Jonathan Whitcomb near Gomlongon Village in 2004

The previous ropen expedition on Umboi Island was led by Paul Nation in 2002, when he was accompanied by his son Nathanael. They interviewed a few natives and hiked through the jungle but saw nothing like a modern pterosaur. Yet without Paul's detailed instructions to me and two other Americans, the two ropen expeditions of 2004 would probably not have taken place.

Yes we had two expeditions in that year, and I see them as resounding successes notwithstanding none of us got any photos or video footage of a ropen at that time. We did, however, have remarkable success with interviewing natives of Umboi, resulting in two scientific papers being published in a peer-reviewed journal a few years after those two expeditions; publishing scientific papers takes longer than trudging through jungles.

Why were those two expeditions in 2004 successful? We three Americans learned much about the ropen through questioning natives, especially eyewitnesses of the featherless flying creature. Although my original hope was to go with the other two Americans, that did not work out, and I had to lead my own expedition and rely on the native friendships that had been established by Paul Nation and other American explorers. The resulting interviews were more than enough to fill two scientific papers. In addition, having two expeditions proved even more productive, for we used different interviewing techniques and questioned mostly different natives in different villages.

I was able to later repay Paul Nation for his help in organizing my expedition, and the repayment came unexpectedly. From 2005 to 2006 I wrote my first book: Searching for Ropens. One of the first readers, an American business man, was fascinated by our investigations and expeditions, and he gave Paul the needed funds to go on an expedition late in 2006.

With his native interpreter Jacob Kepas, Paul was able to explore deep in the mainland of Papua New Guinea. This resulted in a number of sightings of flying lights that we believe are nocturnal flying creatures related to the ropen, although the local natives have a different name for it: indava.

Paul videotaped two of the lights and the resulting footage was later analyzed by a physicist, Clifford Paiva, who then wrote another scientific paper on his findings. Even though that paper was not published in print form, I published much of it online. Paiva concluded that the flying lights were not from any common sources: not airplanes or camp fires or car headlights or meteors or flashlights. He found nothing in his analysis that would be inconsistent with the idea that they were from the bioluminescent capacity of large flying creatures, much larger than fireflies.

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Living pterosaurs and science

With all the scientific discoveries of animal species over the past two centuries or so, we can be tempted to assume that all the big ones have been found and classified in Western science . . . Let's look at the case for modern living pterosaurs, based upon eyewitness testimonies from around the world.

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Pterodactyl Caught on Camera

The biologist Peter Beach, of Portland, Oregon, videotaped a modern pterosaur on New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea, on March 25, 2015, in the presence of Milt Marcy, who is a businessman of the Portland, OR, area.

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Pterodactyl Sightings

As of September 28, 2020, my Youtube channel Protect Animal Life has 91 videos, 89 of them about sightings of modern “pterodactyls”

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Sightings of modern pterosaurs

It was going over the top of me at a height of about 200 to 300 feet flying northwest. I was seeing it from behind. I didn’t think to look for a tail or even notice one at the time but what I did notice was the way it flapped its wings. The wings seemed to roll or have a wave like form from the body outward to the wing tip. The wings would flap very slowly but the creature did not seem to have any trouble flying.

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