In the creationists' delusional eyes, if it's big and it looks like a bat and/or a bird, it's a pterosaur, never mind the details showing they are not what they think they are. Every "report" made of alleged sightings are without proof of evidence and likely made by natives either plagued by superstition or have been bribed or brainwashed into giving the creationists what they want in form of false reports. The only reason why the okapi, the coelacanth, and the megamouth shark are confirmed to be real is because we have found physical evidence for their existence. Mokele Mbembe, Emela-ntouka, the Loch Ness Monster, and other cryptids, on the other hand, had only false eyewitness accounts, fake photos and film, and no physical proofs; every physical evidence for these cryptids are all confirmed to be phony.
The same goes for the alleged "modern pterosaurs" claimed by the likes of Woetzel to be seen alive today in remote areas of the world out of ignorance of total lack of physical evidence for such "modern pterosaurs" such as post-Mesozoic remains and fully intact bodies. On the pterosaur page, Woetzel made a brief description of what pterosaurs are like before presenting the reader to two pages containing alleged "living pterosaurs" such as the Kongamato of Africa and the Ropen of Papua New Guinea. The first page deals with the Kongamato, (meaning "breaker" or "overwhelmer of boats") an alleged pterosaur-like creature described as a black or reddish colored lizard with no feathers, smooth, naked skin, a long thin tail, a wingspan between 4 ft. and 7 ft., possesses a long, pointed snout (some say "a beak") full of teeth, and one look at the creature brings death to that looker. The cryptid is also believe to cause flooding which is why the natives would chant a magic spell "muchu wa Kongamato" to protect themselves from the monster and the floods it is said to cause (Cited in Mutants & Monsters by Oliver Cochran, page 32). However, unlike the Kongamoto and the Ropen, actual pterosaurs are not lizards, nor are they related to them. They don't cause flooding and have hair on their bodies, come in all shapes and sizes, and are probably more colorful than just black and red.
These sightings could likely have been misidentifications of large birds and giant bats. Each of the first two stories on Woetzel's Kongamato page describes the alleged pterosaur as a "large, reddish creature with leathery wings, devoid of feathers" and "a huge red lizard with membranous wings like a bat spreading five or more feet, and with teeth in its huge beak." These two stories are most likely the result of misidentifying mega-size fruit bats also known as "flying foxes." Like the Kongamato, "flying foxes" are reddish and blackish in color, have pointed teeth in their long snouts, and membranous wings. Pterosaurs are known to have hair, yet the cryptid is described to have smooth, naked skin. Sometimes flying foxes are mistaken as pterosaurs by some people, especially when they're seen either briefly at night, at dusk, or during daylight from a far-away perspective.
The third story is an excerpt taken out of context from Charles Gould's classic Mythical Monsters in which Woetzel erroneously points to pages 136-138 while the except actually came from pages 201-202 where it tells of giant-size, elephant-eating flying dragons once worshiped as gods by the natives living in the Kingdom of Congo [Kingdom of Kongo (1395 - 1914)].
"Though dragons have completely dropped out of all modern works on natural history, they were still retained and regarded as quite orthodox into the 18th century. For instance, Pigafetta, in a report of the kingdom of Congo ‘gathered out of the discourses of Mr. E. Lopes, a Portuguese,' speaking of the province of Bemba, which he defines as ‘on the sea coast from the river Ambrize, until the river Coanza towards the south,' says of serpents, ‘There are also certain other creatures which, being as big as rams, have wings like dragons, with long tails, and long chaps, and divers rows of teeth, and feed upon raw flesh. Their colour is blue and green, their skin painted like scales, and they have two feet but no more. The Pagan negroes used to worship them as gods, and to this day you may see divers of them that are kept for a marvel. And because they are very rare, the chief lords there curiously preserve them, and suffer the people to worship them, which tendeth greatly to their profits by reason of the gifts and oblations which the people offer unto them.' And John Barbot, Agent-General of the Royal Company of Africa, in his description of the coasts of South Guinea, says: ‘Some blacks assuring me that…there are winged serpents or dragons having a forked tail and a prodigious wide mouth, full of sharp teeth, extremely mischievous to mankind, and more particularly to small children.'"
