Tag: attack

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An Individual Ropen is Identified and Named – Precise Location Unknown

Desert mountains in Nevada

By Jonathan Whitcomb, executive director of Animal Discovery

How do I know that a ropen with a thirty-foot wingspan, now hunting house cats and killing chickens in Nevada, is the same animal seen in Draper, Utah, a few years ago? The one in Utah was about that size, or a bit smaller, and was there hunting house cats and killing chickens. Yet one clue pins this individual ropen to chicken murders in southern Salt Lake County : The predator does not eat chickens but stomps them into the ground. We call this pterodactyl the “Draper Ropen” (“DR”).

See the Youtube video “Whitcomb Interviewed”

desert mountains in Nevada 01

Remote desert in Nevada

The flying creature seen in 2018 in Draper may have been a bit smaller, according to the rough estimate, than 30 feet in wingspan, but it may have grown during the past three years. The present wingspan estimate of 30 feet is close because of how DR was encountered on October 2, 2021, by the man whose head came to within four feet of one of its wings that night.

As of October 13, 2021, Jonathan Whitcomb does not know for certain whether or not this particular animal is clearly dangerous to humans. He advises great caution should it appear reasonably possible for any person to observe it from less than five hundred yards away.

reservoir in a remote area of Nevada

A reservoir in a remote area of Nevada

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Testimony of the Eyewitness in Nevada

“Approximately 9:20 pm Saturday, 02 October, 2021 [in a rural area of Nevada] I experienced something unusual . . . [While on my computer] in the garage, I heard something very heavy land on the tin roof near its edge. . . .”

“. . . the roof rafters creaked, then I heard claws scratch the roof (similar to big claws just resting on the tin roof). But, much heavier and bigger claws and much much louder than any domestic house cat or bobcat claws both in the area, and MUCH louder than a vulture, turkey, peacock, goose, owl, eagle or hawk . . .”

“I turned off the lights. And, quietly, and very carefully I opened the door and went outside. . . . The garage’s roofline measures 26 ft wide. This creature’s wingspan spread wider by about 2 feet on each side and its wingtip flapped within about 4 feet of my head as I opened the door. . . .”

“My best description is its wing appeared nearly light/tan/ brown/sandy on the topside, but more the color of the night sky underneath. As it flapped for takeoff, I saw the underside first, then the topside of the wingtip. I got a very clear and close view of the wingtip and the animal’s silhouette (and I felt the strong wind its wing produced on an otherwise calm night without any wind at that moment). . . .”

“The wingtip didn’t look like feathers, but it looked very much like a gigantic bat’s wing. From almost immediately underneath (at the closest point during its takeoff), it had a long narrow tail longer than its head to base of tail length.   . . . It looked amazing and gigantic so close.”

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Missing Children and Pterodactyl Sightings

I suggest that to understand the potential danger that a few of these flying creatures may pose to children, we need to know something about modern “pterodactyls”, including the long-tailed ropen.

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Live Pterodactyl

A Youtube playlist highly recommended for those who are new to Youtube videos about sightings of modern pterosaurs like the ropen

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Attacks From a Ropen in New Mexico?

I’ve recently been reading the nonfiction Missing 411 – Western United States & Canada, by the former lawman David Paulides. On page 200, the author points out that all six of those missing persons listed in New Mexico disappeared in the Santa Fe National Forest. Why did none of them go missing in any other national forest of New Mexico?

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An Apparent Living Pterodactyl Reported in Utah

The nonfiction author Jonathan Whitcomb, of Murray, Utah, in 2017 and 2018, interviewed four eyewitnesses of an apparent “pterodactyl” in central Utah. He now declares that those reports from Draper, Salt Lake County, help distinguish Utah in a map showing where similar sightings have been reported across the United States.

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Ropen (Pterosaur) in Draper, Utah

This morning I interviewed, face-to-face, an eyewitness of an apparent living pterosaur that flew over his backyard in Draper, Utah, on Sunday, November 4, 2018. He seemed perfectly credible to me, and I also talked with his wife and found nothing wrong with her deportment.

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Pterodactyl Sightings and Evolution

Patty Carson's sketch of a ropen with caption: "Yes, Virginia, there is a ropen"

By Jonathan Whitcomb

My associates and I, over the past two decades or so, have been criticized in various ways, one of them in a strawman argument something like this: “They try to disprove evolution by trying to convince people that pterodactyls are alive.” The main problem with that criticism is that it’s not usually quoting any of us but declaring what our intentions are, and critics oversimply reality.

Evolution and Neo-Darwinism

First, I recommend my Youtube video “Pterodactyl Sightings and Evolution – Part 2″ on my channel Protect Animal Life. There I explain a bit about the fallacy of lumping various concepts of biological evolution together and assuming it all means the same thing. Let’s get into that a bit deeper.

