Live Pterosaur - Part 21

August 23, 2018

Modern Living Pterosaur in a Remote Jungle in Papua New Guinea

natives in a remote village of Papua New Guinea

By living-pterosaur investigator Jonathan D. Whitcomb

News about a non-ropen pterosaur in PNG

Last week, I found a Youtube documentary on an expedition on New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea, in which two Americans, Milt Marcy and Peter Beach, were searching for a living pterosaur. They spent quite a few weeks on that remote tropical island in 2015, but they were rewarded with a sighting of a flying creature that others had previously seen in that area: a non-extinct pterosaur. This was observed in daylight.

I sometimes refer to this modern pterosaur as the “New Britain Creature.” I don’t know what natives call it, but I believe that many English people of the world would have called this kind of flying creature “dragon” in earlier human history. Let’s consider sightings in the late 20th century, before getting into the encounter in 2015. Keep in mind that all eleven of these sightings were in the same area deep in the interior of New Britain Island, and not one of them appeared to be the same species as the long-tailed ropen observed in other areas of Papua New Guinea.

Around 1965, some of the natives in this general area of New Britain got access to a gun and shot a pterosaur. They then cooked it in three large pots, feeding the village. This event was told to Marcy and Beach by two of the older natives, Fraggie and Hulio, who were boys at the time of the feast. Apparently, however, Marcy and Beach stayed in a different village than the one in which Fraggie and Hulio remembered enjoying that home-cooked meal.

By the way, Peter Beach is a biologist and once taught biology in a small college in the Portland, Oregon, area.

Sighting by Marvin Sconce

His son was a missionary deep in the interior of New Britain Island when Marv Sconce encountered three flying creatures there, in the early afternoon of a spring day in 1989. They were gliding in single file, at a slight downward angle, and he saw them for about a minute or two, starting when they were about three hundred feet above him. The three apparent pterosaurs glided over a river valley that was below the eyewitness, and the last he saw of them they were a little below him, following the course of that valley.

Garth Guessman interviewed Marv in August of 2006, and before the end of that year had given me the detailed eyewitness sighting report. It included the following:

No indication of feathers or hair
No feathers obscured the creatures’ muscular physique
[general] color: dark brown or black
head shape: Had point on back of head with no color difference
neck length: 8-10 inches
wingspan: 10-12 feet
Marvin saw no indication of a tail

Sighting by Harriet Sconce

The wife of Marvin, Harriet, had a sighting of one creature, on May 1, 1990, yet it was a close encounter. The following details were obtained from Guessman interviewing Harriet on October 15, 2006:

The sighting lasted about two minutes
She was about 30 feet away from the apparent pterosaur
It was about 3:00-4:00 p.m., with a clear sky
The animal was gliding at about 3 miles per hour
It’s total length was about five feet
“Smooth skin . . . like a bat wing, did not notice any hair”
Head shape: “Pointed beak, like bird but much bigger, similar to crow”
[head] “Crest? Yes, a pointy crest facing rearward”
The wingspan she estimated to be 9-11 feet
Harriet did not recall anything about a tail

Eight Sightings by Steve Sconce

Guessman interviewed Steve on October 8, 2006, obtaining information that included the following, regarding his eight sightings that occurred over a period of 18 months from 1990 to 1991:

“Number of creatures: two or three in tandem . . . 20 to 30 feet apart”
“Covering: leather, like a bat, not shiny: dull”
“Head shape: pointy straight beak . . . Crests/Comb: about 8 inches”
“Neck length: long . . . (18-24 inches)”
“Sound: . . . like [scratching] a blackboard, but a much lower pitch.”
No report or any indication of a tail

From the Youtube video on the expedition by Beach and Marcy

Sighting on New Britain Island in 2015

Milt Marcy and Peter Beach, both living in the Portland area of Oregon, went on an expedition in Papua New Guinea early in 2015, arriving in a remote village, deep in the interior of New Britain, on March 19th. Six days later, on March 25th, both Americans had their sighting of a pterosaur flying overhead.

I’ll quote from what they said in the Youtube documentary “PNG Expedition 2015 Documentary:”

Milt Marcy:

“We had a pretty momentous occasion.”

Pete Beach:

“I was in my hammock [sick], and I heard ‘big bird, big bird’ . . . I came out; I grabbed a camera that I had . . . and I looked up in the sky . . . It was almost directly above me. It was large, larger than any of the eagles or any of the other birds that we’d seen: leathery, had the claws on the wings . . . I saw the animal; I was stunned . . .