Now here's the full context version of the except with omitted parts shaded in bold,
"Though dragons have completely dropped out of all modern works on natural history, they were still retained and regarded as quite orthodox until a little before the time of Cuvier; specimens, doubtless fabricated like the ingeniously constructed mermaid of Mr. Barnum, were exhibited in the museums; and voyagers occasionally brought back, as authentic stories of their existence, fables which had percolated through time and nations until they had found a home in people so remote from their starting point as to cause a complete obliteration of their passage and origin. For instance, [Filippo] Pigafetta, in a report of the kingdom of Congo gathered out of the discourses of Mr. [Duarte] E. Lopes, a Portuguese," speaking of the province of Bemba, which he defines as 'on the sea coast from the river Ambrize [Ambriz], until the river Coanza towards the south,' says of serpents, 'There are also certain other creatures which, being as big as rams, have wings like dragons, with long tails, and long chaps, and divers rows of teeth, and feed upon raw flesh. Their colour is blue and green, their skin painted like scales, and they have two feet but no more. The Pagan negroes used to worship them as gods, and to this day you may see divers of them that are kept for a marvel. And because they are very rare, the chief lords there curiously preserve them, and suffer the people to worship them, which tendeth greatly to their profits by reason of the gifts and oblations which the people offer unto them.' And John Barbot, Agent-General of the Royal Company of Africa, in his description of the coasts of South Guinea, says: 'Some blacks assuring me that…there are winged serpents or dragons having a forked tail and a prodigious wide mouth, full of sharp teeth, extremely mischievous to mankind, and more particularly to small children.' If we may credit this account of the blacks, they are of the same sort of winged serpents which some authors tell us are to be found in Abyssinia (Ethiopia), being very great enemies to the elephants. Some such serpents have been seen about the river Senegal, and they are adorned and worshipped as snakes are at Wida or Fida, that is, in a most religious manner."
The dragons in Ethiopia, similar to the dragons of India, measured from perhaps 60ft to an exaggerating 180 feet long, so long that they are sometimes mistaken as a hill range. These dragons would attack and kill elephants for food. The winged serpents, similar to the winged serpents of India, are described to have a crest on their heads, scaly, serpentine bodies, two limbs, bat or bird wings, and poisonous venom. When they can no longer find elephants to eat in the region, they entwined themselves to form a living raft and sail across the Arabian Peninsula to Arabia in search for more. That's according to Pliny the Elder who also wrote that the dragons processed a stone in their brains called Dracontias which the alchemists sought to create the Elixir of Life.
Obviously, Woetzel have omitted these two passages and changed the pages around on purpose. He doesn't want anyone to know what Gould really said about the dragons of Ethiopia and how they look absolutely nothing like pterosaurs that have lightweight bones and a hairy gorilla-type body that can't constrict instead of a serpent-type body that does constrict, membrane wings supported by one elongated finger, never ate elephants (especially since elephants were never around when pterosaurs were alive), and measure less than 60 feet long at body length.
The fourth and fifth alleged pterosaur sightings in Africa could likely have been made up by superstitious natives.
"Dr. J.L.B. Smith (famous for his investigation into the living fossil, the coelacanth) wrote in his 1956 book Old Fourlegs about flying dragons that lived near Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. '…one man had actually seen such a creature in flight close by at night. I did not and do not dispute at least the possibility that some such creature may still exist.' Indeed a game warden named A. Blaney Percival stationed in Kenya noted that a huge creature whose tracks only revealed two feet and a heavy tail was believed by the Kitui Wakamba natives to fly down to the ground from Mount Kenya every night. In Kenya the creature is called 'Batamzinga.'"
Batamzinga actually means "turkey" in Swahili. Pterosaurs in reality walk upright on all 4 legs and leave no tail dragging marks behind. Their actual foot tracks have all 4 of their feet fully on the ground, not just toes, with wing dragging marks made alongside them sometimes. Rhamphorhynchoids have long, skinny stiffed tails with kite like vanes at the tip while pterodactyloids have real short tails. This is in sharp contrast to the mystery bipedal monster, likely a large bird, who made the tracks along with the heavy tail dragging marks possibly made by the bird's long tail feathers. The alleged dragons of Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro are said to smell like burnt brass and be either bird or bat-like, leading skeptics to believe these alleged sightings are the result of misidentifying large birds and bats by the locals who claimed to have seen or been attacked by one, but never got a chance to look long enough to see what they really were. As mentioned before, all these alleged sightings were made either at night, at dusk, or spotted from a perspective way too far for anyone to see what the creature is they're seeing. One boy was startled by a large snake falling from the mountain that gave out a burnt brass (or burnt grass) smell when it landed which Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer likens to an injured python fleeing from a fire even though she said she wasn't able to clearly identify what the boy claimed to have seen.
