Questions and Answers About the Ropen

I just got an email from a reader of my digital nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. The man’s questions deserve answers but for everybody, not just this one reader.

Q: In your ebook, the Ropen is almost always described consistently throughout witness testimonies. Are there variations across the region (for example, different behavior, coloration, etc.)?

A: The reader probably refers to the southwest Pacific, including Australia and Papua New Guinea. Even within that geographic area, how deep is this question! We do not yet have enough eyewitness reports to determine variations of species of the long-tailed featherless flying creatures that we call “ropen.” The Perth creature may be a different species than the ones observed by Duane Hodgkinson (1944) and by Gideon Koro (~1994), based upon the apparent differences in rations between wingspan and length of tail (as well as beak-to-tail-end length), but even that is uncertain; different eyewitnesses have different abilities in estimating sizes, even if they all had the same perspective on the flying creatures. Even the capture of several flying creatures would be only the beginning in answering this broad question.

Q: Is it possible that Ropen present sexual dimorphism (color variation between genders, males possessing larger crests/tail diamonds, etc.)?

A: Another difficult question. This may take many years to answer adequately, for we need many detailed photographs and videos, even after we obtain captures animals.

Q: Have [ropens] ever been observed interacting with other animals?

A: This is easier, at least for those few reports that include observations of potential ropens that are catching (or trying to catch) prey. Yet many of these are in North America rather than in Australia or in Papua New Guinea. Many of those reports suggest at least some ropens in North America hunt birds. See the appendix of the most recent edition of Searching for Ropens and Finding God.

Q: Are there accounts of [Ropens] attacking humans?

A: Some areas of the earth have reports of attacks on people, including a valley in British Columbia (Canada) and in Papua New Guinea. I suspect that most of the real attacks have been from rogue ropens, a few creatures that were suffering from something that prevented them from obtaining normal prey.

We should define “attack” here. I leave out those cases in which an apparent pterosaur may have stopped a potential attack after discovering that the intended prey was human. This appears to have been the case with a teenager in Virginia (late 20th century) who encountered a huge flying creature that stopped its predatory dive about twenty feet short of the girl; that was in the dark of night, except for the moon light.

###

Ropen Eyewitness Interview

In this Youtube video, Garth Guessman interviews the World War II veteran Duane Hodgkinson, who witnessed a huge ropen take off into the air in 1944 in New Guinea.

Ropen of Papua New Guinea

“Several Americans have investigated reports of what natives  of Umboi Island call ‘ropen,’ including three pioneers. Jim  Blume, a missionary in Papua New Guinea for decades,  interviewed dozens of native eyewitnesses of pterosaur-like  creatures. . . .”

Rhamphorhynchoid Ropen

Around 1965, Patty Carson saw a similar creature at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She drew a sketch of the featherless long-tailed “dinosaur.” A few years after her sighting, the U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn saw two “pterodactyls” flying in from the sea at Guantanamo Bay.

.

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.

In 2008, a Britten-Norman Islander airplane, a fairly light plane having two engines, was being flown by two very experienced former navy-pilots. They were mostly done with flying from Australia to Indonesia, being at 6500 feet altitude and over the sea, when the pilot saw something coming straight at him, on a collision course. He thought it must have been another plane, somehow at the wrong altitude for that heading. He put his plane into a dive, catching the attention of the copilot, who had been looking down at a chart or something. The approaching flyer also dived, so the pilot banked to the left, saving them all from disaster.

What set apart this near collision from other emergencies was what happened in the brief seconds when the other flyer passed by the Britten-Norman Islander: The two men saw it flap its wings; obviously it was no plane.

Both men said the same word at the same time: “pterodactyl.” This is not to say that those pilots were anxious to promote the concept of non-extinction of pterosaurs, for they made it clear, in their communications with the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, that they were not taking any position on any interpretation of what they saw. In other words, they were not biased in favor of a pterosaur interpretation. But they could find no other logical explanation for it, even though some people would think a modern pterosaur illogical.

The pilot was serious enough about the pterosaur possibility that he phoned Whitcomb to report the encounter, which was a recent encounter.

Possible Ropen off Indonesian Coast

The incident was 150 miles southeast of Bali, Indonesia. It was reported, in August of 2008, by the pilot, to the investigator Jonathan Whitcomb.

According to the second edition of the book Searching for Ropens (by Whitcomb), the bat-like flying creature that has a monkey face is called “ahool.” Apparently it eats fresh-water fish. One eyewitness described a head crest and an upright posture on tree trunks; a ropen of Umboi Island has also been seen to hold itself upright on a tree trunk.

Ropen Over Indonesia

The pilot saw the creature for about 5-6 seconds; the co-pilot, for only about 2-3 seconds. The co-pilot later reported that a common explanation–pelican–has problems: What the two ex-navy pilots had seen was too big and the wrong color (darker than the pelicans he knows live there).

Dinosaur Bird or Pterosaur

A “dinosaur bird” is actually what some eyewitnesses call a living pterosaur. These flying creatures have been observed all over the world, but they seem to be nocturnal, at least for the most part.