Alleged 1924 Ropen Footage?

On September 13th, 2007, Azrul Hisyam Saleh sent me the above footage. It was presented as an “old 1924 video of supposed Pterosaur in PNG.” I was in no mood to rush to publish this on this blog.

But now I’m seeing this footage crop up on creationist sites and crypto blogs. Ugh. So I’ll place it here, make a brief remark, and open it to your comments.

To me it looks like someone put a painted tail (I can’t see the wings move) on an old film, maybe even one from the 1920s, of a frigate bird.

Several things hit my skeptical button on this. No video in 1924, so that mistake, that it is film, is understandable. But wait, the 1925 movie The Lost World might have some copycats I’ve not seen? Or as anyone knows, “old film” (with a sepia look) can be created today.

I don’t know. I really doubt it is a film taken on “one of the last expeditions to Papua by the Australian Geologist Evan Richard Stanley” that was hidden in an “an atheist conspiracy to suppress the truth about the glory of God’s creation,” as one David Woetzel is saying about this footage.

I’m not feeling very forgiving about internet and YouTube hoaxes and pranks today.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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