Pterosaur Eyewitness

The American Duane Hodgkinson and the Australian Brian Hennessy have something in common: They have seen, in daylight, in Papua New Guinea, a huge long-tailed featherless flying creature. In the blog Live Pterosaurs, “Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen,” we read:

The cryptid seen in New Guinea, by Duane Hodgkinson in 1944 and by Brian Hennessy in 1971, I have named “Hodgkinson-Hennessy Ropen.” Similarities between the descriptions given to me by these two eyewitnesses struck me as too much for coincidence. . . .

As I mentioned in my scientific paper (in The Creation Research Society Quarterly, Volume 45, Number 3, “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific”), these different lengths of head crest I believe fall within the range of eyewitness error. In other words, the creatures observed by these two men could very well have had the same length of head crest (relative to the size of the head) . . .  it seems likely that the species is the same for the 1944 and 1971 sightings.

I have interviewed both of these eyewitnesses, finding both of them to be highly credible. Nothing in either the substance of their testimonies or in the way they communicated with me gave any hint of any hoax or any reasonable possibility of any misidentification error.

Pterosaurs are sometimes called “dinosaur birds,” even though they are neither dinosaurs nor birds.

When I began interviewing Gideon Koro, I was still assuming that at least ”ten or twenty” ropens live on Umboi Island. I came to explore the island to videotape at least one of the apparent-pterosaurs, but here I was, videotaping an eyewitness (Whitcomb-Kenda 2004 expedition). When my questioning got to the number of ropens that he and his six friends had seen years ago, Gideon surprised me, staring at me as if I were very ignorant: They had seen only one ropen. I resumed questioning; I’d have to figure out that puzzle later.

When I got to the tail-length of the ropen, Gideon said, “sefan meetuh.” “Seven meters?” I asked. “Yea.” Only later did I tie this length-estimate to the puzzle of the “ten or twenty” comment in an interview many years earlier. That first interview with Gideon (around 1994) involved a question about the size of the creature. When the two interviewers looked away at a nearby house (to get an idea of ropen-size), Gideon said something about “ten or twenty.” The interviewers thought that he meant the numbers of creatures. He must, however, have still been talking about size, for fifteen meters (the medium of ten and twenty) is roughly similar to the length of a ropen that has a tail length of seven meters.

It was his third expedition in Papua New Guinea, but the first one on the mainland. Deep in the mountainous interior, in Tawa Village, at 7:20 p.m., on Nov 9, 2006, Paul Nation videotaped two lights on a nearby ridge. A few weeks later, in Central California, Cliff Paiva (a missile defense physicist) analyzed the video footage, concluding that the two lights were not from any campfires, flashlights, car headlights, meteors, or airplanes. They were also not from any camera artifacts or paste-on hoax. Paiva was unable to resolve the structure that creatured those two lights, for the recording had been done on a typical video camera, not an expensive thermal imaging recorder. But according to his associate living-pterosaur investigators, Paul Nation was the first American to bring back video evidence for living bioluminescent pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea.

An article in the Creation Research Society Quarterly (Volume 45, Number 3, “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific”) states:

The first American to bring back video evidence for the bioluminescence of the ropen was Paul Nation, who explored near Tawa Village in late 2006. He saw a number of flying lights on several nights and videotaped, for about fifteen seconds, two lights that were on a ridge where there were no roads, cars, or campfires.

According to Wikipedia (English Wikipedia: “ropen”):

In late 2006, Paul Nation, of Texas, explored a remote mountainous area on the mainland of Papua New Guinea. He videotaped two lights that the local natives called ‘indava.’ Nation believed the lights were from the bioluminescence of creatures similar to the ropen of Umboi Island.

From Searching for Ropens (second edition, nonfiction book):

[We] “saw one yellow glow start from a small glow to a bright glow and then a second appearance start and increase in intensity. The second and higher up the mountain glow, flew up and over the ridge and out of sight. While the first glow went out. 10 pm saw a single yellow glow flying along the mountain ridge to the east of our location following the terrain up and down going south to north.”

From Live Pterosaurs in America (nonfiction book, published in 2009):

On the Papua New Guinea mainland, in 2006, Paul Nation and his associate, native minister Jacob Kepas, explored deep in the highland interior. One night, Paul videotaped two glowing objects at the top of a ridge. The natives attribute this kind of light to large flying creatures that used to carry away animals and children from their village.

More resources:

Giant Bat and ropen of Papua New Guinea

Problems with a bat interpretation (this blog site)

Paul Nation, the most active LP explorer (another blog on living pterosaurs)

Sketch by Eskin C. Kuhn, 1971

While stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1971, Eskin Kuhn saw, in daylight, two pterosaurs flying about 100 feet above the ground. They were close enough for Kuhn to notice details, and, being talented in realistic drawing, he soon sketched what he had observed. That sketch has been around for many years, but it deserves a closer look, for other eyewitnesses have seen a similar creature.

I spoke with Mr. Kuhn by phone, briefly, late in February of 2010. His manner of speech and substance of conversation convinced me that he had not played any hoax; he had honestly reported a pterosaur sighting. He soon wrote me a letter, part of which I now relate.

“It had a bony protuberance at the chest . . . and the neck was crooked (at what in a man would be the Adam’s apple). The head was disproportionately large with a long beak and long crest behind. The spine had clear vertebrae at the shoulder diminishing in size as it went lower. It had a kite-like wing structure where the bat-skin type of membrane was stretched over what appeared to be extensions of the hand. . .”

The head of the Kuhn pterosaur bears some resemblance to the pterosaur head drawn by an eyewitness of what I have labeled “Hammerhead Ropen” (seen in the Eastern United States in 2008). That eyewitness is also talented in realistic drawing, being a professional artist. Unfortunately, she has not yet given permission for her sketches to be published.

Another resource: Living Pterosaurs in Cuba