The sixth alleged sighting is falsely regarded by Woetzel as "a very credible account" and yet no credible proofs has ever been presented that confirms such sightings to be true. This alleged sighting is made in 1956 by a team of explorers that were out on an evening hunt.
"A very (sic) credible account was described in 1956 by engineer J.P.F. Brown near Lake Bangweulu, Zambia and reported in the April 2, 1957 Rhodesia Herald. Brown was driving back to Salisbury from a visit to Kasenga in Zaire. He stopped at a location called Fort Rosebery, just to the west of Lake Bangweulu to get his canteen from the trunk. It was about 6:00 p.m. when he saw two creatures flying slowly and silently directly overhead. He observed that they looked prehistoric, with a long tail and narrow head. He estimated a wingspan of about 3-3 1/2 feet. One of them opened its mouth in which he saw a large number of pointed teeth. Further reports of such odd flying creatures come from the Awemba tribe that claims they live in caves in cliffs near the source of the great Zambezi River."
Here's the full version told as it is when shown on cryptozoology.com's Kongamato page,
"In 1956 in Zambia along the Luapula river, engineer J.P.F. Brown was driving back to Salisbury from a visit to Kasenga in Zaire. He stopped at a location called Fort Rosebery, just to the west of Lake Bangweulu, for a break. It was about 6:00 p.m. when he saw two creatures flying slowly and silently directly overhead. He, bewildered, observed that they looked prehistoric. He estimated a wingspan of about 3-3 1/2 feet, a long thin tail, and a narrow head, which he likened to an elongated snout of a dog. One of them opened its mouth in which he saw a large number of pointed teeth. He gave the beak to tail length at about 4 1/2 feet. After this report came out, a couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. D. Gregor reported that they had seen 2 1/2 ft. long flying lizards in Southern Rhodesia, and a Dr. J. Blake-Thompson reported that natives of the Awemba tribe had told of huge flying creatures resembling rats that would attack humans. They lived in caves in cliffs near the source of the great Zambezi River."
They looked prehistoric and reptilian— from a far away perspective, but it is likely that they saw a pair of hammer-headed bats (Hypsignathus monstrosus) flying about. These megabats have dog-like snouts (mistaken as beaks) with pointed teeth for tearing at fruit they eat and resemble rats. However, unless rabid, these bats would normally avoid humans. A large, rarely aggressive bird like the saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis), living in the same area Brown have probably seen the hammer-headed bat, may have been responsible for seriously wounding a man in 1957 according the the seventh alleged sighting. While recovering at the hospital, the patient was asked to draw the monster whom he claims injured him in the chest. The man allegedly drew a creature resembling a pterosaur, but the drawing was lost over time.
Here's the eighth alleged sighting made in 1932 by Ivan Sanderson and his team of explorers known as the Percy Sladen Expedition who was exploring the Assumbo Mountains in Cameroon, West Africa.
"To the west in Cameroon, the natives describe a nocturnal, bat-like creature called Olitu. Likely the same as the Kongamato, this creature was observed by an exploration team under Ivan Sanderson in 1932."
The creature is actually known as Olitiau, a cryptid that could possibly have been the mate of a unknown species of bat the explorers shot while hunting near their campsite. The Olitiau is described as a huge bat with a twelve-foot wingspan, but its fur is pure black. There is a well known illustration by Chelsea Sams that depicts what she believes the explorers saw coming at them— a bat with a head like an rhamphorynchid pterosaur (the artist must have been unaware that the creature is said to have a monkey-like face when she made the drawing), all elongated fingers supporting a large skin membrane, and a short tail. It is said the creature appeared to be lacking hair which contrast to pterosaurs having hair all over their bodies. Although some cryptozoologists regard the cryptid as a pterosaur, Sanderson insist it's an unknown species of bat to which he highly regards as the "Granddaddy of all Bats."
