2016 Ambungi Island

2016 Papua New Guinea – Ambungi Island

We visited Ambungi Island examining the caves reportedly used by a sauropod in recent years. Brian and I and a large group of islanders and went to the caves at night. Conflicting reports from the native divers led me to suspect it wasn’t really a deep one. I went back and physically examined the cave the next day in daylight. The water surrounding the entrance was maybe 15 feet at its deepest point. The cave may be about 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep. I placed a trail camera for a week above a secondary purported cave with no success.

The last reported dinosaur sighting around the island was back in July of 2015 by an adult male who wished to remain anonymous. While in a canoe he watched a brown long-necked creature with a saw-like ridge on its back moving in the open ocean in the afternoon.

Ambungi Island appears to be visited at times by these creatures but I saw no surface caves capable of hiding an animal larger than an adult human. The island is comprised of pocketed limestone that has the appearance of Swiss cheese or slag discarded from an iron or steel mill. (I’m guessing most of the islands in New Britain, if not all, have this general appearance.) Geographically speaking, just like Swiss cheese, there were no real continual holes to be found-just many odd shaped pock-marked ones. The only sizable holes on the island that I saw were along the shores where water erosion has occurred on a consistent basis creating small bluffs or overhangs.

Beautiful area where the caves begin. Notice overall size of rocks compared to person on shore in yellow shirt
Jerome Luma, our main contact on the island
Main cave reportedly used by sauropod-like creature
Main cave again but with a person in canoe for scale
2nd cave reportedly used by sauropod-like creature to the left of two young men.
Small pocket cave on east side of island. Entrance maybe 20 feet across. This cave is not deep, and you can see the back from the water.
Photo was taken on the east side of the island. In 1999, somewhere in the center of this photo, is where a sauropod-like creature was seen in a garden area above. It was seen going over the side back into the sea.
Another photo of the same area

Article by Dr. Karl Shuker
https://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2019/03/seeking-neodinosaurs-in-new-guinea.html