“I got the camera, so I turned the camera on, and I tried to focus in on it, but it was a very bright day [Beach had been indoors, suffering from pneumonia] . . . so I could not get a good view of the thing [with the camera]. I only had an LCD screen to look at . . .”

Beach did obtain video footage of the flying creature, but he was not able to zoom in to it. The video was examined by Wayne A. Hall, and the testimonies of eyewitnesses Peter Beach and Milt Marcy correlate with what is seen in the enhanced, enlarged images from that footage.

From video recorded by biologist Peter Beach

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News of Living Pterosaurs on New Britain Island

The other day, I found a Youtube video about an expedition in Papua New Guinea in 2015, a search for a modern pterosaur on the island of New Britain. What a success it was!

Pterosaur expeditions in Papua New Guinea

The following are expeditions in which at least one American has traveled to Papua New Guinea to search for modern pterosaurs or at least to interview native eyewitnesses of those flying creatures or to make a television show with an apparently similar purpose . . .

Those who explore remote jungles searching for modern pterosaurs

Including Garth Guessman, Jacob Kepas, Paul Nation, Jonathan Whitcomb, and David Woetzel (to name only some of them)

Dinosaurs on New Britain Island

Since the 1990s, a large ‘reptilian’ creature has been sighted occasionally on Ambungi Island in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Ambungi Island is located on the south coast of West New Britain between Kandrian and Gasmata. . . . When shown the handbook by Hazel Richardson, Dinosaurs And Prehistoric Life . . . Robert identified a picture of a Therizinosaurus as closely matching the animal he observed, with the exception of one feature, i.e. the creature’s head.

Dinosaur birds

The pterosaur is known by several names in the United States: “dinosaur bird,” “flying dinosaur,” and perhaps the most popular “pterodactyl.” In Papua New Guinea, it is known by many names: “ropen,” “duwas,” “indava,” and “kor.” But what shocks many Americans and Europeans are eyewitness reports that these supposedly “ancient” and “extinct” flying creatures are alive and well and even flying over our heads on rare occasions.

Living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea

Brian Hennessy was one of several men who were in a truck driving down a mountain on Bougainville Island, New Guinea, in 1971. He heard the wing flapping of the flying creature be-fore he saw it. Jonathan Whitcomb, after interviewing Brian, concluded that the Australian had witnessed a ropen, but that conclusion was made more sure after he gave both Hennessy and Duane Hodgkinson a series of silhouette-sketch choices.

Americans saw a living pterosaur during World War II

This is a reply to a portion of a huge web page . . . by the living-pterosaur critic Glen Kuban: “Living Pterosaurs (‘Pterodactyls’)”.

Recent Dragons or Pterosaurs

Once I get into a sighting report or begin to interview an eyewitness, I care little about the label used for a particular flying creature. Common is the word pterodactyl, although some eyewitnesses call it a dinosaur bird or a dragon. I care much more about exactly what the person saw. I suggest using this approach.

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The “Bible of modern pterosaurs” — Searching for Ropens and Finding God

This fourth edition of the nonfiction book is essential for all those who have any serious interest in these extraordinary flying creatures.

Pre-publication image of the back cover of this cryptozoology book

August 10, 2018

Do Reports of Live Pterosaurs Come From Lies?

cryptozoology book, nonfiction, on modern pterosaurs in the USA - "Live Pterosaurs in America"

By the modern-pterosaur expert Jonathan Whitcomb

Soon after I had returned from my expedition on Umboi Island, I saw that somebody had published an online article attacking the possibility of modern dinosaurs and pterosaurs, with a URL containing the words “stupid” and “lies.” The following long sentence appears to have been removed from that site, but it illustrates a point: When a critic writes in anger, mistakes are easily made, not just errors of judgment but errors of fact. The following sentence contains a number of errors of fact, at least in this case, indisputable falsehoods:

“Another claim of an alleged pterosaur sighting is made in Africa where a team of explorers led by John Whittcomb who are sponsored by Carl E. Baugh a staunch creationist and other creationists regard him as a kook, just like Baugh they are kooks themselves.”

As best as I recall, that old site also had a sentence declaring that I had led a group of creationists on an expedition, but that is false. Let’s concentrate on the above sentence.

That was on the critic’s web site Stupid Dinosaur Lies, a dot-com, on February 24, 2005, and the following are the most obvious errors, probably made and published because the person jumped into writing before doing reasonable digging to get to the facts:

1. Both my first name and surname were misspelled.
2. Never in my life have I set foot in Africa.
3. Nobody on my expedition was sponsored by Carl Baugh

That critic seems to have become confused in a number of ways. From the above sentence, she (I believe it was a woman; I could be mistaken) appears to have thought that only one alleged sighting was involved and that only one expedition took place. Baugh led a few brief expeditions in the 1990’s, but most expeditions have been in the 21st century, none of which included Baugh. And no ropen expedition was in Africa, only in Papua New Guinea, which is north of Australia.

