July 9, 2009
To living-pterosaur investigators and to those interested
in live "pterodactyls" (by Jonathan Whitcomb)
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CONTENTS
MonsterQuest "Flying Monsters" Broadcast
Scientific Paper Published (Whitcomb)
New Book Nearly Ready For Sale
(Amazon.com)
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MonsterQuest "Flying Monsters" on television
The June 3rd show on the History Channel
was
interesting to me: Never before had I watched
four of my friends on television in one night.
I was gratified: It introduced many
American
television viewers to the concept of living
pterosaurs. But some things could have been
better, for it seemed to emphasize
standard-
model dogma above eyewitness accounts.
Garth Guessman was a key expedition member
with the MonsterQuest team. On New
Britain
Island, Papua New Guinea, they gathered what
I believe was the largest group of natives
ever to assist an expedition trek to
seek
a living pterosaur (here, it is not called
"ropen"); even a child or two was carrying
luggage. Garth stayed up the first night,
while
the MonsterQuest team members slept.
Unfortunately the one major sighting was
that night, with Garth the only Western eye-
witness.
And that important sighting was not
disclosed in the show.
For those who saw that show, I hope they'll
all eventually come to
know details like
this: The two camp fires observed far off,
that first night ("unknown lights" that were
discovered to be camp fires
in the morning),
were unrelated to the strange light that
Garth had seen while the other explorers were
sleeping. That detail was left
out of the
show, with no hint that anything strange had
been observed during the expedition.
In addition, this MonsterQuest episode
put
great stress on the idea that pterosaur
sightings in Papau New Guinea may be from
misidentifications of bats. That idea is
now very
outdated: Fruit-bat-explanation
was long ago shot down.
The producers or writers appeared to have
decided ahead of time that pterosaurs
are
extinct. The expedition to Papua New Guinea
was for making an entertaining television
show, not for making a serious scientific
investigation.
Aside from those problems, there were a few
brief interview clips favoring the idea of
extant pterosaurs;
this balanced the major
opinion emphasized by the show: extinction.
Nevertheless, they did show some balance.
To their credit,
the show included bits
of interviews with the explorers Garth
Guessman and Paul Nation, and with the
eyewitness Duane Hodgkinson and
with the
physicist Cliff Paiva. Without those four
persons, the show would probably have been
a sham; with them, it was fascinating.
For
more information:
I devoted six pages of my new book (in the appendix)
to this MonserQuest episode. ("Live Pterosaurs
in
America," nonfiction - see the end of this newsletter)
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Scientific Paper Published in the
CRSQ Journal
"Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific"
The Creation Research Society Quarterly, Volume 45,
Number
3 (Winter 2009) included my article on apparent
living Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea.
This is not the first time something
on this subject has
been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal; I
know of one other paper written on this (by Mr. David
Woetzel,
in 2006: "The Fiery Flying Serpent").
For those who have read the second edition of my book
"Searching for Ropens," my article
gives few surprises.
But it does include details not present in the book, in
particular regarding Hodgkinson's 1944 sighting. Also,
there
are several tables that allow quick referencing
of sightings and expeditions (also not present in my
book). Unfortunately, those who
are not members of
the Creation Research Society do not have access to
most of the articles; but membership is not expensive.
For
more information:
NEW
BOOK: "Live Pterosaurs in America"
Much shorter than my previous book (SFR), at 102 pages
of content, it still packs many eyewitness
accounts,
the vast majority of which have never before been
published. The approach differs from SFR, in that it
is primarity a cryptozoological
book rather than a
spiritual-religious-cryptozoological one. Nevertheless,
part of the appendix deals with the creationist aspects
of
the investigations, without which there would not
have been any expeditions and therefore nobody who
would have reported their eyewitness
accounts to me.
In the last newsletter, many paragraphs described one
aspect of the American eyewitness accounts regarding
the
elimination of the hoax-explanation. Since then,
while continuing to write the book, I found two more
aspects of the overall testimonies
that disprove that
a hoax or hoaxes played any significant part in those
accounts. All three methods are explained in the book.
At
$12.50, the nonfiction will be available on Amazon,
but not on many other sites. It should be ready for
ordering sometime between .
. . [it was published on
July 25, 2009; on sale at
Amazon.]
For now, see:
Jonathan
Whitcomb
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