The word “star“ has various meanings and we rarely have any problem with that. But what about the word “evolution”? That’s a different matter.

In my Youtube video dated September 9, 2021, I mentioned how shooting stars are not literal stars; no problem. Yet we in Western societies are often bombarded with the word “evolution” when it refers to different things. The video presents four types of biological evolution:

  1. Loss of a useful organ
  2. Tiny change that helps in survival
  3. Major change in outward appearance
  4. Upward Evolution

An important point in the above is this: Nothing in the first three concepts gives any credibility to the fourth concept. In addition, the first three have been observed and relatively few persons dispute the details in those three concepts, but the fourth has major problems and is based upon many persons who imagine what has happened in the distant past.

Danger to Children

The reality of modern pterosaurs like the ropen—that is not just a subject for theoretical debates about evolution in the distant past but is extremely important to some cases of missing children, including possible attacks against persons in North America.

One lady has reported that she was attacked, when a preschooler, by a huge flying creature in western Oklahoma. The animal, which was covered in hair, flew down towards the girl but she ducked down to the ground and escaped, soon getting into the safety of her house. The child saw that the creature was very strange, for it had teeth in its beak. She knew that birds do not have teeth.

How can we protect children and adults from that kind of attack? We must learn the truth about these flying creatures and help others to know about the reality of ropens and similar apparent modern pterosaurs. Although it seems that only a tiny minority of modern “pterodactyls” every attack any human, that limited number of animals can be dangerous, at least on occasion.

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The Ropen and Evolution

A common criticism thrown at me and my associates relates to the age of the earth and evolution. Our critics will sometimes ridicule the idea that non-extinct pterosaurs “disprove” evolution or prove that the world is 6,000 years old. What they fail to mention, however, is that they construct a sentence or two, in their own words, as if it were our words or our precise purposes.

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Missing Children

I suggest that to understand the potential danger that a few of these flying creatures may pose to children, we need to know something about modern “pterodactyls”, including the long-tailed ropen.

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Living Pterosaurs

This is a well-established blog on non-extinct “pterodactyls” in our modern world, flying creatures sometimes called “dinosaur birds” or “dragons”.

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The Quest for Discovering Modern Pterosaurs

The nonfiction book by Jonathan David Whitcomb: Searching for Ropens and Finding God (fourth edition)

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Living Pterosaurs or Dragons

This may be the oldest living-pterosaur site on the internet

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Modern-Pterodactyl News (2021)

The main news for now relates to the formation of a nonprofit organization that will specialize in research into reports of non-extinct modern pterosaurs, including the long-tailed featherless ropen [Animal Discovery].

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Potential Pterodactyl Attacks Against People

A meadow or field in Pennsylvania

By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

During the past couple of years or so, I have received reports  that make it clear that some modern pterosaurs can be dangerous to humans. Here is one report from the past few weeks:

Attack in Florida

I saw two of them when I was seven with my two younger sisters on a beach in Florida at night. They hovered right over us in one spot silently looking at us like we were dinner. Only a few times their wings flapped down, making a shuddering sound, wuumph! and we could feel the vibrations from their flaps. I always wondered how they stayed in one spot hovering like that.

We backed away slowly keeping our eyes on them, then turned around and ran for our lives screaming back to the grownups. None of the grownups believed us. It was pitch black. I will never forget that sound of their wings.

Attack in Western Oklahoma

The following is from an eyewitness who was only four years old at the time:

I know what I saw, because it was less than six feet above me. This thing was huge. I liken his body size to a Volkswagen bug. [It was] covered completely with brown / blackish fur [and had] no feathers. . . . the wings [had the] same color but like a bat. . . .

I ducked down just enough, I guess, for it to be a miss for it. . . . It opened its beak . . . I see teeth and at four I knew that wasn’t right . . .

This woman reported that she believes that some cases of missing children in this area of the country could be from attacks from this kind of flying creature.

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Are Modern Pterosaurs Dangerous?

The following is not a first-hand account but from a native who contacted me by emails in 2010, and he got the story from the grandson of the native fisherman who died three days after being attacked by a kor.

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A modern dragon in Papua New Guinea

This is a Youtube video showing three eyewitnesses who testify that they have encountered a huge flying creature (in the southwest Pacific).

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Press release on flying creatures in Utah

A nonfiction-cryptozoology author has analyzed eyewitness accounts of apparent non-extinct pterosaurs, commonly called “pterodactyls” or “flying dinosaurs,” and found that several states in the USA stand out, including Utah. Jonathan Whitcomb, of Murray, Utah, has been receiving emails since 2004, from five continents, and most of those reported sightings, in recent years, have been in North America.

