The Pterosaur Eyewitness blog recently had a post titled “Pterodactyl Attacks and Human Deaths.” For me, it brings to mind native accounts from Papua New Guinea, but this is far closer to home, in British Columbia, Canada. For many years, there have been reports of people being attacked in Africa and in Papua New Guinea. I have only recently noticed this news about flying creatures attacking people in British Columbia at night. For the moment, I have little to add except to recommend this post I have mentioned and to quote from it.

I hope that no pterosaur was responsible for any of the human deaths in British Columbia, Canada, along the 500-mile stretch of highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert, but I also hope that all attacks from irresponsible humans, against innocent human victims, will cease, and that this world will become a paradise in which death itself will cease. Notwithstanding all our hopes for the future, however, we now face a present danger, a warning from Gerald McIsaac, author of Bird From Hell, who believes that “most of the hitchhikers [on this highway at night] who disappear have been killed by this animal. It is also my opinion that many of the people who have disappeared have not been reported.”

I said I had little to add but I retract that. In Papua New Guinea, deep in the mainland, in 2006, Paul Nation, from Texas, was searching for the flying creature that natives in Tawa Village call “indava.” He learned that those natives remember a time when the indava would fly down on Tawa and carry away a pig or a child. Attacks on natives and their pigs stopped when the natives learned to make a lot of noise when they heard the indavas coming; since then they have had little if any problems from indava attacks. Paul Nation believes the indava is the same kind or a similar kind of pterosaur as the ropen.

In the northern islands of Papua New Guinea, the natives call the ropen “kor.” It was said to have attacked Japanese soldiers during World War II. The Japanese retaliated, sending a ship’s bombardment onto one or more of the caves where the kor lived.

Other examples could be given from Africa, but I think this is cause enough, because of potential attacks from nocturnal flying creatures, for people in British Columbia to be careful when they are out at night.

Of course we don’t mean “fossil expert” when we use the phrase “pterosaur expert,” for this is not a paleontology blog but a cryptozoology blog. In regard to the ropen of Papua New Guinea, I think that Paul Nation and Garth Guessman are the most experienced explorers who have searched for living pterosaurs in that part of the world. But others have made great contributions.

I quote from Whitcomb’s Pterosaur Eyewitness blog, in particular the post titled, “Experts on Living Pterosaurs.” By the way, although Whitcomb does not have as much experience exploring remote areas of the world, he may have more access to eyewitnesses around the world than any other cryptozoologist, in regard to sightings of what seem to be modern pterosaurs, even though his interviews are mostly by emails.

About Paul Nation

Paul was instrumental in helping organize the two ropen expedition of 2004, both of which were searches on Umboi. He was unable to go along that year but had his own expedition with Jacob Kepas, late in 2006, deep in the mainland of Papua New Guinea. That expedition resulted in one daylight sighting of a giant indava by Kepas and several nighttime indava-light sightings by Nation. The video footage recorded by Nation in 2006, showing two glowing objects near the top of a ridge near Tawa Village, was found to be strange: not any camp fires or airplane lights or flash lights or meteors any other commonplace explanation.

About Garth Guessman

Guessman’s knowledge of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur fossils allowed him to notice an important clue . . . [Guessman and Woetzel] learned that the native traditions describe the ropen‘s tail as being stiff, never moving except near where it connects to the body. Guessman recognized that this relates to the stiffening extension rods of Rhamphorhynchoid vertebrae: all but a few vertebrae are locked into stiffness; the few that are flexible are near where the pterosaur’s tail connects to the body.

Others have made contributions, over the years, including Professor Peter Beach, James Blume, Jacob Kepas, and Phillip O’Donnell.

I realize that I have previously said a good deal about pterosaurs in Texas, but the Marfa Lights mystery keeps coming back. Prior to last month’s press release, “Unmasking a Flying Predator in Texas,” few Americans would have even thought about the possibility that those mysterious lights were from living entities of this world. Some persons conjectured UFO intelligence, but that seems unlikely, because of the frequent returns of the lights to the same rather barren countryside.

I know that James Bunnell of Texas and Edson Hendricks of California have done extensive studies of the more mysterious Marfa Lights. Both men seem to be well educated in science, with years of experience in their respective fields. Yet it has been pointed out that neither one is a biologist, and the conjectures and hypotheses of bioluminescence in Marfa Lights calls for a biologist.

I have written previously about Evelyn Cheesman, the British biologist. For a short time, she worked on learning as much as she could about the mysterious lights that flew near the top of a ridge that was in view from her base camp deep in the mainland of New Guinea. I think it possibly important to note that the natives would not talk about those lights, so Cheesman was left with no local information about them. If I understand correctly, in many native settlements in Papua New Guinea the traditions about glowing nocturnal flying creatures include traditions about bad luck and danger from those creatures. Cheesman may have been with a tribe that was so fearful that they did not want to talk about the flying lights that villagers to the south (Tawa Village area) were later willing to talk about with the American explorer Paul Nation. Be that as it may, Chessman became convinced that the flying lights she observed could not have been from any “human agency.”

In addition:

There’s a new web site titled “Marfa Ghost Lights.” To quote one paragraph:

The flying Marfa Lights of southwest Texas have been compared with the ropen of Papua New Guinea. There the lights have been coorelated with appearances of large and giant long-tailed flying creatures, featherless and resembling Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs.