Pterosaur

Excerpts from the third chapter of Searching for Ropens and Finding God: “Email of August 8, 2004: “. . . in 1944 . . . I was stationed in Finschhafen, New Guinea, with the U.S. military. While there, I made several trips into some of the surrounding native villages with a friend of mine and a native guide . . . On this one particular trip, we had the wonderful opportunity to witness a pterodactyl take off from the ground and then circle back overhead and to the side, giving us a perfect side view which clearly showed the long beak and appendage protruding from the back of its head (just like the ones that Fuzzy used to ride in the comic strip Ally Oop). It was a big one! I have a Piper Tri-Pacer airplane [wingspan twenty nine feet] and it appeared to be about that size. “The frequency of its wing flaps was . . . about one or two seconds. With each flap, we could hear a loud ‘swish, swish’ and the plants and brush immediately beneath its take off path were deflected by the down rush of air. I have not told many people about this . . . “By telephone and letter, Hodgkinson told me more. Before spotting the creature, while the native guide was ahead of them on the trail, he and his friend stopped in a clearing. The two soldiers heard a “crashing” noise in the brush, and when they looked toward the uphill side of the clearing they saw the creature take off into the air. Before this takeoff, it was unseen. A wild pig, which had caused the noise, then ran to the downhill side of the clearing, into the taller brush; apparently, it had startled the “pterodactyl,” which then circled above the clearing. Hodgkinson didn’t remember much about the tail, for he was focusing on the head; after the creature had flown out of sight for the second time, however, the men did remember that they carried a military camera.” Excerpts from the Kindle book Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea (sighting by Brian Hennessy) “The creature I saw one early morning in Bougainville [New Guinea] is etched in my memory. . . . I actually heard it before I saw it. A slow flap...flap... flapping sound. . . . When I looked up . . . I saw a very unusual creature. . . . very big . . . It was black or dark brown. I had never seen anything like it before. It certainly looked prehistoric, in that it did not look like any other bird that I have seen before or since. “Why prehistoric? Well, maybe my memory has been influenced by the intervening years, but I recall seeing this creature with a longish narrow tail . . . the head was disproportionately large compared to the body (no feathers in sight). The wingspan was large. The head had no 'normal' beak. Rather there seemed to be . . . a kind of beak that was indistinguishable from the head, and the head seemed to continue this 'point' at the back of the head. There was a clear line running from the 'beak' to the back of the head..where the 'line' continued to protrude . . .”

We greatly need support from the public and from biologists and cryptozoologists, in the investigation of reports of sightings of flying creatures that are unlike any known bird or bat but resemble pterosaurs, commonly called by many non-scientists “pterodactyl” or “flying dinosaur.” To report a sighting or for inquiries in general, contact the author Jonathan Whitcomb. We seek recognition for these flying creatures, including the cryptid commonly called “ropen.”