What happened
On the islands of Papua New Guinea, stories circulate about the ropen – a nocturnal flying creature with a long tail that supposedly feeds on fish or carrion and glows in the dark. From the mid-1990s, the legend attracted the interest of American searchers, most of them associated with the young-Earth creationist movement, for which a living pterosaur would be an argument against the theory of evolution. Successive expeditions, including Carl Baugh's in the 1990s and David Woetzel and Garth Guessman's in 2004, reached Umboi Island in Morobe Province. Participants collected accounts from residents, and some claimed to have seen a mysterious moving light over the hills attributed to the ropen. None of the expeditions, however, managed to photograph or record the animal.
Witnesses
Residents of Umboi and neighboring islands and members of American search expeditions.
Explanations and hypotheses
Paleontologists stress that there are no pterosaur fossils younger than 66 million years. Descriptions of the ropen fit known animals: large fruit bats of the genus Pteropus, frigatebirds with wingspans exceeding 2 meters, or birds of prey. The nocturnal lights may come from bioluminescent insects, campfires or fishermen's lamps. Critics note that the campaign surrounding the ropen has been run mainly by authors associated with creationism rather than by zoologists, and that there are no credible photographs despite many expeditions.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.