I see a glimmer of truth in the sentence, for a number of Biblical creationists have been encouraging ropen expeditions in Papua New Guinea. A few weeks after my expedition, the Americans Garth Guessman and David Woetzel, along with the native Baptist minister Jacob Kepas, interviewed natives on Umboi Island. I don’t know of anyone who doubts that Guessman and Woetzel are Biblical creationists, but I’ve never read or heard anything to suggest that some creationists consider such explorers to be “kooks.”

To that critic’s credit, that sentence (beginning with “Another claim of an alleged pterosaur sighting”) was removed from the old site Stupid Dinosaur Lies. In fact the whole site disappeared in 2010 (the old dot-com version). The errors in that sentence, however, show the importance of careful research over a period of time rather than a quick shotgun blast, without any careful aim, at an idea that upsets the skeptical writer. I hope that critic continues to improve in thinking and eventually comes to recognize the truth behind the worldwide sighting reports of these animals.

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Stupid Dinosaur Lies

Within the past few weeks [late 2014], at least two posts have accused me, Jonathan Whitcomb, of deceiving people. The second writer, “idoubtit,” seems to have been convinced by the first one, Dr. Donald Prothero, regarding my online writing behavior. But when Prothero responded to me, he appeared to reveal two sources for his conviction that I have used deception, and the earliest source is the site Stupid Dinosaur Lies . . .

Modern-pterosaur expert

When a non-scientist observes a featherless flying creature that looks like a pterosaur, that eyewitness might say “pterodactyl” rather than use the correct name: pterosaur.

Critic of living pterosaurs

Scientific skepticism can be useful, when a scientist is criticized on a particular point. It can sometimes allow him or her to make a needed correction and improve the original idea. But when extreme bias exists in either that scientist or the one doing the criticism, problems arise.

Bulverism from a critic

Early yesterday morning, November 30, 2010, I posted a short announcement on the “Cryptids on the Wing” forum of Cryptozoology.com [which site has disappeared]. The quick, negative responses were no surprise to me, for I have received similar dismissals, for years, on this forum. The first criticism deserves attention here, as an example of bulverism.

Do pterosaur sightings come from lies?

The following is in response to a statement about me, Jonathan Whitcomb, published on a web forum: “. . . that he lies about in his book . . .”

I believe that the total number of web pages and blog posts that I have written over the past eight years is well over a thousand, with perhaps more than a quarter of a million words related to the concept of modern living pterosaurs. That is in addition to two editions of one nonfiction book, three editions of another, and a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal of science. With hundreds of thousands of words to choose from, why doesn’t at least one of the critics on this forum thread find one or two of my sentences, to quote me? If one of my books includes a lie, why not quote that lie, bringing to light why it is wrong?

Live Pterosaurs in America — third edition of this nonfiction book

Live “pterodactyls?” In the United States? Many scientists have long assumed all pterosaurs died millions of years ago. Now take a whirlwind tour of many years of investigations in cryptozoology, and prepare for a shock: At least two species of pterosaurs have survived . . .

August 2, 2018August 3, 2018

“I saw a Prehistoric Bird”

Gitmo Pterosaur of Guantanamo Bay Cuba, sighting in 1965

By nonfiction-cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb

A number of words and phrases come up in eyewitness reports of apparent living pterosaurs. The following are some of them:

Pterodactyl
Dinosaur bird
Ropen
Prehistoric bird
Dragon
Flying dinosaur

I know that pterosaurs are not actually dinosaurs, but people often think of them like that, for in our Western culture those flying creatures are connected with dinosaurs because of assumptions about universal extinctions that were supposed to have occurred many millions of years ago.

Eyewitnesses who know of other eyewitnesses

How many friends, relatives, and acquaintances do you know well enough that you would tell them that you had observed a non-extinct pterodactyl, if you had seen such a flying creature? If you live in the United States, or in another Western country, you might know only a few persons, if any, whom you could trust, feeling that they could trust that you were not having a nervous breakdown. It’s a big problem for Western eyewitnesses of pterosaurs.

