Pterosaur Eyewitness

I rarely mention jaws that snap or claws that scratch. I write more on featherless features of long-tailed creatures, emphasizing both non-bird and non-bat evidence from eyewitnesses, and  I warn against a weakness in Western mentality, pleading for self-inoculation against the intellectual danger of bulverism. Laying aside those points, I’ve recently read the cryptozoology book Bird From Hell, not the best or second-best living-pterosaur nonfiction but it warns us of a more down-to-earth danger. It’s now time to mention what often captivates readers: teeth with an appetite to bite.

I hope that no pterosaur was responsible for any of the human deaths in British Columbia, Canada, along the 500-mile stretch of highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert, but I also hope that all attacks from irresponsible humans, against innocent human victims, will cease, and that this world will become a paradise in which death itself will cease. Notwithstanding all our hopes for the future, however, we now face a present danger, a warning from Gerald McIsaac, author of Bird From Hell, who believes that “most of the hitchhikers [on this highway at night] who disappear have been killed by this animal. It is also my opinion that many of the people who have disappeared have not been reported.”

Chapter Eight, “Highway of Tears,” in Bird From Hell reveals, “Amnesty International estimates that since 1969, thirty-two women and girls, most of them Aboriginal, have disappeared along that highway.” Nobody denies that some women and girls in this part of Canada are victims of abuse at home and that some of them hitchhike on this highway, making themselves vulnerable at night. But the general human population, at least the Native Americans in one area of northern British Columbia, keep indoors at night to avoid the “devil bird,” and some eyewitnesses of that flying creature have been attacked by an animal with wings, when those persons have stayed outside after sunset.

Of course it is possible that aboriginals are superstitious and that all the missing persons, over the decades, who have walked that long highway at night were attacked by human rapists and murderers; that seems possible on the surface. But animalistic humans do not fit all the reported encounters at night in British Columbia, according to the book Bird From Hell.

What about the dead horse mentioned in that book? Much of its body was found by a tree. Of course ordinary non-human predators could be responsible, or so it seems. But why were parts of its body in the top of that tree, with some of the branches broken?

What about the girl in Kwadacha (northern British Columbia)? She was outside one dark night, when it seemed that “one of the boys” was spying on her. She was big for her age, and decided to teach him a lesson by charging him. At the end of the charge, she came to a stop. It was not one of the boys . . . She was facing a creature that she later called the “devil bird.” It released a “cloud of smoke” and flew away. Whatever the species of that flying creature, pterosaur, whatever, it was not one of the boys or one of the animalistic humans who have attacked girls on the Highway of Tears.

I don’t believe everything that I’ve read in Bird From Hell, but other cryptozoology books mention “pterodactyl attacks,” even when a different name is used for the flying creature. Take one account in the pioneering nonfiction On the Track of Unknown Animals, by Bernard Heuvelmans:

Coming straight at me only a few feet above the water was a black thing the size of an eagle. . . . its lower jaw hung open and bore a semicircle of pointed white teeth set about their own width apart from each other. . . .  And just before it became too dark to see, it came again, hurtling back down the river, its teeth chattering, the air “shss-shssing” as it was cleft by the great, black, dracula-like wings. . . . the brute made straight for George. He ducked.

Those are the words of the well-known biologist-explorer Ivan T. Sanderson (1911-1973). Within minutes, a large flying creature had dived straight at a human twice; I would call that behavior “attacking.”

I have read other reports of early-to-mid twentieth-century attacks, in Africa, from pterosaur-like flying creatures; but in late-2004 I did more than read: I led a small expedition on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, where I interviewed an old villager who encountered a strange flying creature. Micheal told me that he had witnessed, in 1949, the glowing ropen one night, when it dug up and carried away a human body that had just been buried in a grave in Gomlongon Village. I would not call that behavior “attacking,” for the man was already dead, but it was extremely rude to the family and friends of the deceased. If I were a resident of Umboi Island, I would not allow my children to wander too far, alone at night. And if I were a resident of northern British Columbia, I would avoid a long walk at night.

Online references to the “demon flyer” of Papua New Guinea are easy to find; but finding both clear thinking and dependable knowledge in this area is not so easy.

Ropen: a Demon Flyer?

