the mystery creature that is mokele mbembe

Good day to all you loch ness lurkers, champ chasers, and Ogopogo ogglers, today i'm going to bring you a story of a river monster that only few folk would know, but it's an interesting tale indeed.

So in the congo, something is reported to be lurking in the gambia river (it flows into the congo) and there the locals re ported to seen what appeared to be an aquatic anomaly of some sort. Now evidence is hazy at best, but the earliest reports something amiss in the waters.

In the 1980s, Dr Mackal led two expedition teams to the vast Likouala swamp and rainforest area of the Congo which is inhabited by pygmies, on the hunt for this mystery creature - Africa's version of Scotland's Loch Ness Monster.

The Mokele-mbembe is reputed to be a large reptile-like creature, with a long neck, and long tail.

Despite being a herbivore, it is said to roar aggressively if approached by humans. Some say it has a single horn, which it uses to kill elephants.

now that is the testimony of the locals, whom Dr Roy Mackal who communicated through pictues as things could be lost in translation, pictures of local animals were immediately identified, the foreign animals weren't however when shown a picture of a dinosaur and without doubt or hesitation said "Mokole mbembe."

Now that's intersting, firstly if the reaction was immediate, there could be some credence to the stories, as Adam davies says

"Certainly mythology surrounds it," says Adam Davies, a British man who spends his spare time and money travelling the world in search of undocumented species, and has twice gone to Africa on the trail of the Mokele-mbembe.

"But when you put it to people, 'Is this a real creature?' they become quite affronted… and they consistently came out with physical descriptions."

So now we all have seen greys-the little big eyed chaps-so I can say i have seen one because X-Files. maybe it is just a campfire story

In all, there have been more than two dozen searches for the "living dinosaur" over the years and still evidence for mokele-mbembe remains elusive. There are no photographs or films of the creature, no bones or teeth, no evidence beyond stories and anecdote. In the modern world of Google Earth, and ubiquitous cameras and cell phones, it is highly unlikely that dozens or hundreds of dinosaurs (there can't be just one that's 65 million years old!) exist but have somehow never been photographed or even found dead.

Good point there, but now we come to the chicken and the egg. did the mythology came from actual reports, or did the mythology spawn the reports? your guess is as good as mine, however there are pink dolphins in the amazon river, the coelcamph was thought to be extinct for millions of years, what else could be lurking in our waters (or their waters)

I'm no cryptozoologist so i have no idea what to make of this.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

I remember the first time I heard of this as a kid...

youtu.be...

Nothing would surprise me anymore, though I'm more skeptical leaning on this topic.

There is a movie on VHS about this creature, supposedly resembles a long-neck herbivore dinosaur that still lived in Africa. I used to have it nearly memorized but the story goes where some British or American reporters get word of it and go searching only to find the rumors true but a warlord was trying to kill the beasts while the locals were trying to keep them a secret. I lost that tape over 20 years ago, no idea of the title.

a reply to: Gravelbone

I remember the stories too.
Apparently, one time the natives in the area killed and ate one...and discovered the meat was poisonous.

a reply to: StratosFear

Are you thinking of "Baby Secret of the Lost Legend" ?

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

There might be more than a few folk that have heard about it - it was the subject of a hit 1985 Hollywood movie.



Yeah it was awful but it got me to do a little research at the time. Very cool story!

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

Thanks for the thread. Another mystery in the Congo. Add this to the mystery of the Bili Chimps in the Bili Forest which is also in the Congo.

Billi Chimps:

en.wikipedia.org...

