First off: Yes, I am using the latest version: 5.0.12.
Context for how I found this bug:
I found a weird discrepancy in the icons.png file in the files of Minecraft: Java Edition. It's that there is a duplicate version of an armor bar icon (as shown in image 1). So I made a version of it in an ugly but effective resource pack to easily tell which one is showing or not.
Then I loaded the resource pack only to find that it shows up as a missing texture. (as shown in image 2)
How did I know that, as the title says, saves the .png file as a .pdn one? I renamed the fake .png to a .pdn file and Windows finally recognized it. (it showed an actual image rather than the Photos app's image icon.)