The ninth sighting of the alleged Kongamato is said to have taken place in modern times,
"Modern reports of the Kongomato continue to surface. In 1998 Steve Romandi-Menya, a Kenyan exchange student living in Louisiana, declared that the Kongomato is still known to the bush-dwelling people in his country. The creatures are said to feed on decomposing human flesh, digging up bodies if they are not buried to sufficient depth."
How are they still known when there's not a single credible physical evidence found that confirms the existence of the Kongamato? There are multiple accounts of alleged sightings made over the years, but not a single piece of physical evidence has ever been found. Plus, anyone who thinks they're modern day pterosaurs obviously are unaware of the pterosaurs inability to dig. If the cryptid is a pterosaur, then how did these alleged "pterosaurs" manage to dig up human corpses to eat when their anatomy based on the studies of their bone structure clearly show they can't?
And finally, the tenth sighting is an except likely taken out of context from Charles Robert Senhouse Pitman's 1942 book, A Game Warden Takes Stock (also cited out of context in Lost Cities & Ancient Mysteries of Africa & Arabia by David Childress [another creationist], page 322), where after describing a "wailing tree hyrax," also known as the Western Tree Hyrax (Dendrohyrax dorsalis), who the natives are afraid to look at it at night lest they die, but find no trouble catching it in the daylight (at least according to the tribe's superstitious tale), Pitmen wrote about the natives telling him about the alleged Kongamato.
"When in Northern Rhodesia I heard of a mythical beast, alleged to have a similar death-dealing attribute, which intrigued me considerably. It was said to haunt formerly, and perhaps still to haunt, a dense, swampy forest region in the neighbourhood of the Angola and Congo borders. To look upon it too is death. But the most amazing feature of this mystery beast is its suggested identity with a creature bat- and bird-like in form on a gigantic scale strangely reminiscent of the prehistoric pterodactyl. From where does the primitive African derive such a fanciful idea?"
From seeing megabats and large birds in the dark, where else? There would have been fully intact bodies, eggs, young, and nesting rookeries of the cryptid about if what the natives say is true. But none are found. From a perspective, they may look like pterosaurs, but one of those days, a discovery of a Kongamato will turn out to be nothing more than a new species of megabat, not pterosaur despite what some cryptozoologists who are also creationists are hoping for. If the Kongamato is a pterosaur, then the pterosaur would be a subject of much studying to figure out how did the pterosaur evolve to adapt to life on Modern Earth. Otherwise, the Kongamato are just literally batty. ;)
Moving away from the Kongamato page we come across the Ropen page. Here we find a list of claims coming from those who claimed to have seen the Ropen (demon flyer), a cryptid said to dwell on two small islands located off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
The Ropen is said to be a cross between Pteranodon and a Rhamphorynchus, two pterosaurs that lived millions of years separate from each other. Pteranodon lived 70-65 million years ago in what is now North America and Rhamphorynchus lived 150 million years ago in what is now England. Although the Ropen looks nothing like any pterosaur known and has more appearance of a mythical dragon than a pterosaur, creationists by the likes of John Whitcomb and Carl Baugh strongly advocates the Ropen to be an actual pterosaur that discredits the notion of pterosaurs dying off long before humans came to earth. But they cannot explain why are there no pterosaurs found in the fossil record above and below the Mesozoic strata, nor do they cannot explain why are they finding no physical evidence for the Ropen's existence, including evidence of fully intact bodies, eggs, young, etc.
Still this doesn't stop them from masterfully manipulate the laymen into believing everything they claim about the Ropen being an actual pterosaur by constantly parroting the assertion that the Ropen is not a hoax and everything they present, in form of mostly hundreds of alleged eyewitness accounts containing conflicting descriptions and tiny few questionable photos and videos, are all true and accurate and the descriptions about the monster having no feathers, bat wings, crested head, and a long tail with a diamond shape flange at the end all clearly points to a living Rhamphorynchus pterosaur, and that it exactly match the descriptions of extinct pterosaurs found in the fossil record. But repeating unfounded, conflicting claims such as these is not going to make the cryptid exist, nor make such unsubstantial claims reliable and trustworthy. All the two creationists only present as a case for the alleged Ropen is hundreds of eyewitness accounts such as this alleged account coming from the first person who claims to have allegedly seen the mythical pterosaur alive.
