Old Biologist; New Pterosaur Insight

Evelyn Cheesman was no cryptozoologist. She explored remote jungles in New Guinea to discover new species of insects or new species of amphibians, not modern pterosaurs. This British biologist was respected in the scientific community; here is part of what Wikipedia says:

” . . . unable to train for a career as a veterinary surgeon due to restrictions on women’s education . . . she studied entomology, and was the first woman to be hired as a curator at Regent’s Park Zoo, in London. In 1924 she was invited to join a zoological expedition to the Marquesas and Galapagos Islands. She spent approximately twelve years on similar expeditions, travelling to New Guinea, the New Hebrides and other islands in the Pacific Ocean. In New Guinea she made a collecting expedition . . . collecting insects.

If my information is correct, it was in the early 1930’s when Cheesman was baffled by flying lights just below the top of a nearby ridge deep in the mainland of New Guinea. She wrote about the mysterious lights in her book The Two Roads of Papua; the publishing date was 1935.

The lights could not reasonably be explained away as coming from the locals, for they were glowing in a somewhat horizontal formation, inexplicable as human-caused. But in more recent decades, a number of explorers have searched in Papua New Guinea for flying creatures that are reported to be bioluminescent. The flying creatures have names like “duwas,” “ropen,” “seklo-bali,” and “indava.” They are said, by natives, to glow as they fly at night. This seems to be what Cheesman saw many years ago. She would have been shocked at the suggestion that she had been observing living pterosaurs.

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