critics – Page 2 – Pterosaur Eyewitness

November 25, 2014

Donald Prothero and “Fake Pterosaurs”

Another paleontologist has stepped outside his field of expertise and railed against my writings about modern pterosaurs: Donald Prothero, who specializes in mammalian paleontology, according to Wikipedia. His November 24, 2014, post is titled “Fake Pterosaurs and Sock Puppets” on skeptic.com. I avoid linking to libelous pages, and this one includes “Whitcomb admitted the deception in July, 2014” and links to one of my posts. Strange to tell, but that post of mine explains why I was NOT being dishonest in using pen names. Here’s the link: Jonathan Whitcomb pen names. It gives me some hope that Prothero was making an honest mistake, when he included that link; nevertheless, his post appears sure to lead his readers astray from the truth, not only about my motivations but about investigations of living-pterosaur sighting reports in general. I must respond.

I’ll not say much about the sock puppet accusations here; I’ve written much on it already. For those who go to that link in question, it may become obvious that I was not trying to deceive anybody concerning reports of modern living pterosaurs, including the flying creature called ropen; for those who read only that post by Prothero, however, it can seem like I’ve tried to deceive people about the ropen and that I did so almost single-handedly. Let us look deeper.

Do “virtually all” writings about the ropen come from just one person: Jonathan Whitcomb?

My blog posts and web pages outnumber those of anyone else on the subject of modern “pterodactyls” or primitive flying creatures that have been assumed to have been long extinct; that need not suggest that I have been dishonest. Skeptics include at least three of the best-known paleontologists in the world; that need not suggest my investigation over the past eleven years has been in vain. Look at some details.

Notice, if you read that post by Dr. Prothero, the absence of the following words:

Umboi
expedition
exploration
eyewitness

Now notice the absence of the following names of explorers, on his post:

Paul Nation
Garth Guessman
David Woetzel
Jacob Kepas
James Blume

“Whitcomb” is found twelve times on his post. If only it were saying only nice things about people. Oh well, I’m getting used to it.

What does Donald Prothero think I have been writing about for eleven years? Most of my web page publications have been in blog-post format, and those posts number well over a thousand. Yet to anyone who wants to look deeper, it will become obvious why Google has not penalized my pages about eyewitness accounts of these flying creatures: My posts are not spam-repetition of previously published pages. Their quoting of other pages is limited, as is this post by Prothero (“Fake Pterosaurs and Sock Puppets”).

A paleontologist has stepped outside his area of expertise in yet another way, declaring that my online writings are a “classic case” of “sock puppetry” online. Nonsense! The majority of my posts have been under my name of Jonathan Whitcomb (or Jon Whitcomb), NOT any pen name. And by the way, for a spammer to use many alias would hardly hide repetitive content from detection by a search engine system like Google. It seems Prothero is again outside his field of knowledge, making another assumption without any deep investigation beforehand. (I’ll leave sock puppetry for another post, but I used two pen names because I was falsely accused of dishonesty, NOT to be dishonest. Readers really needed to be enlightened by eyewitness reports, without being distracted by my name.)

Expeditions in Papua New Guinea

I was surprised at the way Prothero referred to the Destination Truth and Monsterquest episodes that related to the ropen of Papua New Guinea. He declares that those two television show episodes were “based on the obsessions of one individual.” Really?! I was consulted by the pre-production researchers of both Destination Truth and Monsterquest before their expeditions in the southwest Pacific, it is true. But many persons have been involved in interviews in Papua New Guinea, before my own 2004 expedition in that remote area of the planet.

Again Mr. Prothero appears to have stepped outside his area of expertise. I would not have expected him to deeply investigate how those two production teams decided to include the ropen in their shows, yet one paleontologist has taken a big leap of faith, and a blind leap apparently, in assuming that I, Jonathan Whitcomb, as a lone individual, inspired those television producers to pay for teams to be sent to Papua New Guinea. Some of my web pages may have caught their attention but the power of persuasion was in the eyewitness testimonies.

Other paleontologists, including Darren Naish, have at least dipped their toes into the ocean of eyewitness sighting reports, before rejecting everything that chilled them. Dr. Prothero seems to pretend that the ocean does not even exist, at least in this post “Fake Pterosaurs and Sock Puppets.” Dr. Prothero, burying ones head in a fossil bed in the middle of North America does not make the Pacific Ocean disappear.

Eyewitnesses are the point

For those who read his post about me, I would ask, “Where do I get new material for writing countless web pages about apparent living pterosaurs?” I promise I do not just repeat myself endlessly. I continue to get emails from eyewitnesses of flying creatures that appear to have been living pterosaurs. I now have reports from eyewitnesses from four continents and from islands in the Pacific. No need for much repetition. I write about new sighting reports and compare them to older accounts.

Now please notice the following names of eyewitnesses, persons from various places and with various backgrounds and religious beliefs. Each of these names is found in the fourth edition of my nonfiction book Searching for Ropens and Finding God. Not all of them believe in modern pterosaurs, but most of them do, having seen them. (Some of these persons witnessed a flying light at night, rather than the form of an apparent pterosaur.)

