sound, in a big hurry, more of a scramble, and flew to its left and disappeared behind trees and terrain.”

Also from the book (another excerpt) is a report from Modesto, California:

The man later told me, “I didn’t realize you had dedicated as much time and resources to researching this subject as you have. . . . . Thanks for taking my story seriously. . . . [I’ll] do my best to explain the shape of the head . . . its head would be that of a ‘claw hammer’ only not bent downward. As for the front of its head, well it wasn’t blunt like the front of a claw hammer but rather like the beak of a pelican, without a saggy throat.”

That reminds me of the sightings east of Winder, Georgia, in the summer of 2008, of what I call the “American Hammerhead Ropen,” . . . Some of these large flying creatures observed across North America should be the same species.

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Searching for Ropens and Finding God – nonfiction true-life adventure, uplifting spiritually, educational, enjoyable

From the Acknowledgements:

What more could we ask of the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn and the little girl Patty Carson, two eyewitnesses of “pterodactyls” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the middle of the twentieth century? They carefully observed those flying creatures and later drew detailed sketches that defy any misidentification conjecture that any skeptic might throw at them. Thank you, Eskin; thank you, Patty.