I had been to other parts of Papua New Guinea back in 2002 to hunt for stories of living dinosaurs and other mysterious creatures. It was an interesting learning experience back when I was just getting started in my quest to document and verify the survival of these amazing ancient creatures.
I heard reports about Sauropod dinosaurs seen repeatedly on and around Ambungi Island in Papua New Guinea over the years. So, I decided to go there and see what I could personally find.
During late December 2015 through early January 2016 Australian Brian Irwin and I traveled to the island of New Britain (primarily West New Britain province) in Papua New Guinea as part of a follow up to past research trips of Brian’s in June of 2012 and May of 2008. Aussie Russell Cook and Brian Irwin visited there in 2012. Joey Massang and Matt Clarke went to the area (including Ambungi Island) in December of 2014.
Our goal was basically to track down stories of living dinosaurs and to look into the possibilities of extant (non-extinct) dinosaur remains as reportedly seen in this video posted January 2014.
The trip was overall rough going yielding little new information on our targeted goals. Fortunately, we were able to learn of some other potentially exciting undiscovered wildlife. Brian and I could not have had a successful trip without the help of many people, especially from Bryan & Teena Girard, and their children Rist and India, and Bishop Bill Fey. Others who helped were Henry Baul, Michael Hoffman, John Manlel, Jerome Luma, our local guides, and many others.
Brian and I traveled to various places asking multiple people about reports of reptiles resembling dinosaurs. I also asked about other possible cryptids in the region including surviving Tasmanian tigers and bigfoot-like creatures. I brought along laminated flash cards with sketches and cartoons to help in communicating with the locals due to the language barrier. This was very useful in identifying previously unknown wildlife.
Click below to see what we found.