Searching for Ropens and Finding God New view of the "fiery flying serpent" Ropen (pterosaur) Fiery Flying Serpent and Flying Dragons Fiery Flying Serpent in Book of Mormon
What were those fiery flying serpents? Someone once suggested that “fiery” may relate to the name given to the fire ant: taken from the pain from that insect’s bite. But we do not have flying fire ants in the Bible, and FLYING is the key. The word in Hebrew relates to a back and forth motion, like the wing beats of a bird or the swinging of a sword during an ancient battle. The new interpretation is this: “fiery” refers to a bioluminescent glow, “flying” refers to literal flying, and “serpent” refers only to a general look of a snake. When the wings were folded up, the creatures looked like snakes, and so that was included in the name they invented. It now appears those ancient creatures were long-tailed pterosaurs.    
What is this “fiery flying serpent” spoken of in the Old Testament? Enter this realm of investigation, if you dare to find the truth.
The Fiery Flying Serpent
The Bible mentions fiery flying “serpents” as real animals, causing death to many of the people of Israel in the desert many centuries ago. Moses created a “brazen serpent” on a pole, which miraculously helped those who looked on it to be healed from the venom.
Patty Carson witnessed a strange flying creature around 1965, in Cuba (As an adult, she drew the above sketch of what she had encountered)
Those who want to continue believing that the fiery flying serpents in the scriptures were literally snakes---they may believe what they may. But those who have interviewed eyewitnesses of ropens, in various parts of the world, now believe that the dangerous animal of ancient times was a modern Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur, possibly related to the long-tailed nocturnal creatures now seen in various areas of the world. A small portion of modern encounters with these creatures is reported to have caused human deaths in Papua New Guinea and in British Columbia, Canada. Yet most encounters have harmed nobody.
See also Genesis Park
Eskin Kuhn’s sketch of what he saw in Cuba, in 1971: two featherless flying creatures at Guantanamo Bay, in clear daylight: pterosaurs
copyright 2014  Jonathan Whitcomb
Posed photograph of the four Carson children --- Each of them had seen the long-tailed creature, in three separate sightings, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the 1960’s (This posed photo is on the island of St. Croix).
U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn
Patty Carson
Eyewitness Brian Hennessy
Fourth edition of the nonfiction book on sightings of modern pterosaurs encountered by eyewitnesses worldwide