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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.

  1. 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.
  2. Length: SFR is longer, with details on expedition experiences. LPAPNG gives the essentials about expeditions, but gives details on the eyewitness accounts.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

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Is the Ropen a Myth?

What is a myth? I think of it as an old fiction. But two ingredients there seem to be in what makes something a myth.

  1. It is very old or an old story
  2. It is restricted to a particular part of the world

People from all over the world, in recent years, see flying creatures that are too much like pterosaurs. That goes against both of the above points.

Here are some examples:

  • 2011: Two men in San Diego, California, see two huge flying creatures
  • 2012: A woman in Lakewood, California, sees a large dragon-pterodactyl
  • 2010: A married couple from Oregon see a ropen around the Columbia River
  • 2009: Student of a university in Papua New Guinea sees the ropen of Umboi Island at a close distance in the daytime
  • 2012: A woman in Connecticut, at dusk, saw a “giant flying creature” that looked like the “rath from Lord of the Rings”
  • 2012: A woman in Brooklyn, New York, in mid-summer at about 6:30 p.m., saw a creature that reminded her of a dragon. It had “a strange shaped head like the pterodactyl pictures”

The Ropen of Columbia River Gorge

We were talking to each other when all of a sudden coming left to right across the highway about 100 yards (give or take) in front of us came the most odd looking thing I have ever seen flying.  My wife and I both immediately said “what was that?” . . . it came swooping over the trees on the left side of the highway.

Smithsonian Proclaims Ropen Myth

Brian Switek made some serious errors of judgment in his “Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth.” It was the August 16, 2010, posting on the Smithsonian Magazine, online publication.

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Ropen Still Lives on Umboi Island

Since the 1990’s, when Young Earth Creationists first began exploring Umboi Island, the ropen had been elusive, usually refusing even a distant view of its pterosaurian qualities. In the 2002 expedition by Paul Nation and his son Nathanael, there was no sighting. But both of the two expeditions of 2004 resulted in a sighting, although they were at a distance and only involved the flying light. No pterosaur features were observed.

We’ve had no American-led expedition on Umboi Island since 2004, but in 2009 Rex, a native of Tarawe Village and a student at a university on the mainland, during one of his trips between the city of Lae and Umboi Island saw the ropen. He and others on the boat observed the ropen on the south coast of the island, although only its tail was above the surface of the water when they passed by in the banana boat. The ropen still lives there.

crypotozoologist Paul Nation crosses a river in Papua New Guinea in 2002

Ropen Close to Bunsil Station

I saw that its tail is about 6-7 meters long [about twenty feet long] with sharp diamond shape. It was an awesome scenerio.

Pterosaurs Still Living

It was around 1994 when the seven “boys” (probably in their early teens) climbed up to Lake Pung. Soon after they had arrived, the ropen flew down to just above the surface of the crater lake.

Nocturnal Ropen in California

She looked up to see a strange winged creature that immediately flew off, startled by the human who had suddenly come out from under the nearby gazebo.

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