Yet during the fifteen years that I have been questioning eyewitnesses I’ve found that a significant number of them, albeit a minority, report to me that they know somebody else who has seen a living pterosaur. These reports keep coming in, mostly through emails. I see only one reasonable explanation, but let’s first look at what is unreasonable:

Take the case that all species of pterosaurs became extinct many millions of years ago. Let’s also suppose that a young lady in training to become a veterinarian’s assistant sees what appears to be a living pterosaur, in daylight, in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina. Also assume that she began telling people, face-to-face, about her apparent encounter and about her belief that it was a non-extinct pterosaur. After a long period of time, she has talked with one hundred persons about it. Under the assumption of universal extinction of such flying creatures, how many persons should we expect would reply to her that they had also seen a living pterosaur? Probably not even one person.

Now let’s get back to reality. In the middle of the year 2018, my associates and I continue to proclaim that not all species of pterosaurs are extinct. We still make up only a tiny part of the American public, yet we stand with many eyewitnesses of these flying creatures. Let’s now take a look at the young lady in Raleigh, North Carolina, for she is in fact a real person, even though she has probably talked face-to-face with only a few persons about her encounter, nothing close to a hundred, at least not in the first few weeks after she saw the strange flying creature.

Cynthia Lee sent me an email on June 1, 2017, the same day that she had her sighting. Here’s sentence number six of that first email that she sent me:

“My mother and uncle saw one too while they were playing outside of my grandma’s house when they were really little.”

Eyewitness Cynthia Lee

I submit that the most reasonable explanation is this: Many more people in North America are observing living pterosaurs than my associates and I imagined fifteen years ago. It’s not just the eyewitnesses who send us sighting reports but the other eyewitnesses that never get in touch with us, and we know that they exist because the reporting eyewitnesses have told us of them. On occasion, one of these other eyewitnesses will come to contact me and report what was seen by them, but those are the exceptions.

More Eyewitnesses who Know Other Eyewitnesses

Setting aside those exceptions, let’s look at a few other cases.

Around 1965, little Patty Carson encountered a “dinosaur” that flew up out of tall grass at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She did not contact any researcher, like a cryptozoologist, about it until she sent me an email in 2011. It seems that it was much later that she learned that her brother Tom also had a sighting, probably of the same species of flying creature (not far from where Patty had her sighting at Guantanamo Bay).

Sketch draw by the eyewitness, Patty Carson

Near Detroit in 2012, a man saw an apparent pterosaur in flight. He reported the encounter to me, mentioning that he had a relative who saw something similar in that general area (both encounters in Canada, near the border).

Late in 2012, I got an email from a man who encountered a “pterodactyl” while the man was driving, a little after sunrise, between Katy and Houston, Texas, about five or six years earlier. Perhaps that was not enough to cause him to contact me, but on December 3, 2012, his wife was talking on the phone with him while looking (I believe through the window of the house) at what seemed to be a “pterodactyl.” That was in a different area in Texas, and that was enough for him to send me an email and report those two sightings.

To the best of my knowledge and memory, that lady never contacted me or any of my associates about her sighting. That seems to be the norm.

Conclusion

Sightings of modern pterosaurs are far more common than cryptozoologists used to think. The vast majority of eyewitnesses have not yet contacted us.

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I saw a prehistoric bird

I have been haunted for close to 20 years by what I saw in the desert. I have never told anyone due to the fact that I was afraid I would be thought nuts . . .

Dinosaur bird in Utah

I interviewed three eyewitnesses in Draper, Utah, two days ago. The sightings were about four miles west of the mountains that are the eastern border of the Salt Lake Valley, near the southern area of the valley.

Ropen or dragon?

The Fiery Flying Serpent of the Bible may have been a long-tailed Rhamphorhynchoid, related to the modern-day ropen.

Dragons and pterosaurs

How delighted I was, this past March, to receive an eyewitness report of three “dragons” flying over the I-5 freeway in Los Angeles!

Living pterodactyl in California

On March 18, 2013, I compared eight sighting reports of apparent pterosaurs in Southern California. The most recent sighting had been just fifteen days earlier, between Griffith Park and Glendale. Not one of those sightings was very far from a storm channel or stream bed.

Living Pterosaur in Ontario, Canada

I was phoning around dawn on a hill on Eglington Ave. across from the Ontario Science Centre when I saw a very smooth brown flying creature about the size of a great blue heron, with an appendage on its tail’s tip, fly northeast from the dense vegetation around the power lines where there was a cliff. I was stunned and shocked as it slowly flapped its wings . . .

Flying dinosaur

What do these persons have in common: Duane Hodgkinson, Gideon Koro, Susan Wooten, Brian Hennessy, Mesa Augustin, Aaron Tullock? Each has seen a large flying creature that is much more like a pterosaur than anything else.

Eyewitnesses of modern pterosaurs

In daylight, seven native boys or teenagers climbed up to a crater lake, around 1994, on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea . . . the giant ropen, flew just over the surface of Lake Pung. All seven boys ran home in terror . . .

