rest at back of head; overall, dark colour; tail at least ten to fifteen feet long, and a longish narrow tail; loud swishing sound of wing-flaps; one or two seconds per wing-flap; 'prehistoric' appearance; 1944 - on mainland of Papua New Guinea, 1971- Bougainville Is., Papua New Guinea: the 1944 witness Hodgkinson is a professional flight trainer and the 1971 witness Hennessy is a professional psychologist. Neither one would want to damage credibility by sending in a hoax or false report.
There is a problem in all of these sightings (which occur world-wide and in fact are becoming more and more frequent with the passage of years) in that the body conformation is NOT what you would expect of a giant Pterosaur. The giant Pterosaurs were of a type that did not have much in the way of a tail: the tailed pterosaurians were the smaller kinds. Also the assumed wing membrane filling in all the way to the feet and being of a broad rhomboid overall appearance do not agree with the shape of the wings as they seem to be in these pterosaurs (nor yet with the shape of the wing membranes as preserved on fossils). On the other hand, they are exactly as represented in 1960s dinosaur movies and animated cartoons (eg, The Mighty Mightor shows Pterosaurs of that type, actually an imaginary design).
As a matter of fact I had heard of such reports and mentioned the creatures in my first letter to Ivan T. Sanderson in the 1970s. And I soon afterward came up with the solution myself: 'I supppose they could be manta rays leaping out of the water and assumed to be Pterosaurs on brief viewings. The witnesses on shore could get confused if they saw the creatures over land or see when they were remembering about it afterwards'. And in fact the size and shape of the wings and tail in all of these reports exactly correspond to a manta ray when they do NOT corresond to any type of Pterosaurian.
There is more to it than just that: witnesses in New Guinea are also apparently describing a type of very large hornbill (which is also recognised under a different name as a separate cryptid) and the reports of 'Bioluminescence' are basically either 'spook lights' or marsh gas. 'Spook lights' otherwise occur world-wide without any connection to supposed pterosaurian sightings and I would write such sightings off as red herrings in these cases.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Ropen is a flying cryptid alleged to live in the vicinity of Papua New Guinea. According to the book Searching for Ropens, it is "any featherless creature that flies in the Southwest Pacific, and has a tail-length more than 25% of its wingspan." On Umboi Island the word "ropen" refers to a large nocturnal creature that glows briefly as it flies. The ropen is the subject of folklore (like a man but also like a spirit) but it's believed by some natives to be a real animal. Descriptions vary, but it is often said to be batlike, and sometimes, Pterosaur-like; although pterosaurs are generally accepted to have been extinct for 65 million years. The ropen is believed to be nocturnal and to exhibit bioluminescence. Purportedly it lives on a diet of fish, though there have been some reports of the creature feasting on human flesh, especially grave robbery.
[The descriptions obviously include inferrances that the Ropen is a Demonic or Undead-human rather than a normal living animal-DD]
As an attempt to discredit mainstream scientific views on the age of the Earth, several expeditions have been embarked upon by American creationists, including Carl Baugh, Paul Nation, Jonathan Whitcomb, David Woetzel, and Garth Guessman.
In late 2006, Paul Nation, of Texas, explored a remote mountainous area on the mainland of Papua New Guinea. He videotaped two lights that the local natives called "indava." Nation believed the lights were from the bioluminescence of creatures similar to the ropen of Umboi Island. The video was analyzed by a missile defense physicist who reported that the two lights on the video were not from any fires, meteors, airplanes or camera artifacts. He also reported that the image