Pterosaurs of New Guinea

Pterosaurs of New Guinea

The Texas sized island of New Guinea is comprised of large areas of thinly explored terrain, sometimes inhabited by indigenous tribes isolated from the modern world. Locals and researchers in cryptozoology alike report over the years of having witnessed a bio-luminescent avian creatures alternately called Indava or Ropen, that some people are claiming to be remnants of pterosaurs surviving to the present day.

Pterosaurs are a diverse family of dinosaurs, ranging in size from specimens found with wingspans of ten inches (may have been an immature individual), to over thirty feet with as much distinction across species as among modern birds.

A website called Live-Pterosaur.com is dedicated to the study

Paul’s 2006 living-pterosaur expedition was the first one of its kind to the remote mountainous interior of New Guinea.

On one night, after several sightings over several nights, near Tawa Village, he videotaped two indava lights just before they flew up from a ridge above the village. During videotaping, one light slowly turned off but the other continued glowing for a few more seconds.

Jacob Kepas, a national Baptist pastor from the mainland, assisted Paul as an interpreter. As a living-pterosaur investigator himself, however, Jacob did much more: He became an eyewitness of one of the creatures they sought.

With a local man (Joseph) Jacob climbed up to where he could see the cliff (or the“cave” as some nationals of Papua New Guinea sometimes call overhanging cliffs) where an indava appeared to be asleep. Joseph had climbed up first, then called Jacob, by radio, asking for assistance with Paul Nation’s video camcorder.

Jacob was not sure but thought he saw the head of the indava under one of its wings. The steep angle of observation (lower than the cliff ) and great distance made him unsure. Joseph, however, climbed to a higher vantage point and confirmed that it was the creature.

But sadly they seem to approach research with all of the professionalism that most self named experts involved in crypto-zoology do.

Unfortunately, none of the video footage the two natives obtained showed what they had seen. It seems that neither one was proficient with videotaping. Nevertheless, Jacob Kepas seems to have been the first living pterosaur investigator who had a daylight sighting while searching for the creatures.

The History Channel’s “Monster Quest” has addressed the issue, and as only too typical they seem to spend more time talking about the expedition than actually expediting.

Well I have to say one thing this video gets completely wrong. Around the 3:50 mark Garth Guessman, identified as director of field research for Genesis Park which is a Creationist “Science” organization, states that evolution says pterosaurs went extinct around 65 million years ago. Evolution says no such thing. Evolution is the study of adaptation of species to their environment and the progression of those changes over the course of history, and in that regard it might state that if a species cannot or for some reason does not adapt then it is likely that species will go extinct, but putting Guessman in a position of expert testimony without properly identifying his agenda of attempting to disprove evolution by proving that a possible species of dinosaur still exists is irresponsible. In any case, a living specimen of the dinosaur family has no impact whatsoever on the truth or fallacy of evolution, excepting of course for the known living relatives of the dinosaurs; Birds, who evolved over the millennia into the forms we know today.

Here is a video of the proposed Ropen or Indava bioluminescence compared to similar sightings over Lake Erie, and Yakima Washington. Similar lights are reported in Texas

Analysis of the light from the New Guinea video taken by Paul Nation is posted at Ropen.com

The above processed images (of the two glowing forms videotaped in the remote interior of Papua New Guinea) show that there are indeed two sources of light. Each is about one meter in diameter. They both vary in intensity over the 17 seconds of video footage.
They are not fires because the center of the light is less intense (in both lights): very unlike a camp fire.

Neither light is moving, so they are not meteors or airplane lights.

The lights are not artificial mistakes inside the camera (artifacts): They are real.

After sophisticated image-processing and analysis, the video does not appear to be anything produced by a hoax.

However just because it is not a hoax, it does not immediately follow that these lights are indication of bio-luminescent dinosaurs.

Paul Nation’s video footage of the two ropen lights (they could be called indava lights) are images of actual light sources, confirming his testimony that he videotaped the two lights. This proves the value of continued investigations into what eyewitnesses indicate are giant flying creatures, featherless, long-tailed, and matching what would be expected of living Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs.

There is a problem with investigating anything with your conclusion in mind. Doing so serves only to cause one to jump to that conclusion as soon as any other potential source of the phenomena witnessed can be dismissed. While the source of this light is certainly worth investigating, it needs to be done not as a search for cryptids, but as a search for answers.

In an article by Xavier, from 2010, where a sighting of Frigate Birds caused a stir about flying dinosaurs, one commenter had this to offer:

I am an ornithologist with extensive experience New Guinea. There is no doubt the video shows a frigatebird. The Ropen myth has taken a life of its own, started on no evidence and some local boys pulling the leg of naive visitors to their village. The myth has persisted with those eager to believe, but there is no evidence. Knowing the hunting prowess of the Papuan people, if there was any animal out there they could shoot or trap, they would have by now and there would be plenty of bones available as evidence. These guys are great hunters and fishermen. Any piece of meat that large would not elude them. Ropen is a total falsehood.

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Henry Paterson
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