Eyewitness
Testimonies
Please consider the details from eyewitness testimonies of apparent modern-pterosaurs; the alternative is either total ignorance of
the subject or unending vacillation between images of giant mutated bats, giant bioluminescent pelicans, and international hoax-conspiracies.
Truth is more simple.
Duane Hodgkinson was a weather observer during his military service in 1944. He had lived on a farm in the midwestern
United States, during his teenage years, before World War II. As he and his army buddy entered the jungle clearing, just west
of Finschhafen (on the mainland of what was then called
New Guinea), on a clear day, nothing much looked strange. The grass was about
two feet high and some large ants were crawling on a nearby log; the two men were looking at those ants, for they were bigger
than any seen back in the States. The point is that nothing prevented Hodgkinson from getting a feel for the size of that clearing:
the other side was about 100 feet away: an ordinary little clearing. . . . almost.
What happened next was not, at first,
extraordinary: A wild pig, probably startled by the human intrusion, ran through the grass nearby. Then followed the epitome of strangeness:
On the far side of that clearing, something was startled by that pig, something that flew up into the air, revealing a wingspan of
close to thirty feet. Hodgkinson was fascinated by the long horn-like appendage at the back of the creature's head, yes, "creature,"
for it was obviously not a bird taking flight. It flew out of view briefly, but returned, perhaps to gaze at the two strange
beings who gazed back from the clearing.
Many interviews, many years later, have gleaned more details from Hodgkinson's
experience: the "pterodactyl" (labeled so, right after it flew away) was dark and had a long pointed beak and a long neck; the tail
was long, too: at least ten or fifteen feet; there was no evidence of feathers. But how critical is the distance between the men and
the creature, and how! At 100 feet away, the farm boy could hardly have badly mistaken the size of the creature. Besides, without
feathers it was no bird, and with a very long tail it was no bat: very strange.
What could be more extraordinary than this
1944 sighting? It is that many eyewitnesses relate encounters with a large or giant pterosaur-like creature around
the Southwest Pacific. These accounts come not from hallucination, for eyewitnesses come from different countries, from different
cultures, and from different educational backgrounds (they would not all hallucinate the same thing). Accounts come not from
hoaxes, for most of those who have spent the most time searching for a modern pterosaur (commonly called "ropen") have seen little
or nothing that would directly show that what they had seen was a pterosaur (hoaxes normally involve maybe one or two proponents
who lie that they saw what they did not; many explorers who say they saw almost nothing--those are not hoaxers). Accounts come
not from any mental health issues, for insanity does not cause persons of different backgrounds to describe similar appearances and
activities of an animal; besides, one of those eyewitnesses is Mr. Brian Hennessy, a
professional psychologist who works at a medical
university:
a poor candidate for insanity.
Could Hodgkinson have exaggerated the length of the tail of the "pterodactyl?" Half
a century after this encounter on the mainland of New Guinea, on a small island to the north, seven boys (around ten to
fourteen years old) climbed up to a
crater lake near their village on Umboi Island. Soon after they had arrived, a giant "ropen"
flew over the lake, and the boys ran home in terror. About ten years later (in 2004), in their own village, I interviewed three of
those young men. Gideon Koro told me about the tail of the ropen: seven meters long (22 feet). Even if this was greatly exaggerated,
the tail of the creature he saw was extraordinarily long. In addition, Gideon told me that the ropen had no feathers. (No bird, no
bat.)
Reply to a Critic
(Continued)
By Jonathan D. Whitcomb
Author of "Searching for Ropens"
More about the World War II veteran Duane Hodgkinson
Objective Evaluation of the Eyewitness
Reports
Carl Baugh and Paul Nation searched for the glowing ropen of Papua New Guinea
The first
paragraph of the web page "Prehistoric Reptiles" seems to be an attempt to convince the reader that there would be nothing strange
about a modern creature that greatly resembles an ancient creature but was unrelated to it. But both the evolutionists (supporters
of standard models) and religious creationists, that is, almost all scientists, would look at a newly discovered living dinosaur or
pterosaur as a descendant of creatures closely related to fossils that greatly resembled those living creatures. The Coelacanth, for
example, has always been recognized as being descended from Coelacanths that left fossils. The web author of "Prehistoric Reptiles"
seems to be dogmatically shielding the General Theory of Evolution from any loss of credibility; but this attempt is obviously radical
to the point of being untenable.
Cryptozoology is the study of "hidden" or unclassified but possibly real living
creatures that are called "cryptids." The ropen of Papua New Guinea is one of those cryptids. But this apparent modern-pterosaur has
other names: indava, duwas, seklo-bali, and wawanar. Some of the investigators who have explored remote jungles for a possible view
of the reclusive ropen are: Paul Nation, Garth Guessman, Jonathan Whitcomb, David Woetzel, and Carl Baugh.