. . . a brief Google search makes me suspect that the island of ”Rambunzo,” by that spelling, does not exist in Papua New Guinea; perhaps it is a misspelling, for the first few pages of Google searching refer [only] to cryptozoology sites and Wikipedia has nothing by that spelling. But if this is a misspelling of “Rambutyo,” (near Manus Island) we need to consider what at least some of the people of the northern islands of Papua New Guinea call the large nocturnal flying creature : “kor.” My contact person in that part of PNG is clear about that word for what Umboi Islanders (to the south) call “ropen.” “Kor” is their word, which I suspect is used by the people of Rambutyo.

That post gives many more details on this use of the phrase “demon flyer” in referring to the flying creature that is called by a number of names in Papua New Guinea. I’ll add here what was left out there.

On Umboi Island, at least some of the villagers have a different perspective on the concept of spiritual beings, at least different from many Americans. An intelligent being need not be either 100% spirit or 100% physical. The ropen of Umboi, according to Darius (who recited native traditions to the American explorer Paul Nation, in 2002), is like a spirit but also like a man. It flies around at night and sometimes comes down from a mountain to hunt game animals. To many islanders, this being may appear to be both spiritual (flying) and human (hunting animals for food).

In addition, natives may have a more complex concept of spirits than most Westerners have. A spirit, to them, need not be either 100% good or 100% bad. In that sense, at least, “demon flyer” seems a poor translation for a word that probably does not have a purely negative connotation for them.

Addendum

Marfa Lights Explanation

We need to consider the apparent intelligence in the movements of those CE-III Marfa Lights, for sometimes some things are exactly as they appear to be, in this case, intelligent.

The third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America (published in this version in November of 2011) is available on Amazon.com and from some other book sellers.

From the third paragraph of the back cover:

Americans, for years, have reported obvious living pterosaurs, with sightings in Washington state, California, New Mexico, Texas, Ohio, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, Kansas, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Missouri.

Who is an expert on live pterosaurs? Only a few nonfiction books and maybe two scientific papers have been written on modern living pterosaurs, so what makes a person an expert? Probably no college or university offers even one class on this narrow niche of cryptozoology, so let’s define an expert as one who has interviewed at least three eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs (or been directly involved with at least three interviews), since the beginning of this century.

Please excuse the repetition, but we also need to review some of the names for modern pterosaurs (English-language and otherwise):

Pterodactyl, dragon, flying dinosaur, prehistoric bird, dinosaur bird, ropen, indava, seklo-bali, wawanar, kor

Exploring Papa New Guinea

The following four Americans have explored in Papua New Guinea, within the past eleven years, searching for living pterosaurs in remote tropical rain forests. This is not an all-inclusive list but few other cryptozoologists, if any, have given nearly so much of their time in this kind of search. I list these adventurous explorers in order of when they first interviewed eyewitnesses in Papua New Guinea.

Paul Nation

This expert in ratites (flightless birds like ostriches) first became involved in ropen searches by accompanying Carl Baugh (who no longer searches for living pterosaurs) on an expedition on Umbi Island, PNG. In 2002, Paul took his son Nathanael to Umboi, where they talked with many natives but saw no ropen.

Paul was instrumental in helping organize the two ropen expedition of 2004, both of which were searches on Umboi. He was unable to go along that year but had his own expedition with Jacob Kepas, late in 2006, deep in the mainland of Papua New Guinea. That expedition resulted in one daylight sighting of a giant indava by Kepas and several nighttime indava-light sightings by Nation. The video footage recorded by Nation in 2006, showing two glowing objects near the top of a ridge near Tawa Village, was found to be strange: not any camp fires or airplane lights or flash lights or meteors any other commonplace explanation.

On the sideline, the indava lights are seen just south of the area where the British biologist Evelyn Cheesman saw strange flying lights in the 1930′s. But the duration of the lights Cheesman saw relate more closely to the ropen lights of Umboi than the indava lights, even though Umboi is further away and in a different environment (coastal reefs for ropens to fish rather than deep jungle interiors).

Jonathan Whitcomb

With the advisory help of Paul Nation, Whitcomb was able to embark on his own expedition on Umboi Island, in 2004. Like David Woetzel, he eventually wrote a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal of science, on this subject. Whitcomb has written two books (in multiple editions) and about a thousand web pages and blog posts on living pterosaurs. A few of his web pages are non-English including French, German, Hungarian, Spanish, Japanese, and Polish. He receives emails from eyewitness from around the world and may be the world’s leading expert in worldwide sighting reports. He may be the only cryptozoologist who devotes anything close to a full-time effort, six days a week for eight years, to the subject of living pterosaurs. His controversial ideas have been noted in various newspapers, mostly American, including the Houston Chronicle.

