In a Nutshell

According to National Geographic, regarding the Marfa Lights (Texas), ”Reports often describe brightly glowing basketball sized spheres floating above the ground, or sometimes high in the air.” (Word-for-word National Geographic correlates with Wikipedia here.) Wikipedia adds that skeptics attribute the lights to “mistaken sightings of ordinary nighttime lights, such as distant vehicle lights, ranch lights, or astronomical objects.”

According to Jonathan Whitcomb, author of the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America, some of the America ghost lights may be from bioluminescent pterosaurs, similar to the ropen of Papua New Guinea. Those flying lights are sometimes seen above mountains, sometimes with a mountain background, and sometimes moving too fast to be from any human source; they are not from vehicle lights (especially where there are neither vehicles nor roads, especially in the sky), astonomical objects (with mountain background), or natives’ flashlights.

The British entomologist Evelyn Cheesman investigated the strange lights she saw deep in the mainland of New Guinea, in the 1930′s. She never was able to come to any conclusion about what caused the lights, although she was sure that they were not from any human origin.

See also “Pterosaur Interpretation of Chessman Sightings.”

New species, giant rats and strange frogs, being discovered in New Guinea—that now seems commonplace. New Guinea is the second largest island on the planet (after Greenland) and perhaps the least explored. But look just a bit to the east, on New Britain Island: Over the years, eyewitnesses have reported three types of giant dinosaurs and a pterosaur. Extraordinary!

The second largest island in the nation of Papua New Guinea, New Britain, covers 14,600 square miles, mostly tropical rain forest. Before the 20th Century, the interior of the island had been mostly unexplored by outsiders. But by 2009, several astonishing cryptozoological investigations had taken place.

The MonsterQuest Papua New Guinea expedition of 2009 (it was short)–that was not one of them, for it appeared practically a foregone conclusion that the expedition team would discover no pterosaur but only reaffirm their bat-explanation. According to one member of the team, they were there to make a show, not to do scientific research.

A more-enduring endeavor, a medical mission deep in the interior of the island, unintentionally gave cryptozoologists much more to talk about, for the eyewitnesses were focused on helping local natives rather than inspiring American cryptozoologists. Garth Guessman (who has explored in Papua New Guinea twice, searching for “living fossils”) interviewed the three eyewitnesses, in 2006, after they had returned to the Unites States. They described a featherless creature, with a head crest but without any long tail, “soaring” for up to half a mile in daylight; the Pterodactyloid-like creatures fly regularly over one valley, sometimes in a small group. It obviously differs from the nocturnal, solitary long-tailed ropen of Umboi Island.

Leaving the pterosaurs, what about a ten-foot-tall grey-colored creature with a head like a dog and a tail like a crocodile? This was not millions of years ago but in 2004. “Christine Samei told reporters she saw the ‘dinosaur‘ early on Wednesday in a marsh just outside . . . Kokopo . . . New Britain.” After hearing others talk about it, she went to see for herself; “very huge and ugly looking,” she said. Michael Tarawana, a local leader, told a newspaper reporter that the creature had eaten three dogs. That sounds like something a tyrannosaurus rex might do.

But near the coast of southwest New Britain, two different dinosaur-like creatures have been observed by natives. According to the Australia explorer Brian Irwin, Dililo Island (near Gasmata) has an apparent sauropod dinosaur, seen one afternoon late in 2005; the length was estimated at “about 20 metres” (over 60 feet). And Umbungi Island has an apparent Therizinosaurus, seen “occasionally,” and with length estimated at “10–15 metres” (about 40 feet).

New Britain Island deserves more scientific expeditions, even if only one of these creatures is officially discovered and verified a living fossil.