"Duane Hodgkinson was stationed northwest of Lae, near Finschaven, PNG as part of the Army cavalry in 1944. About noon one day in August he was walking down a trail through a clearing in the forest when he was startled by a crashing in the brush. As he watched a large bird-like creature ponderously rose from the ground, circled and flew away. Hodgkinson, a pilot, estimated the wing-span to be about 20 ft. He clearly recalls the dark-gray coloration, long serpentine neck, beak, and distinctive head crest. Described as a nocturnal creature, the Ropen possesses two leathery wings like a bat, a long tail with a flange on the end, a beak filled with teeth, and razor-sharp claws."
Other claims follow, each containing conflicting descriptions of the Ropen other than its main features, the bat wings, the featherless body, the created head, and the long tail with a skin diamond-shaped vane at the end.
This cryptid is described as a dragon-like monster similar to a mythical dragon pictured on the left side of the page which Woetzel and other cryptozoologists says to come from a 1595 sea chart shown in the book A Pictorial History of Sea Monsters and Other Dangerous Marine Life by James Sweeney. It has ribbed wings, dermal bumps, Pteranodon-like head with a narrow beak filled with rows of teeth and a crest on the back of its head. It has webbed feet, a long tail that ends with a diamond shaped fin at the end and is considerably nocturnal and process the ability to glow in the dark through bioluminescence.
The Ropen descriptions are claimed to fit Rhamphorynchus. It doesn't. Proof that creationists and cryptozoologists know nothing of pterosaurs based on fossil evidence! Those who make such claims obviously don't know Rhamphorynchus all too well enough to know if that's really the case. Even the two creationists admit the descriptions don't fit any known pterosaur found in the fossil record right down to the finest detail, including Rhamphorynchus who, unlike the Ropen, do not have webbed feet, a dermal ridged back, and a crest on the back of its head. The wings, each supported by one elongated 4th finger, are anything but ribbed and the beak is low depressed and curved. Rhamphorynchus is a real small pterosaur that can flap its wings well. The ropen is said to only soar like an eagle and can't flap its wings well. Rhamphorynchus measured 7 inches long and has a wingspan of 7ft. The Ropen has a wingspan of 30-50 feet long according to one account while on average the Ropen is measured to be about 20-24 feet long, a measurement sometimes attributed to another alleged creature (probably the Indava) said to inhabit the Islands of Duah.
All these alleged eyewitness accounts is what the two creationists encourage the readers of Whitcomb's idiot book Searching for Ropens: Living Pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea to listen, believe, and take them as their word, constantly claiming like a broken record that what they advocate is not a hoax. But chances are, what they advocate is definitely what they constantly claim it's not. Relying only on imaginary eyewitness accounts, coming from perhaps hired natives who act out with a straight face, pretend they're not hallucinating or making this up, and give out false stories of seeing a half Pteranodon, half Rhamphorynchus hairy pterosaur stereotype one can only see in science fiction films and comics, is unreliable and worthless. In order for all of the alleged accounts to be reliable, they're should be accompanied with scores of physical evidence that will clearly confirm such accounts to be true such as fully intact bodies, eggs, and young. But none of such things has ever been found!
Woetzel claims there are two species of the alleged Ropen, including a small one, which is estimated to measure 1 to 2 feet in length with up to a 4 foot wingspan (now that's really smaller than Rhamphorynchus), alleged to live in caves that dot the islands of Rambunzo. Alleged unproven reports claims it's a surviving species of Rhamphorynchus, which in reality is native only to Europe and nowhere else. The ropen is said to dine on occasionally decaying human flesh and is alleged to be seen harassing native funeral gatherings. But no proof of such incidents has ever been found. The cryptid is said to bear a crest on the back of its head and has a ridged back. Although a tad few Rhamphorynchids have crests, the crests are actually seen at the front of their beaks, not on the back of their heads (When creationists like Goertzen makes hilarious, stupid claims about pterosaurs like Scaphognathus seen alive in historical times, they envisioned pterosaurs like Scaphognathus, a basal Jurassic pterosaur, to be just like a Pteranodon with a bony crest on the back of its head, all while ignoring the real anatomy of Scaphognathus based on fossil evidence that clearly shows the Jurassic pterosaur to have a round, skin crest on the top of its beak.). None, crested and non-crested, have in fact any ridges on their backs either.