Blume, James
Bunnel, James
Carson, Patty
Cheesman, Evelyn
Conrad, Venice
Cooper, Sherry
Cottingham, Steven
Eunice of Umboi Island
Fabian of Salamaua
Gates, Joshua
Gima, William
Grotty, Rob
Guessman, Garth
Hennessy, Brian
Hodgkinson, Duane
Jonah Jim
Kau, Mark
Kepas, Jacob
Koro, Gideon
Koro, Wesley
Kuhn, Eskin
Laura in Arkansas
Leonard of Opai
Marcy, Milt
Meixner, Kevin
Moke, David
Nation, Paul
Nolo, Dickson
Norman, Scott
Paina, Luke
Paradise, Sandra
Quiroz, Lydia
Ragu, Jonathan
Rhodriquez, Devin
Schroder, David
Stew (in Mexico)
Watters, Professor Steven
Woetzel, David
Wooten, Susan
Zacharia of Owongai Village

The above is not a complete listing, in my book, of all the eyewitnesses of possible pterosaurs, but it should suffice.

Why not listen to the eyewitnesses? They are the point of all these investigations in cryptozoology, including the work of my associates, Paul Nation, Cliff Paiva, Garth Guessman, David Woetzel, Jacob Kepas, and others. I testify that I have not been alone in this work, and the eyewitnesses deserve to be heard.

Eunice, an eyewitness on Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea

Garth Guessman and Duane Hodgkinson, both eyewitnesses of one or more living pterosaurs

David Woetzel, another cryptozoologist-eyewitness of living pterosaurs

Jonathan Whitcomb, nonfiction writer and author who believes many of the eyewitnesses

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Is there no new evidence for modern pterosaurs?

Ricky Kearns and family members witnessed a large flying creature at night, and it had wings that were glowing. This was in Point Pleasant, although Ricky mentioned to me that what he saw did not look like what the Mothman is reported to look like. Nevertheless, there may be a relationship with some sightings of what has been labeled “Mothman.”

Modern pterosaurs, AKA “flying dinosaurs”

Look up “pterosaur” in a dictionary and one of the first words you’ll see is “extinct.” Many Americans call them “pterodactyls” or “flying dinosaurs.” Few Americans have admitted believing that those “prehistoric” flying creatures could still be living, few indeed, until recently.

Flying creature of the night

So who do you call? I hope you’ll contact me, Jonathan Whitcomb. As far as I know, I am the only person on earth who has devoted anything like a full-time effort, over years, to interview eyewitnesses of apparent living pterosaurs or ropens, promoting the idea that these flying creatures are not extinct but very much alive.

Live Pterosaur Media – press releases

A physicist [Clifford Paiva], who examined video footage of two strange lights that explorers think are bioluminescent pterosaurs, declares that the glow is not from meteors, lanterns, campfires or an airplane.

A quest for discovering modern pterosaurs

September 8, 2014January 3, 2019

Ropen “Extinction” on Wikipedia

By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

The “ropen” page on Wikipedia, at one time, had many paragraphs, delighting some cryptozoologists but annoying some skeptics. One biology professor in Minnesota, in particular, detested the many web pages he saw that supported belief in modern living pterosaurs, including the long-tailed ropen. It may have been a coincidence, but when he wrote his own blog post, ridiculing me about my writings about the ropen—that was about the time that the “ropen” page became extinct on Wikipedia. With limited warning, it was deleted, with the excuse that it did not provide enough mainstream opinion about the flying cryptid.

Why did no biologist or paleontologist seem to make any “ropen” statement on Wikipedia? Who knows? I tried to quote the words of one paleontologist Dr. David Martill, to save the Wikipedia page from deletion, but one self-appointed editor, with not enough patience to look deeply, deleted my quotation. It was unfair, but I could not spare more hours of work to submit text that could again be deleted within five minutes.

The “Ropen” page was censored through deletion on Wikipedia

I don’t think Dr. Martill (the pterosaur fossil expert) had anything to do with deleting the Wikipedia page; whether of not the biology professor in Minnesota caused the censoring, directly or indirectly, I don’t know. But since the man in Minnesota railed against the countless web pages that I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have written on the subject of modern pterosaurs, I now submit the following as evidence that I am not the “only” source of information about ropens. None of the following three pages were written by me:

Ropen of Papua New Guinea

I don’t believe this page is perfectly accurate in all details. The wingspan estimate given by Duane Hodgkinson was actually about twenty-nine feet rather than twenty feet, for it was similar to the size of a Piper Tri-Pacer. Also, I do not believe that “demon flyer” is the literal meaning of the word “ropen.”

Unknown-Explorers – Ropen

I also see problems with some details on this page, including the wingspan estimates and confusion about “ropen” and “duah.” Different names of flying creatures, among natives having hundreds of different village languages, is hardly evidence that different species of animals are being described. Some ropens are small and older ones are larger. “Duah” surely is a mistake by a Western explorer, many years ago; the correct name is “duwas.”

Ropen on Destination Truth

This actually has little text. It does mention extinction being avoided by this “pterodactyl”-like creature. The page has links to Destination Truth pages on cryptids like the Orang Pendek, Ogopogo, and Swamp Ape.