Wiki labels them as Bili Apes because these Chimpanzees are huge, some growing 6ft tall. They even walk upright like people!

when i was a kid a read about the mokele mbembe in my favorite Ranger Rick magazine. I was totally obsessed about it. The natives know what all the creatures look like and every time they were showed the photo of a brontosaurus they said he lived in the forest in water. If i remember correctly, Josh Gates also did a show on it and maybe one on monster quest. a reply to: Thecakeisalie

It's likely a living dinosaur. They're not millions of years old. All cultures around the world saw dinosaurs like mokele mbembe (big with a long neck and tail) and they depicted them consistently:


mesopotamian cylinder seal


Amazon Jungle



USA

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
Good day to all you loch ness lurkers, champ chasers, and Ogopogo ogglers, today i'm going to bring you a story of a river monster that only few folk would know, but it's an interesting tale indeed.

So in the congo, something is reported to be lurking in the gambia river (it flows into the congo) and there the locals re ported to seen what appeared to be an aquatic anomaly of some sort. Now evidence is hazy at best, but the earliest reports something amiss in the waters.

In the 1980s, Dr Mackal led two expedition teams to the vast Likouala swamp and rainforest area of the Congo which is inhabited by pygmies, on the hunt for this mystery creature - Africa's version of Scotland's Loch Ness Monster.

The Mokele-mbembe is reputed to be a large reptile-like creature, with a long neck, and long tail.

Despite being a herbivore, it is said to roar aggressively if approached by humans. Some say it has a single horn, which it uses to kill elephants.

now that is the testimony of the locals, whom Dr Roy Mackal who communicated through pictues as things could be lost in translation, pictures of local animals were immediately identified, the foreign animals weren't however when shown a picture of a dinosaur and without doubt or hesitation said "Mokole mbembe."

Now that's intersting, firstly if the reaction was immediate, there could be some credence to the stories, as Adam davies says

"Certainly mythology surrounds it," says Adam Davies, a British man who spends his spare time and money travelling the world in search of undocumented species, and has twice gone to Africa on the trail of the Mokele-mbembe.

"But when you put it to people, 'Is this a real creature?' they become quite affronted… and they consistently came out with physical descriptions."

So now we all have seen greys-the little big eyed chaps-so I can say i have seen one because X-Files. maybe it is just a campfire story

In all, there have been more than two dozen searches for the "living dinosaur" over the years and still evidence for mokele-mbembe remains elusive. There are no photographs or films of the creature, no bones or teeth, no evidence beyond stories and anecdote. In the modern world of Google Earth, and ubiquitous cameras and cell phones, it is highly unlikely that dozens or hundreds of dinosaurs (there can't be just one that's 65 million years old!) exist but have somehow never been photographed or even found dead.

Good point there, but now we come to the chicken and the egg. did the mythology came from actual reports, or did the mythology spawn the reports? your guess is as good as mine, however there are pink dolphins in the amazon river, the coelcamph was thought to be extinct for millions of years, what else could be lurking in our waters (or their waters)

I'm no cryptozoologist so i have no idea what to make of this.

This has always been one of my favorite cryptids. The Paleoanthropologist in me means I need to operate on facts. But the wonderment and curiosity that led me towards science is still there and while I doubt a breeding sized population of anything of this size is at all possible of evading all signs... it makes me think twice.

Plus I'm also very skeptical of the stories involving a white guy showing random photos to natives. We see a similar scenario with the Dogon tribe allegedly identifying stars they shouldn't have known about and in the end the truth is less exciting because the Dogon had no knowledge of these things prior to contact but it hasn't stopped people from expanding on the initial false reports to what we see today where people claim that they are of Egyptian descent and Sirius B is a part of their traditional folklore. none of which is true.

There is nowhere near that level of insanity surrounding M'kele M'bembe but the origin stories bear a striking similarity.
At the end of the day, I would LOVE for this to be true. I'm just not seeing the evidence to support it.

a reply to: cooperton

I used to write off such arguments as the small minded rantings of religious fundamentalists, buuut there are those (fanciful??) pictographs you posted, and few sculptures and such, but the big one was the fresh tissue found on some dinosaur "fossils" and now... I'm just confused.