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Eyewitness Reports of Apparent Living Pterosaurs

The following persons ask the general public to become aware of research into many eyewitness sightings of apparent extant pterosaurs, commonly called “pterodactyls,” and to consider the possibility that at least some of the accounts have been from actual encounters with flying creatures descended from animals closely related to pterosaurs known from fossils.

from web page "Declaration on Eyewitness Reports of Apparent Living Pterosaurs

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Are Modern Pterosaurs Dangerous?

By investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

[Have you seen a pterodactyl? You can safely and privately report here it and be anonymous if you like.]

Native Fisherman Killed by Something Like a Ropen

The following is not a first-hand account but from a native who contacted me by emails in 2010, and he got the story from the grandson of the native fisherman who died three days after being attacked by a kor. I believe this animal is at least related to the ropen, if it is not the same exact species. [I made a few corrections for capitalization, spelling, etc.]

The native of Tandual Village, Pak Island, went fishing and was attacked. The animal destroyed his canoe and he fought it with a traditional fishing spear.

After hours of attacking him and tearing bits of the fisherman’s body apparently the creature was enraged by his refusal to be eaten: Every time the animal attacked he dived under, and when the light above him showed the animal he would lunge up, doing only slight damage.

The animals tail and jaws took a heavy toll as it followed him to shore where a sea cave runs into a crevice which leads into the middle of the island. Its deep and seawater runs through it.

Badly wounded and backing into this ‘Barret”, as it’s called here, he wedged the spear into a crevice and took the animal through the mouth with the spear, made from a souvenir German colonial bayonet. He crawled out was found by villagers who went to see the animal and told his story.

 

generic photo of a native of Papua New Guinea

Generic photo of a native of Papua New Guinea: “The last death by this creature” (video on a flying creature attacking a native fisherman)

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Various Second-Hand Accounts of Danger

Over the past 17 years, I have received hundreds of reports of apparent living pterosaurs, accounts directly from the eyewitnesses themselves. I have found it quite rare, however, for someone to report to me an attack from a modern “pterodactyl”. I understand the concept that “dead men tell no tales”, but of course that is not evidence.

Many years ago I got an email from a man who said that he and his girlfriend were attacked, as I recall, but he never answered my request for details, so I have no idea where or when the event occurred.

I have indirect reports of extant pterosaurs, apparently, attacking and killing natives in Papua New Guinea. I believe those accounts are basically true, yet I rarely mention them in my blog posts or books, for none of the reports I have received have been directly from eyewitnesses of the attacks, as best as I recall.

I also know of reported attacks on people in British Columbia, Canada, and in Mexico, but those are also indirect accounts.

{This blog post was originally on the blog Pterosaur Fossils but has been transferred to Live Pterosaur}

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Pterodactyl Attack on a Fisherman

On August 1, 2020, I uploaded to Youtube a video memorial for a native fisherman of the southwest Pacific who was attacked by an apparent living pterosaur.

The above is about a human death in northern Papua New Guinea.

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Rhamphorhynchoid ropen

From a report in Cryptozoology News, we learn of an encounter in California in which a mother and daughter saw an apparent pterosaur, one with a long tail.

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Are modern pterodactyls dangerous?

I recently uploaded a new video about two common fears that Americans have in relation to reports of non-extinct pterosaurs, and it’s on my Youtube channel Protect Animal Life: “Living Pterosaurs – Why fear? – Plus: a secret.”

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The long-tailed ropen

The ropen is described in ways that actually lead to two words: “dragon” and “pterosaur,” depending on culture and taste. But notice the word noticeably absent: “extinct.” Many people are convinced that they are alive because they have seen them flying over their heads.

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Cryptozoology and pterosaurs

Living pterosaurs? How could they now be living in California, Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Ohio, New York, and many other states? Did not pterosaurs become extinct millions of years ago? Cryptozoology is the study of reports of creatures (or apparent creatures) whose descriptions suggest something other than animals classified by standard biology as extant.

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Is the ropen a pterosaur?

In 2011 I made a detailed evaluation of 98 sighting reports, the more credible of the countless eyewitness accounts worldwide. Those 98 were chosen because they appeared unlikely to have been from hoaxes and also unlikely to have been misidentifications of non-pterosaurs. I made some interesting observations, but let’s now look at only the data regarding long tails.

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Fight with a modern pterodactyl in northern Papua New Guinea

R.K. also told me about a fisherman who died after fighting off (and killing) one of the creatures; it seems that local natives believe the kor attacked the fisherman to eat him (larger kor are said to catch and eat young crocodiles and turtles).

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