Ropen Sighting by Brian Hennessy

According to the second edition of the book Searching for Ropens, Brian Hennessy saw a large flying creature that “looked prehistoric.” It was flying overhead one day, when he was on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. It was nothing like a Flying Fox bat (a fruit bat).

 

He described it: “It was so unusual. I actually heard it before I saw it. A slow flap . . . flap . . flapping sound.  The air was still,  and our truck had stopped on our downward journey from the top of the range to the coast way below . . . it was very big (wingspan at least two metres,  probably more . . . possibly much, much more).  It was black or dark brown.  I had never seen anything like it before. . . . I recall seeing this creature with a longish narrow tail . . . the head was disproportionately large compared to the body [no feathers in sight]."

 

Jonathan Whitcomb, author of Searching for Ropens, interviewed Hennessy, by email, in 2006, and the psychologist examined similar sketches created for determining the shape and length of both the “beak”

and head appendage. Hennessy’s choices resulted in a composite sketch of the head. Whitcomb was struck by its similarity to a  sketch from another interview two years earlier: Hodgkinson's "pterodactyl."

 

In 2004, just before his expedition in Papua New Guinea, Whitcomb interviewed Duane Hodgkinson, a World War II veteran. Much was learned about his 1944 sighting near Finschhafen,  Papua New Guinea.  Like Hennessy’s creature, long and narrow were the beak-mouth and the head appendage and the tail. Both the 1944 and 1971 sightings were in daylight: the men clearly saw what both described as “prehistoric.”

 

Compare Brian Hennessy’s sighting report with Duane Hodgkinson’s; there are many similarities: long tail, head appendage, loud flapping of wings, and no sign of feathers. And both eyewitnesses are credible.

 

Also compare this sighting with that of a lady in South Carolina (“pterosaur”): long-tailed, humongous-bat-like

 

Apparent credibility of live-pterosaur sightings actually is related to origin philosophies. Choose your philosophy.

 

Critics have assailed the idea that pterosaurs are still living. Perhaps the most formidable opponent of living-pterosaur investigations is Glen Kuban. Read the reply to his web page. Kuban’s idea about Flying Fox fruit bats is seriously flawed: Those bats never grow long tails and they do not glow in the dark.

 

See book reviews by Jonathan Whitcomb, including books on living dinosaurs and living pterosaurs.