The cryptid is said to eat mainly fish, which Whitcomb uses to discredit the notion of the Ropen being misidentifications of large fruit bats living in the area. However, many large birds living in PNG, such as the Frigate bird (Fregata minor), do eat fish and sometimes they're seen at a faraway perspective to look a lot like giant bats or pterosaurs which leads to the possibility of the Ropen myth being misidentifications of large birds minus the feathers and the short tail. He's also aware that the Ropen, according to some accounts, is said to have a hairy body just like a bat which leads him to compare it inaccurately to Sordes pilosus (hairy devil), a pterosaur whose tail lacks a diamond-shaped vane at the tip. It has a second membrane attached to its legs, leaving the tail to be completely free from any membrane attachment. Remains of this pterosaur has hair imprints covered all over its skeleton and was unearthed only in Kazakhstan and nowhere else.
Even though the physical evidence for the Ropen are nowhere to be found, this doesn't stop the creationists from creating false forms of evidence in form of crappy films and questionable photos such as what Carl Baugh and missionary Jim Blume have claimed to have created when they allegedly observed the creature at night, and took a snap shot of one of the prints the creature is alleged to have left behind when they were on the ground. But, did the prints looked like the actual prints real pterosaurs left behind that features all part of their feet on the ground, not just toes, and occasional wing-dragged marking alongside it? Nope, not likely. The photo taken have all been proven to be too fuzzy to be reliable.
The next claim involves an alleged sighting of a humanoid cryptid called Orang-bati (men with wings) which Woetzel stupidly regards as a creature similar to the Ropen.
"In 1987, Tyson Hughes, an English missionary, began an 18 month contract to assist the Moluccan tribespeople of Ceram Island, Indonesia to develop efficient farms. Tyson heard stories about a terrifying creature called the Orang-bati ("men with wings") that possesses enormous leathery wings like a bat and live in the caves of Mount Kairatu, an extinct volcano situated in the center of the island. Likely this creature is similar to the Ropen from adjoining PNG."
Wrong! Orang-bati are not pterosaurs. They are in fact humanoids, with wings like bats, face like monkeys, and real reddish black hairy bodies, that's said to capture human children and carry them to their lair inside of a extinct volcano and eat them. They also capture monkeys, too and eat them which is their main prey. They only capture children they confused as monkeys coming from tribes living in the Indonesian country of Seram due to the lack of monkeys living in the region while leaving the tribes living elsewhere alone where there's plenty of monkeys for them to eat.
The next claim involves the Genesis Park alleged trip to Sissai Island of the coast of PNG.
"In October of 2004, Genesis Park staff conducted a three week trip to the remote Siassi island off the western coast of Papua New Guinea, somewhat south of the Manus island group. The goal was to hike into the mountainous interior of Siassi to follow-up on intriguing reports received from coastal communities on the south of the island. Dozens of interviews were conducted and the credibility of witnesses was carefully tested by the use of black and white profiles."
Those types of tests are worthless. I guess this is their way to brainwash the natives into give them what they want while not having a single proof of such sightings in form of fully intact bodies, eggs, young, etc.
"After carefully collating the dozens of interviews, a composite drawing (left) of most likely characteristics possessed by the Ropen was assembled. The creature appears to resemble the Dimorphodon pterosaur, with the addition of a head crest and dermal bumps. However, the animal is said to have a 15-20ft wingspan and exhibits a bioluminescent glow."
Unlike the alleged cryptid, Dimorphodon is crestless and have no ridges on its back. It's a real small 180 million year old pterosaur whose remains are found in England. What is shown on the left side of the page is a distorted image of this inaccurate bipedal model shown on display at the Bristol City Museum in Bristol, England.