Pterosaur sighting in Raleigh, North Carolina

Jonathan Whitcomb, author of nonfiction cryptozoology books, has suggested that flying creatures reported in Raleigh, North Carolina, over several years, may be related to what Americans in other states have reported to him over the past fourteen years. One kind he has labeled the “American Hammerhead Ropen.”

June 20, 2018

Recent Reports of Non-Extinct Pterosaurs

sketch of a modern pterosaur - by Eskin Kuhn

By modern-pterosaur expert Jonathan Whitcomb

The following two eyewitness reports may have limited relevance to strange missing-persons cases in North America, yet the potential danger of attacks from related flying creatures makes them worthy of note. Each report is given only in part here. I’ve also edited them for punctuation, spelling, etc.

Be aware that “recent” refers to when I received the reports, not when the eyewitnesses encountered the apparent pterosaurs.

Sighting in New Jersey

After communicating with her through emails, I had a long phone conversation with this eyewitness. I concluded that her honesty credibility is very high (this is no hoax). Her sighting was in Long Valley, New Jersey, in about 2016, and she reported it to me in June of 2018.

She wants to be anonymous for now, because of her present employment, yet she told me that she will, when that changes, allow her name to be used in publications on this subject of living pterosaurs.

At about 4:00 a.m., or a little before, she stopped her car at a stop sign. The huge flying creature then hopped over to her car and looked through the glass right into her eyes. She described this animal to me and mentioned that it was bigger than her car.

[It made a] slow gesture . . . when it tilted the head to look inside of the car, it looked at me. I was so taken by that specific move that I was still and frozen into its eyes. I did not want to take my eyes away from what I was seeing. I did not want to check anything else because I did not want to loose that specific moment of who was starring at me.

. . . It made unusual gestures when it opened the leathery wing. It pulled a bit back from the side of the window [and] kind of stretched to get tall and . . . then it stretched the wings. It made three [movements] to open the wings: bat leathery thick wings . . . I realized that this thing was huge . . .

Sighting in Central California

In about 2004, two eyewitnesses saw an apparent pterosaur in Kerman, which is about 15 miles west of Fresno, California. The following is a small portion of an email I received from one of those eyewitnesses. (Both of these persons is anonymous. One of them may have been attempting to steal cable service, from a telephone pole, at the time of the pterosaur sighting.)

. . . the kid on the ground is pointing in the sky and said LOOKOUT. I was still transferring to the other side of the pole, but I was looking and here it came. Funny thing about it is it was very dark out but I could see him and his colors very well. . . . his wings were I’d say 14 feet wingspan. As he was coming down towards me, his wings were wide open kind [like a] parachute.

. . . his wings were very similar to bat wings. He had hands in the middle his wings and a claw on the wings like bats do . . .

I suspect that these two eyewitnesses in central California saw a bioluminescent pterosaur.

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Modern pterosaurs in New Jersey

[The wings had] like black brown smooth skin.

Pterodactyl in New Jersey

It had huge wings like a bat, it was like a dark brown color. There was no feathers at ALL. The body was black, with short or no hair. It had a very slim body and a small tail.

Living Pterosaurs in California

For at least the second time in the past nine months, somebody has reported a flying “dragon” in Los Angeles County. I don’t know that they are the same species, but a few similarities deserve attention . . .

Recent Pterosaurs

Pterosaur Eyewitness Group Support (PEGS)

Missing Persons and Living Pterosaurs

When a person is alone in a wilderness area in the United States, a large hungry ropen may attack, subduing the human by a mist or vapor that is debilitating when inhaled by prey. This may explain why human victims, when found alive, are asleep or unconscious or in a state that rescuers may describe as “confused” or “disoriented.”

Pterodactyls alive in California

A 38-year-old woman in a residential neighborhood of Lakewood, California, just northeast of Long Beach, reported a “dragon-pterodactyl” that had no feathers but a long tail with a “dragon” “triangle” at the of that tail.

Strange missing persons cases and pterosaurs

Some of these cases strongly suggest a small number of ropens in North America may be responsible for a small portion of reports of people going missing. Similarities in certain details stretch across decades, and across many hundreds of miles . . .

Attack in the Dead of Winter

Remember your worst nightmare? Were you glad to wake up? Be grateful. In the early morning hours of February 23, 2010, a few miles or so southwest of Marfa, Texas, the victims were terrified by what awakened them.

Attacks in British Columbia

One of the girls in the village was recently attacked by a pterodactyl. She had a campfire burning in her backyard and was attacked in the darkness. . . . She called me up, very upset, as people are laughing at her. [British Columbia, Canada]