Pterosaur Eyewitness

On his blog Frontiers of Biology, Dale Drinnon recently suggested that “many” sightings of apparent pterosaurs were misidentifications of Manta ray fish that jump out of the sea and up into the air. But that conjecture quickly falls flat when we examine sighting details.

The Four Key Sightings in the Southwest Pacific

In the nonfiction Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, four sightings are given special attention for both high credibility and low possibility of misidentification:

1. Finschhafen “Pterodactyl” of 1944
2. The Bougainville Creature (1971)
3. The Lake Pung Ropen (about 1994)
4. The Perth Creature (1997)

Hodgkinson Sighting in 1944

Duane Hodgkinson and his army buddy saw a huge flying creature during World War II, as they were hiking inland from Finschhafen, New Guinea. The main refutation for a Manta ray misidentification here may be this: The two soldiers were far inland, in a jungle clearing (never mind the detailed description Hodgkinson gave of the feet of the creature as it ran through the grass before getting into the air). Manta ray fish do not live far from the sea in jungle clearings.

Hennessy Sighting in 1971

Brian Hennessy was in a truck on a mountainous highway in the interior of Bougainville Island, New Guinea, when the strange creature flew overhead. Like the 1944 sighting, this one was far from the sea, with no possibility that a Manta ray fish could have been jumping over the truck.

Seven Boys by a Crater Lake

Gideon Koro and six of his teenager friends had hiked up to Lake Pung, on Umboi Island, around 1994. They had hardly had time to enjoy the view when the “ropen” flew over the surface of the lake, terrifying the seven boys. This crater lake has no major stream or other flowing water connecting it to the sea. Lake Pung is in the middle of Umboi Island, surrounded by mountain peaks. I tried hiking up to it in 2004, but failed to get up there. Those seven boys did not see a giant Manta ray fish jumping out of that lake. Just say “no.”

Married Couple Take a Walk . . . Into Cryptozoological History

In Perth, Australia, in December of 1997, a couple was taking a pleasant walk between two residential neighborhoods. They started watching something flying in the distance, high up in the sky, but it was approaching the couple. The closer it got, the more bewildered became the two eyewitnesses, for it had an apparent wingspan of thirty to fifty feet and a “lizard” appearance. To quote the husband (who worked in a scientific field), “Within a minute or so it had reached our position and was about 250 or 300 feet above us.” That was no Manta ray fish jumping out of the water and flying, for a minute or more, 250-300 feet above the  land.

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

It’s not that the writer, Brian Switek, is technically wrong in all his proclamations in his blog post. . . . But Switek ridiculed in general: any potential report, anywhere, of any possible sighting of any living pterosaur. . . . failing to mention even one of the key sightings.

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Photo of a Manta ray fish under water

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Sketch (by eyewitness E. Kuhn) of two “pterodactyls” flying above the land

Did Eskin Kuhn See Two Flying Manta Rays?

While stationed at the Guantanamo Bay military station, in 1971, U.S. Marine Eskin C. Kuhn witnessed the flight of two large flying creatures. Being a talented artist, he immediately sketched what he had observed. Were they two Manta ray fish jumping out of the sea? No, for several reasons.

Kuhn’s sketch shows details completely unlike any ray fish. Take the heads, which show a particular head crest, and the feet-like structures. The end of the tail, especially, is completely unlike the tail of a Manta ray fish.

The height of the two creatures could have been as little as forty feet, but that alone eliminates the possibility that they were a pair of Manta rays that had jumped out of the sea. In addition, the appearance of a tight formation of two flying creatures is completely different from what would be expected of Manta rays.

It was a clear day. Kuhn watched the two creatures fly away; he did not watch two fish fall back into the water. No fish were involved.

Manta Rays or Modern Pterosaurs?

A recent post by Dale Drinnon brought up an old suggestion that sightings of giant long-tailed pterosaurs may be misidentifications of large Manta rays (a type of fish) that leap out of the sea.

Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, my third nonfiction cryptozoology book, differs in being published only in electronic form: Amazon Kindle format. It’s also shorter, about 76 pages, making it much less expensive than the average cryptozoology book: $3.99.

Before quoting from the book, let’s consider an example of Western indoctrination. My wife runs a child care business where many of the preschoolers come early. This morning, a thirteen-month-old boy was feeling sleepy, so he was put to bed with a children’s educational television show playing on low volume. Just as two other preschoolers (a three-year-old and a two-year old) were about to come into the room, the man on the children’s show displayed a picture of a dinosaur and said, “All dinosaurs are extinct.”

From the first chapter:

By the middle of the twentieth century, school teachings had cemented the ancient-extinction idea into Western culture, so dinosaurs and pterosaurs were portrayed as living only in science fiction and dragons only in fantasy. Expeditions in central Africa, searches for a sauropod dinosaur, were the rare exception, with no official discovery. . . .

