I’ve written about this Manta ray fish story many times already, but we need to now concentrate on the reasons why Dale Drinnon has repeatedly brought up this leaping-fish conjecture. But before getting into his reasoning, let’s review his conjecture. He believes that “many” sightings of reported pterosaurs (the extant living creatures, not fossils) come from people who see a large Manta ray that jumps up out of the water.
Mr. Drinnon insists that any extant pterosaur on this planet must resemble pterosaurs known from fossils that have been discovered and that any deviation in appearance means the creature observed cannot be that type of flying creature. He does not explain why he has taken that stand, but he dogmatically holds onto that position.
Hypothetical Encounter at a Zoo
Let’s apply that position to fossils in general and to modern creatures in general (why should pterosaurs get special treatment?). How would we react if a paleontologist marched up to the administration office of a zoo and insisted that a particular animal enclosure be labeled “Animatronic – not a real animal?” Everybody else knows that those animals are biological and not fake. Why is that paleontologist mistaken in his dogmatism? He knows that no fossil yet discovered is exactly like what we all see in that zoo enclosure, so he insists that the animals in question cannot be biological. Why is he wrong? (Of course that paleontologist is imaginary.)
Almost every adult human in Western society understands biological diversity, whether those adult humans are Biblical Creationists or strict Darwinist Evolutionists. Chihuahuas and Saint Bernards are the same species, regardless of outward differences. Why should pterosaurs drastically differ from the general rule?
Paleontologists know from pterosaur fossils that varieties existed in the past, great diversity in those flying creatures. Why should we be shocked that a modern pterosaur would have one or two or even three details of appearance that differ, in some degree, from already-discovered fossils of pterosaurs? In fact, new varieties of pterosaurs are still being discovered in fossil form. The shock is in discovering that not all their species are extinct, after generations of indoctrination into the universal-extinction dogma.
Mr. Drinnon emphasizes anything that seems to relate to a Manta ray fish (with sighting reports of pterosaurs) especially the general shape of the body of the Manta ray. But he mentions almost no details, no particular sighting, in most of his writings; what sighting report has a description of a ray shape and was over a large body of water? Two creatures flying together, high over a city in the Philippines could not have been a leaping Manta ray, although Drinnon still wants to hold onto the possibility that it was that fish (because that city is near water).
Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaur Resemblance
In the second ropen expedition of 2004 (I led the first one), Garth Guessman and David Woetzel interviewed a few native eyewitnesses, in Papua New Guinea, by using a page of silhouettes. Those images (unlabeled except for numbers) were of dozens of known birds, bats, and pterosaurs. Only two natives had a good-enough view of the flying creature (that they called “ropen”) to make a valid evaluate of shape, comparing the images with what they remembered observing on Umboi Island. I have photocopies of the detailed reports of those interviews.
The two natives who had good views of the ropen both chose the image of the Sordes Pilosus, a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur:
That silhouette does bear a slight resemblance to the shape of a Manta ray (if we cut off the Rhamphorhynchoid tail vane and the head). But both Jonathan Ragu and Jonah Jim (in two seperate sightings) saw a flying creature that was glowing, not a Manta ray that jumped out of the sea and fell back. In fact, Jonah Jim was miles from the coast, far from any major body of water.
Ragu witnessed, with his daughter, the glowing ropen flying at or near the northwest coast of Umboi Island. Take the case that the man and his daughter had merely seen a jumping Manta ray, as unlikely as that appears to have been. Why would he have chosen the same silhouette as Jonah Jim would later choose? And why would Ragu report the same strange phenomenon: a glow? Those factors practically eliminate the jumping Manta ray misidentification as a reasonable conjecture for these two sightings. Ragu and Jonah Jim had surely seen the same flying creature, regardless of how shocking a modern giant Sordes Pilosus may be to Westerners.
Mr. Drinnon is mistaken on two major points: The critical sightings that my associates and I have analyzed could not have been misidentified leaping rays, and modern pterosaurs need not be precisely similar, in all details, to those paleontologists know from fossils.
The Four Key Sightings in the Southwest Pacific
Misidentified sea birds [Frigate bird] are a far cry from how serious living-pterosaur investigations really began.
No Manta rays would appear to fly through the air together and change directions in the air . . .