The Ropen is said to perch upright on a tree trunk while bats hang from the trees upside down from the branches. Many dinosaur books do picture pterosaurs hanging upside down on the branches like a bat, which is now known to be unlikely. It is also unlikely that pterosaurs perch upright in trees like a bird, too because the feet of pterosaurs, lacking a hallux, can't grip branches the way birds do. Nonetheless, pterosaurs can climb trees and grip branches much differently than a bird or a bat can; they are not like any bat, bird, or especially cryptid indeed.
Also on the left, at the bottom of the distorted pterosaur image is a image containing two glowing dots coming from a video alleged to show 2 alleged glowing Indavas (another name for Ropen apparently) flying in the sky above the peaks of volcanoes located on Umboi Island created by creationists possessing fake credentials.
"On Wednesday October 27 a large, yellowish glow approximately 20-25% the size of the full moon was observed to fly behind one of the volcanic peaks. The light left no trail and it twinkled around the edges. The whole sighting lasted for only a few seconds, as the light streaked across the horizon and behind Mt. Tolou (spelled correctly as Tolo)."
Does the word UFO ring a bell? Those could be UFOs from outer space flying faster than any plane, bat, bird, or pterosaur, seen by the natives and filmed by creationists who, along with Whitcomb, constantly asserts the video to be genuine. Shown in various sections on the ropen.com site, Whitcomb repeatedly asserts that the video doesn't show airplanes, meteors, car headlights, flashlights, camera artifacts, or a paste-on hoax. It doesn't show live pterosaurs, either. In fact the video likely shows two UFOs similar to all other UFO sightings made all over the world made up of bright glowing objects streaking across the sky at a real fast rate.
Then Woetzel, in another clear example of falsely regarding any ancient artist representation of a modern animal as a dinosaur because of it being shaped like one regardless of the inaccuracies pertaining to the art, mentions some "intriguing carvings made by an unknown artisan" depicting "a medicine man with a reptilian creature on his shoulders" or so he asserts. The photo is cropped off on purpose so that no one will suspect that the photo is really a cropped image of a bird headdress worn by elderly leaders of the tribes living along the Sepik River. These so-called "statutes" (or statues spelled correctly), including this one, are claimed to feature creatures with "a lizard-like ear, forked tongue, elongated snake-like neck, shallow beak, scaly membrane wings, dermal bumps running down its back, webbed feet, and a long tail (in one case being swallowed by a crocodilian)"
The so-called forked tongue are in fact strings hanging from the creature's nose, ears, and wings for decoration. Both Pterosaurs and birds have internal ears. Unlike pterosaurs, the wings show no signs of fingers whether elongated fingers supporting the membrane or small fingers sticking out of the top. The wings appears to be more of a bird-like than a bat-like (the "scaly membrane" part of the wings represents feathers). The long tail could be the bird's tail feathers, the narrow beak could be a bird's beak, the snake-like neck come from the bird, dermal bumps could be the scales representing a crocodile and webbed feet is something only sea birds have. Pterosaurs, in reality, don't have webbed feet. All Pterosaurs with long necks are stiffened and are anything but snake-like. Their wings are far from scaly, they lack dermal bumps, have hair, and in most cases have skinned crests located in front of their beaks. Only some pterodactylids have bony crests on the back of their heads.
In reality, such statues all has to do with the mythology of Kura, one of the tribes living along the Sepik River, and nothing to do with pterosaurs or Ropens. According to Kura mythology, a woman was saved by a crocodile who took her to his underwater lair and married her. She gives birth to two sons who has the ability to transformed themselves between crocodiles and eagles. These 2 animals are the main symbols of male leadership and ritual power, which is why they are found on such headdresses worn by spiritual leaders and on statues located inside and on the rooftops of spiritual houses that carry out initiation ceremonies to welcome a young adult boys into manhood.
And finally, Woetzel mentions another expedition made in the Fall of 2006 that claims to obtained the first photograph "of a Ropen light as multiple creatures were observed flying nocturnally." But no such photographs has ever been shown. If there were photographs, then they're all poorly taken and much too blurry to be regarded as reliable evidence for the Ropen's existence.
At the conclusion of this section Woetzel asserts that all these combine claims provides a (sic) strong case and a powerful argument for living pterosaurs while being evasive to the question of "If what you claimed to be the case, then how do you explain the complete lack of physical evidence in form of fully intact bodies, remains of animals that have recently died, eggs, young, etc?"
