Credibility of Umboi Island eyewitnesses of the ropen

Credibility of the Umboi Island eyewitnesses

who claim to have seen a giant ropen and

describe it in terms suggesting a pterosaur

Gideon Koro interview, 2004

Do pterosaurs still live? In the 21st Century? Don’t rush to any conclusion; get the facts, then judge credibility.

According to Jonathan Whitcomb, a legal videographer in Long Beach, California:

“On October 7, 2004 I left the Gomlongon Village area with my interpreter and some local guides. We arrived at Akure Village without much notice to the locals who were unaccustomed to seeing a white-skinned man. I waited there while someone was sent to get Gideon. It is unlikely he had time to prepare for the interview; he was at ease being questioned (and videotaped) about his experience.

“He acknowledged that he had been interviewed before. I had studied his previous video-recorded testimony and noticed that he was much more at ease than he appeared to be years earlier. It should be noted that the previous interview may have taken place soon after the sighting itself took place.

“These villagers have probably never seen a movie or television or even a live dramatic play. They are unaware of acting techniques in the way Westerners are. The many facial expressions of Gideon during our videotaped interview were highly consistent with his verbal answers. There is no reasonable possibility that he was willfully giving false information and that he had not seen any creature like the one he described. I interviewed him in front of the villagers who knew him. After I asked him the length of the tail of the ropen, he looked away as if to imagine the tail on the ground. He looked back and forth at the ground for a few moments and then he looked back at me and answered emphatically, “sefan meetuh” (seven meters). He was surely doing this to get a feel for both what the tail would have looked like if it were stretched out on the ground, and to then to estimate the length. It is beyond belief to suggest he was acting in dishonesty.

“In regard to any possibility that he firmly believed in a creature that he thought he saw, but which was only a mental illusion or dream, we need to consider a broad perspective on this sighting. A specific hallucinated image does not affect a group, but is experienced by an individual. The ropen sighting involved seven boys. They ran home in terror after this sighting. Wesley, the brother of Gideon, described the ropen to me and I was able to videotape his answers. Likewise, another of the witnesses, Mesa, told me that he saw the ropen at that time. These videotaped interviews are available to all who would like to examine them. What these young men described to me was no dream or hallucination.”

Gideon Koro of the Akure

Village area of Umboi Island

in Papua New Guinea, 2004

When asked if the creature

had any feathers, Gideon

showed nonverbally that

the question was strange:

He said: “No feathers”

When he was asked about

the length of the tail, he

looked away to imagine

the tail and then estimate

its length. This was done

in a highly credible way.

Wesley & Mesa interviews

“Soon after interviewing Gideon, I learned that two of the other witnesses were present with us. Wesley is a brother to Gideon and answered my questions without any hesitancy. He displayed a swaying motion just as he answered some of the questions, but this was not any sign of dishonesty: He swayed before answering “yes” to my question about if he were a brother to Gideon in the same manner he swayed before answering other questions. Both his answers and his mannerisms were highly credible.

“Mesa seemed nervous in his interview, likely because it was the first time he had been questioned about the sighting. He agreed with Gideon. He and Wesley both told me that the tail of the creature had a “diamond” on it. (I believe this refers to a flange at the end of the tail; it’s common in Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur fossils.) I found nothing in Mesa’s testimony to cause any doubt in his honesty.

“In regard to Mesa’s nervousness, some of the legends about the ropen suggest some danger or bad luck or other negative aspect to being in contact with it. It is not surprising that one out of three of these young men is still very ill at ease about this ropen encounter.

“It should be noted that these people are very much aware of the Flying Fox bat that is common on this island. This creature holds no fear for them. It is an ingredient in a soup these islanders enjoy. Those who received a sling-shot as a gift from me, were delighted as this makes it much easier to catch the “byung.” It is unbelievable that seven island boys would run home in terror of an ingredient of soup (a fruit bat). It is also unbelievable that they mistook a byung (Flying Fox) for a ropen with a seven-meter-long tail. (And it was flying over a lake.) It was obviously no Flying Fox.

“It’s also important to realize that the islanders who testify to what they saw, do not usually repeat the legends of the ropen. They simply answer questions as to what they saw. Apparently, nothing in the knowledge or culture of these people is close to the form of what the boys saw other than the ropen, so the boys called it by that name. A living pterosaur—that’s what seems to best fit these descriptions.”

Jonathan Whitcomb, forensic videographer