Expeditions in Papua New Guinea – Page 8

September 4, 2010May 3, 2013

Old Biologist; New Pterosaur Insight

Evelyn Cheesman was no cryptozoologist. She explored remote jungles in New Guinea to discover new species of insects or new species of amphibians, not modern pterosaurs. This British biologist was respected in the scientific community; here is part of what Wikipedia says:

” . . . unable to train for a career as a veterinary surgeon due to restrictions on women’s education . . . she studied entomology, and was the first woman to be hired as a curator at Regent’s Park Zoo, in London. In 1924 she was invited to join a zoological expedition to the Marquesas and Galapagos Islands. She spent approximately twelve years on similar expeditions, travelling to New Guinea, the New Hebrides and other islands in the Pacific Ocean. In New Guinea she made a collecting expedition . . . collecting insects.

If my information is correct, it was in the early 1930’s when Cheesman was baffled by flying lights just below the top of a nearby ridge deep in the mainland of New Guinea. She wrote about the mysterious lights in her book The Two Roads of Papua; the publishing date was 1935.

The lights could not reasonably be explained away as coming from the locals, for they were glowing in a somewhat horizontal formation, inexplicable as human-caused. But in more recent decades, a number of explorers have searched in Papua New Guinea for flying creatures that are reported to be bioluminescent. The flying creatures have names like “duwas,” “ropen,” “seklo-bali,” and “indava.” They are said, by natives, to glow as they fly at night. This seems to be what Cheesman saw many years ago. She would have been shocked at the suggestion that she had been observing living pterosaurs.

August 25, 2010August 25, 2010

Bulverism and Pterosaurs

I’ve touched on the subject of bulverism previously, but I feel it deserves more attention. Since other blog pages contain more about this I’ll focus on one of them.

Bulverism and Extant Pterosaurs

C. S. Lewis, in the mid-20th Century, noticed an unfortunate trend becoming popular: Avoid reasoning, on whatever subject, by talking about how your opponent is silly in a mistake. . . . Lewis gave this habit a name: “bulverism.”

Some critics of the idea of extant pterosaurs have stooped to the lowest form of bulverism. . . . the remark by a commentor that information about the Kor of Papua New Guinea ”comes from a creationist blog (though they hide it quite well) so we need to take everything on it with a truck load of salt. Creaionists [read Creationists] will fabricate all kinds of rubbish to back up their fairy tales.”

How many ropen expeditions have creationists (by whatever definition of that label) led in Papua New Guinea over the past 17 years! How often has a creationist trudged along a jungle trail, hoping to learn about (or even see) a living pterosaur! Yet when did one of us report observing the clear form of a living pterosaur in Papua New Guinea during those 17 years? Never. We had too little time, too little money, and too few resources to mount any major expedition. The point? If even just one of us had any desire to deceive, how easy it would have been to lie about observing a living pterosaur!

Accusing ones opponents of fabricating “all kinds of rubbish to back up their fairy tales” appears to me to be the worst form of bulverism, for it insinuates that a whole group of investigators lie. Perhaps an evidence against that accusation becomes obvious when the accuser has ample opportunity to give specifics and then gives . . . nothing.

Truly it is sad when blog commenters reject everything from persons they disagree with, then label those with whom they disagree “liar.” What a sad state of human affairs!

May 19, 2010May 19, 2010

Sighting at Umboi Island, 2009

Bunsil Station, southern coast of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea On the southern coast of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, a bay shelters Opai Beach, the same beach where Paul Nation and Jonathan Whitcomb disembarked from banana boats in their respective 2002 and 2004 expeditions. Near the southeast edge of the bay is a government station called “Bunsil.”

From about 1993 through late 2004, at least five living-pterosaur expeditions, on Umboi Island, were led by Americans. In this part of Papua New Guinea, many natives call the giant nocturnal flying creature “ropen.” There is no mistaking it for the nocturnal flying fox fruit bat, for the ropen glows, for several seconds at a time, with what some researchers believe is intrinsic bioluminescence.

Rex Yapi is an accounting student at the University of Technology in Lae, Papua New Guinea. Around July of 2009, he was on a banana boat in Bunsil Bay, Umboi. Those on the boat became alarmed at a large creature that was mostly under water but approaching them. They stopped the boat as the creature passed, for apparently it was catching fish or something. Only the tail of the creature was above water, but what a tail! Rex estimated the length at six or seven meters, with a “diamond shape,” which may refer to a Rhamphorhynchoid tail flange.

It was obvious to the university student that they had observed the ropen. When Rex was able to obtain the use of a computer, he emailed the American researcher Jonathan Whitcomb and reported the incident, including his feelings about it. He said, “it was a frightening scene.”