. . . I don’t blame anybody for simply assuming that their ancient extinction is scientific truth, for we’ve been taught that idea all of our lives. Real science, however, progresses, and progress means change, even when it shocks us. . . .

. . . As you read the following chapters, consider the following perspective. What eyewitness reports should we expect, should uncommon nocturnal pterosaurs live in the southwest Pacific? I suggest that sightings would be relatively few and mostly at a distance and under less than ideal viewing conditions; only a small percentage of encounters would convince eyewitnesses that they had seen a living pterosaur. . . .

The Preface, at the beginning of the book:

Living Pterosaurs in Australia

Even if you’ve never been in Australia or in Papua New Guinea (PNG), you might live within a culture similar to a culture in one of those two countries, regarding disbelief or belief in modern living pterosaurs or in flying dragons . . .

Ebook “Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea”

Featherless creatures fly overhead, in Papua New Guinea and in Australia. This nonfiction gives you up-to-date eyewitness reports, informing you why these creatures are still alive and why they are so rarely reported in newspapers.

 Number One Selling Cryptozoology Book

1. Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea
2. There’s Something in the Woods
3. Destination Truth
4. Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures
5. Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside

I have neglected writing many blog posts, of necessity, over the past few days, for my newest nonfiction book needed much editing and formatting before being sent to Amazon. Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea will soon be available for purchase online, at least on the Amazon-Kindle store. Marketing will be focused on Australia, so the spelling (“metres,” for example) is adjusted for Down-Under. But Americans should have no trouble with this nonfiction cryptozoology ebook.

The Amazon processing normally takes at least twelve hours or so, making the earliest date for purchase around September 9, 2012.

Promotional materials include the following (here quoted in part):

Featherless creatures fly overhead, in Papua New Guinea and in Australia. This nonfiction gives you up-to-date eyewitness reports, informing you why these creatures are still alive and why they are so rarely reported in newspapers.

Why do these large long-tailed flying creatures sometimes appear in daylight, when they are nocturnal? Why do natives in Papua New Guinea report their encounters but Australians rarely talk about them? Get the details from the world’s most prolific nonfiction author on this subject of modern living pterosaurs.

Update: My cryptozoology ebook is now available, for $3.99 (U.S. dollars) on Amazon, as a Kindle book: Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. It has been submitted as a potential “Kindle Single.”

Australian Pterodactyls

But most of the Australian sightings in the new book have never been published before in any book, and there are at least two new ropen sighting reports from Papua New Guinea.

My newest book is nearing completion: Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. This ebook should be published next month (Sep-2012), with much of the marketing focused on Australian readers. I here include samples, even though the editing is not yet complete.

Some of the sightings mentioned in this book had not been published in any book before, to the best of my knowledge; they are first-hand accounts given to me over several years.

Introduction

. . . I don’t ask that you launch your imagination to fly with each eyewitness report you begin to encounter in the following chapters. When somebody sends me an email about a strange flying creature, I don’t jump onto the first paragraph as if the creature had to have been a living pterosaur; neither do I dismiss the whole account when I first encounter something unexpected. Please do the same: Judge not too quickly, either to one side or the other. . . .

How can pterosaurs be alive? – Chapter One

. . . The first discovery of a pterosaur fossil by a Western scientist, in 1784, was decades before Charles Darwin began writing about his ideas on extinctions and evolution. Before Darwin, Western scientists had assumed that all species of pterosaurs were extinct for a simple reason: Those who discovered the fossils had no experience with any similar animal that was living. . . .

The Finschhafen Pterodactyl – Chapter Two

. . . the two soldiers were fascinated by ants much bigger than those in the States and startled by a wild pig charging through the grass: nothing outlandish. The giant creature that flattened the grass with its wing beats, however—that divided the two soldiers, for Hodgkinson wanted to talk about the “pterodactyl,” but his buddy preferred to pretend they had no encounter. . . .

The Bougainville Creature – Chapter Three

“Thank you, Brian. Your description reminds me of other accounts in the Southwest Pacific. May I ask some questions?”

Q: “Was anything coming out the back of the head (Whether classified as a crest, appendage, horn, or comb)?”

A: “It was like a horn.”

Q: “Can you remember the wing-flapping well enough to estimate the frequency? Thinking of one cycle as the time it takes for the wings to go up and also go down, how many seconds did it take for one cycle (up-and-down-flap)?”

A: “Estimate every 2 seconds.”

Q: “Was the tail straight? (Was any bending of the tail visible?)”

A: “As far as I can recall, straight.”

The Perth Creature – Chapter Six

The creature seen flying over Perth in December of 1997 may not have been the same species as the one seen by Duane Hodgkinson in New Guinea in 1944 or the ones seen by natives on Umboi Island, for the Perth creature seems to have had a short neck. But it appeared to those two Australians as a real living creature . . .