Sightings – Page 12 – Modern Pterosaur

September 29, 2012

More About the New Pterosaur Book

The new book is strictly in digital format and not available in traditional print form. Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea is shorter than the previous books by Whitcomb, about 76 pages, according to Amazon. Still, this is much longer than an article.

Is this new book a “bestseller?” From my experience looking through Amazon, Whitcomb’s new book is not a bestseller in the usual sense, at least not yet. Like many books sold online, the rankings change from hour to hour and day to day. On September 28th, this new book on modern pterosaurs was ranked number one among Kindle e-books that were classified in cryptozoology, after eliminating all the fictions and general paranormal ones.

Although much in the new book is similar to some of the eyewitness accounts in the older Searching for Ropens, other sightings are new and quite interesting to compare. I would say that in the new book sightings in Papua New Guinea outnumber those in Australia, but Whitcomb is calling for new Australian eyewitnesses to come forward, and this is important. When a few reports are published, then other people should be encouraged to also come forward. It has a cumulative effect.

Pterosaur Book is Bestseller in its Genre

Yesterday afternoon I searched on Amazon for the best-selling Kindle ebooks in the genre of nonfiction cryptozoology. I eliminated, one by one, the fictions and the paranormal books in which cryptozoology played only a limited role.

New Electronic Book on Pterosaurs in Australia and in PNG

Common Ground: Regarding Papua New Guinea, the new e-book has some of the same sightings as SFR, although there are a few added details here and there. The new sighting off the coast of Umboi Island is an exception, for it is absent from the older SFR. Both books have a chapter devoted to the Perth sighting of 1994.

September 22, 2012

Possible Pterosaurs in Southern California Storm Drains

I don’t mean to limit this to the underground drainage lines that take rain water quickly to the ocean. I also include the rivers and open storm channels that run through some areas of Southern California. Apparently at least a few flying creatures that may be ropens or related to the ropen are seen flying nearby.

The ropen is a large featherless flying creature with a long tail and is usually associated with Umboi Island in Papua New Guinea or at least with that tropical country in general. But descriptions from Americans, and Californians in particular, often connect with descriptions in Papua New Guinea and in Australia. This creature does not seem to be confined to one part of the globe, and why should it? Giant wings make it easy for the ropen to reach distant lands across the earth.

So where should we expect to find a ropen if one were to arrive in California, a ropen whose ancestry originated in tropical island environments in the southwest Pacific? Why not areas where there is water? Storm drain channels, such as are found in Southern California, could be ideal, should nocturnal ropens try keep away from human attention. They may fly through the channels at night, searching for rats and possums and other easy prey.

Ropens Near Storm Channels in Southern California

Another lady eyewitness saw what she called a “pterodactyl” near the traffic circle in Long Beach, just east of Signal Hill. This traffic circle is very near the beginning of another storm channel, the one that goes through California State University Long Beach.

Los Angeles County’s Modern Pterosaurs

So what would keep individual creatures from venturing out? What would keep them from spreading out across the planet over a period of a thousand years?

Umboi Island Ropen

“He acknowledged that he had been interviewed before. I had studied his previous video-recorded testimony and noticed that he was much more at ease than he appeared to be years earlier. It should be noted that the previous interview may have taken place soon after the sighting itself took place, so he may have been nervous being interviewed on camera.

September 12, 2012

New Electronic Book on Pterosaurs in Australia and in PNG

I’ll compare this new e-book, Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, with the print book Searching for Ropens. Both of them have details on pterosaur sightings in Papua New Guinea. Both are written by Jonathan Whitcomb.

General Genre: SFR, at least in the first edition, is cross genre: cryptozoology and Christian believes on the Bible. LPAPNG is strictly cryptozoology, with only a brief mention of creationist explorers.
Length: SFR is longer, with details on expedition experiences. LPAPNG gives the essentials about expeditions, but gives details on the eyewitness accounts.
Common Ground: Regarding Papua New Guinea, the new e-book has some of the same sightings as SFR, although there are a few added details here and there. The new sighting off the coast of Umboi Island is an exception, for it is absent from the older SFR. Both books have a chapter devoted to the Perth sighting of 1994.
Nit Picking: The covers of e-books are not physical, simply digital images. The new book, LPAPNG, has a “cover” with the same eyewitness sketches as another book by Whitcomb, namely Live Pterosaurs in America. This might leave an impression that those drawings of pterosaurs are based purely on ropens in Papua New Guinea and in Australia, but not so. They are from eyewitnesses in Cuba, decades ago. Purists might disapprove of that.
Misc: The new e-book does have some new ideas, although not many of them are completely absent from SFR. An exception is the explanation of why modern pterosaurs are seen in daylight when they are nocturnal. The new book gives details and plausible conjectures about pterosaurs being disturbed and awakened in the day, causing them to fly up into the air.

To be fair to the new book, I don’t mean to imply that those who have read the older SFR will gave little new from the new book. LPAPNG has a number of Australian sightings that are not found at all in SFR, for they are newly reported accounts, and straight from the mouths of eyewitnesses in Australia.

I guess I could also have compared the new book with the paperback Live Pterosaurs in America. They seem to be about the same length, but its hard to compare page numbers with digital space or with word counts. E-books have no page numbers.

For more information see “New Cryptozoology Book: Live Pterosaurs in Australia,” which I quote:

In modern eyewitness reports, long-tailed pterosaurs outnumber short-tails, at least four-to-one. Standard models of extinction make this ratio appear strange, for the long-tailed variety were thought to have dwindled before the short-tailed pterosaurs became dominant, at least that’s the theory.