Jim Blume’s

Investigation

Baptist Missionary Helps Ropen Seekers

 

Jim Blume, a missionary in Papua New Guinea for thirty years, has interviewed dozens of eyewitnesses of the creature some islanders call “ropen.”  He gave a telephone interview, in 2000, in which he described the creature to the ropen investigator Garth Guessman. Blume’s findings strongly suggest that long-tailed pterosaurs (Rhamphorhynchoids) are not extinct.

 

According to Blume, the ropen has a long tail, with some reports describing a flange at the end of the tail. The wings are much like a bat’s, and there are “hands” half-way up the wings. Some ropens grow to have a wingspan of twenty feet, though in the northern islands they’re smaller: three to four feet wingspans.

 

The bill is like that of a pelican but there’s a comb at the back of the head, like the comb of a rooster “only stiffer.”

 

Some of the larger, darker colored ropens are dangerous, sometimes killing an adult human. In 1985, West of Finschhafen, a man was working in his garden when he was attacked by a ropen. When the other villagers came to see what the noise was about, it was too late: The pterosaur-like creature carried the man into a large tree where it ate him. (See the book.)

 

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