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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.

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Freakish Frigate Bird

Tales of pterosaurs are one thing; photos and videos of Frigate birds are another. The confusion between the two has become common enough to elicit a response here, for there is little actual resemblance. I now list web pages that are enlightening in this regard.

How Absurd! A Frigate Bird!

… the beginning of that video shows an obvious Frigate Bird soaring as Frigate Birds will soar. I’ve lost count of how many times I have responded to that video footage, explaining that it does not show any ropen but only a common ocean-going bird.

Living-Pterosaur Email Newsletter

 I realize that some believers in ropens know little or nothing about Frigate birds. Please note that when something is soaring, in daylight, over a beach or school of fish, and the wings resemble the wings of a Frigate bird, then we need to consider it a Frigate bird, unless there is something noteworthy that makes it differ from ANY kind of Frigate bird.

Frigate Birds Are Not Pterosaurs

 One video is so obvious that it brings up a question: “Why did the person who put up the video not realize the obvious?” The bird has the white throat-chest common for some Frigate Birds and it has the wing-shape of a Frigate Bird.

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Another Modern Pterosaur

It’s not that I have nothing original to say today. There now seems to be so much written, online, about reports of living pterosaurs, that another quote seems in order. This one is from another page with the title “Modern Pterosaur.”

The eyewitnesses come from a number of countries and they have various beliefs and backgrounds, yet most of them have seen at least somewhat similar creatures. Common descriptions include a large or giant size, featherlessness, and long tail, and a head crest. It matters not whether the eyewitness is a supposedly superstitious native of Papua New Guinea or an airplane pilot, the creatures observed are described like pterosaurs, not any bird or bat.

. . . over a period of years, circular reasoning has become involved in discrediting the cryptozoologists who have investigated sightings of apparent living pterosaurs: Investigators are criticized by rejecting popular ideas about extinction, and those investigators are then dismissed by ridiculing their intelligence or integrity, thereby causing others to disregard the possibility of modern living pterosaurs because of the “reputation” of those who promote the idea. Let’s dispense with personal attacks and communicate through reasoning, please.

On the subject of “not any bird or bat,” I refer to another page: Flying Foxes of the Southwest Pacific. Part of it is an overview about this large fruit bat, but there is also reference to sightings of apparent pterosaurs in that part of the world:

For many years, reports of “pterodactyls” in Papua New Guinea were dismissed as misidentifications of Flying Fox fruit bats. Recent investigations on Umboi Island, however, bring to light an astonishing possibility: The creature called “ropen” does not hang upside down from a branch but holds itself upright on tree trunks. In addition, the ropen does not eat fruit but fish that it catches on reefs by using a bioluminescent glow as it flies at night, over the water.

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