Garth Guessman

With David Woetzel and native Jacob Kepas, Garth Guessman explored Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, searching for ropens. Just a few weeks after the Whitcomb expedition, these three explorers interviewed many islanders, most of whom had not been interviewed by Whitcomb.

According to Creationwiki:

Guessman’s knowledge of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur fossils allowed him to notice an important clue about the ropen‘s classification [being the same kind of flying creature]. [Guessman and Woetzel] learned that the native traditions describe the ropen‘s tail as being stiff, never moving except near where it connects to the body. Guessman recognized that this relates to the stiffening extension rods of Rhamphorhynchoid vertebrae: all but a few vertebrae are locked into stiffness; the few that are flexible are near where the pterosaur’s tail connects to the body.

Guessman has lectured in church and creation-association meetings and continues to support the concept of modern living pterosaurs and their relevance to the origin of life.

David Woetzel

Cameroon Expedition in Africa

They call it li’kela-bembe, and they revere it for its fierce reign over the Boumba river. They have never told a soul about this muscled beast that feasts on molombo fruit and pummels crocodiles with its serpentine tail – because nobody ever asked.

Nobody, that is, until last November, when Concord businessman David Woetzel went crashing through the virgin forests of Cameroon on the trail of this much-rumored but ever-elusive modern-day dinosaur. Now, thanks in part to Woetzel, this mysterious li’kela-bembe may be roaming into range of a camera lens for the first time.

But David Woetzel has searched jungles other than in Africa and for creatures other than dinosaurs (pterosaurs are scientifically classified as being seperate from dinosaurs). Although he never saw the dinosaur in Africa, he did see the ropen light in Papua New Guinea.

Woetzel Sees the Light on Umboi Island

“My sighting was so quick that it was impossible to get a video—maybe 2 seconds  . . . almost golden and shimmering around the edges. It looked like an old-fashioned street light in the fog. There was no tail and it was flying horizontal from  Mt. Barik toward  Mt. Tolo.” (Woetzel was interviewed by Jonathan Whitcomb soon after this sighting)

Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition of the nonfiction book by Jonathan David Whitcomb)

About eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs, Jonathan Whitcomb has written more books, more web pages, and more blogs than any other person on earth. . . . After interviewing many natives [on Umboi Island, in 2004], he returned to the United States convinced of the identity of the ropen: a living Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur; but he did not return to his former profession: He became a writer, proclaiming to the world that pterosaurs are still living.

Traditional news media writers, in the past, have given us detailed (or not-so-detailed) accounts of apparent encounters with “dragons” or “pterodactyls,” although the article in the mid-ninteenth-century Illustrated London News now seems highly suspect, regarding its origin. But more recent news writers have also commented on sightings of possible pterosaurs.

Author Tracks Pterodactyls Among Us

Matt Coker, in a December, 2010, post on a blog for a California newspaper, mentioned my conjecture about the Marfa Lights of southwest Texas (I’m still not nearly 100% certain about bioluminescent pterosaurs causing some of the Marfa Lights; we need more close-sightings).

Jonathan Whitcomb is actually based in Long Beach, where as a cryptozoology author he offers an explanation of the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas, and Papua New Guinea. Human inhabitants in both places have observed in the sky balls of light that seem to split into two, fly away from each other and then turn around and fly back together.

Such sights have produced legends about dancing devils or ghosts and scientific explanations involving lightning or earthlights. Whitcomb has a far different explanation: bioluminescent predators flying together . . .

Of course the subject of flying predators causing CE-III Marfa Lights is a deep subject, too deep for most news articles.

Live Pterosaur Media Center

This online “media room” or “press room” makes it easier for news writers to gather together the information and images they need regarding sightings and investigations of apparent living pterosaurs.

Contrary to what many paleontologists believe, some cryptozoologists, including Jonathan Whitcomb of Long Beach, California, believe that one or more species of pterosaurs are still living, although most, at least, seem to be nocturnal and uncommon. For eight years, Whitcomb has gathered and analyzed eyewitness reports from around the world, including North America. He has concluded that a number of species of pterosaurs still live on the earth.