Critics and Bulverism

The British author and philosopher C. S. Lewis used the word “bulverism” for the habit some people fell into to avoid actual reasoning on topics. A person may dismiss an opposing idea by explaining why the opponent is “so silly.” Some critics of modern-pterosaur investigations find fault with imagined motivations of me and my associates, using that bulverism to avoid the real issue of whether or not all species of pterosaurs became extinct. Why not, instead, just discuss the subject?

UPDATE: January 3, 2019

As of January 2, 2019, there is still no page on the English Wikipedia named “ropen.” On the other hand, it does have a page titled Kongamoto, which is about a cryptid in Africa that seems to resemble the ropen of Papua New Guinea. Wikipedia also has a page on the winged cryptid Orang-bati, which is reported to fly in Indonesia.

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Ropen made extinct on Wikipedia

. . . his blog post may have contributed to the extinction of that page on Wikipedia, however (“There are no living pterosaurs and ‘ropen’ is a stupid fantasy”). It seems likely that one or more of his students or one or more of the readers of his post were involved.

Ropen Q & A – Modern Pterosaur

I just got an email from a reader of my digital nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. The man’s questions deserve answers but for everybody, not just this one reader.

April 21, 2014May 14, 2014

Ropen Critic on Youtube

crude head sketches evaluated by Hodgkinson

Around September of 2013, the following comment appeared in response to the “Ropen-Pterodactyl American Eyewitness” Youtube video:

“Wow! The problem here is these creatures would have to live in populations in order to survive. They would be seen by lots of different people (not just wacky fundies) and would be well known to science. It is pathetic you people live in a fantasy. Join the rest of us in a place called…the real world.”

What did that skeptic mean by saying that these creatures “would be seen by lots of different people?” Garth Guessman and I created the video, and we could very well be labeled “fundies” by this critic, but the sighting was in 1944, years before we were born: Obviously, we did not see the creature reported in this video. Mr. Hodgkinson did not reveal anything about his religious beliefs in this video, so why assume he is a “fundy?” What did the skeptic mean? I suggest this critic was not thinking clearly and was also not thinking deeply.

In Searching for Ropens and Finding God, three estimates are given for the number of persons who have encountered a modern living pterosaur, worldwide, during the past fifty years. The lowest estimate involved encounters with obvious pterosaurs: 70 thousand; another estimate was 7 million; the third was 128 million eyewitness encounters. That last estimate (like the second one) refers to all actual encounters that humans have had with modern pterosaurs during the past fifty years, and that is a conservative estimate, although it’s critical to know one factor: Those were mostly encounters at night and the vast majority of them were with limited human visibility, so the persons did not recognize what had flown overhead, with few exceptions. Maybe less than 1% were aware that it was not a bird or bat that they had encountered in the dark.

Yet even the lowest estimate—70,000—seems quite enough to be labeled “lots of different people,” for these were worldwide sightings over a fifty year period, with eyewitnesses from various languages and religious beliefs. Did the skeptic assume that Hodgkinson’s sighting was the only sighting?

The critic gives no indication or suggestion that he has seen or read of any other eyewitness sighting report of an apparent pterosaur, so we are left to think this: He has only seen this one report. Why does he think that “lots of different people” have not seen anything similar? Has he interviewed every person who has ever lived on this planet?

And what did he mean by “the real world?” Consider our two expeditions in 2004, in which Garth Guessman and I (and several others) explored a jungle north of where Hodgkinson reported he encountered a huge flying creature? Is not Papua New Guinea part of the “real world?”

The following are excerpts from the nonfiction book Searching for Ropens and Finding God:

Science can thrive in examining relevant details, when we ponder possibilities. Of course we also need to think clearly. . . . we live in a big world, and we need to learn what people experience in the present; we need that more than we need to be bound by old ideas about imagined worldwide extinctions of numberless species of a general type, regardless of how comfortable our imaginations can make us feel temporarily. Listen to experiences of common people more often than the imaginations of professors.

. . . My experience, from 2003 to 2013, has shown me . . . [that] eyewitnesses have a variety of religious beliefs, and not all supporters of these investigations share the same faith.”

So what might we all agree upon, including the critic who says, “It is pathetic you people live in a fantasy?” Would we not all agree that in the Western world, when a few persons report a sighting of a living pterosaur and they create a video and upload it to Youtube, at least one person will ridicule it with words like those we have examined, words of this skeptic? We have all seen that, and even the skeptic would find it difficult to deny that he had ridiculed us. So what can we conclude? When a few persons report a pterosaur sighting in that way, it will be ridiculed. That is why, in the Western world, few persons report their sightings, and that is part of why this wonderful discovery has been delayed for so long in the United States and other Western countries.

Survey form given to Duane Hodgkinson, in which he chose the longest head crest

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The new nonfiction book Searching for Ropens and Finding God

From page 183:

The wings were somewhere between 15 and 20 feet wide and they covered the entire opening to the U-shaped inlet when they were open. The wings were bat shaped without feathers, the head’s silhouette looked like a point (again, could not see facial features as it had the moon behind it) like a head crest but what I was looking at more than anything else was its large, sharp talons.