But the M-M legend in the Congo sure as heck has some legs to it and as such critters existed at some point in the past, why not a few now?

originally posted by: Baddogma
a reply to: cooperton

I used to write off such arguments as the small minded rantings of religious fundamentalists, buuut there are those (fanciful??) pictographs you posted, and few sculptures and such, but the big one was the fresh tissue found on some dinosaur "fossils" and now... I'm just confused.

it's a misconception that there was fresh tissue found in dinosaur bones. There was fossilized soft tissue inside of a T-Rex fossil. Nobody had ever thought to cut a fossil in half before and it seems that this was a massive learning experience for standard dogmatic paleontologists who, and rightfully so, demanded more evidence to support the initial claims. One of the most important aspects of the scientific method is the ability of independent scientists to attempt to recreate the same results based on the parameters of the initial experiment.

Despite Coopertons claims, we've got a really good handle on the various methods of radioactive decay and how it works in relation to determining the age of fossils. If Dinosaurs survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, we would be finding even more fossils of increasingly younger ages than the estimated 66MA event that wiped out a large chunk of life on earth.

But the M-M legend in the Congo sure as heck has some legs to it and as such critters existed at some point in the past, why not a few now?

Because just a few today wouldn't be enough for a breeding population to exist. And if something the size of a brontosaurus existed today in numbers large enough to have not just a population large enough to sustain the population, that would leave unmistakable marks on the landscape. Just "a few" today would have such drastically compromised genetic diversity that they wouldn't have been able to maintain any sort of population and the lack of genetic diversity would mean that they were definitively on the fast track to extinction.

originally posted by: peter vlar

it's a misconception that there was fresh tissue found in dinosaur bones. There was fossilized soft tissue inside of a T-Rex fossil.

No it's not. It was soft tissue. It was collagen that was so well intact that they could compare it to contemporary bird collagen samples. It is not just one extraordinary sample that had dinosaur collagen, but it is actually the norm. Now that they know where to look, they are realizing it is common to find collagen in dinosaur remains. Considering the estimated half life of collagen is 100 years, this strongly insists that dinosaurs are not millions of years old.

If Dinosaurs survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, we would be finding even more fossils of increasingly younger ages than the estimated 66MA event that wiped out a large chunk of life on earth.

Carbon dating data says they are less than 40,000 years old

Thats it, what underpass61 posted. For a period of time it was one of the few movies I had growing up. I`m sure the actual movie was horrible but the ideas it conveyed are fascinating.

originally posted by: IAMTAT
a reply to: Gravelbone

I remember the stories too.
Apparently, one time the natives in the area killed and ate one...and discovered the meat was poisonous.

That is actually a very very interesting thing if the meat was poisonous, like a natural genetic defense mechanism for a herbivore dinosaur to be avoided by carnivores so it can survive. Poisonous toads, that sort of thing.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie what is funny is the MSM story one followed by scientists etc,but no one knows who wrote the story,kind of like history of the US,true history nothing like what we are told,a big bag of bull#

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

First heard about this over 20 years ago so was kind of hoping technology may have come up with some answers by now.

On the other hand, i'm not particularly surprised it hasn't! The Congo has essentially been in a civil war for the last 50 plus years. Every despicable act you can imagine has happened with alarming regularity there. Add to that the armed groups from other nations that fled over the border to the Congo adding to their problems. And that is before you get to the biggest problem of all, one that many people don't recognise or understand - the swamp in question is similar in size to the country of Wales.

Imagine trying to find something in a swamp the size of a nation!

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed

originally posted by: IAMTAT
a reply to: Gravelbone

I remember the stories too.
Apparently, one time the natives in the area killed and ate one...and discovered the meat was poisonous.

That is actually a very very interesting thing if the meat was poisonous, like a natural genetic defense mechanism for a herbivore dinosaur to be avoided by carnivores so it can survive. Poisonous toads, that sort of thing.

That was part of the plot line of the movie. They went in to help a tribe that fell ill and many had died. They thought maybe their water supply had been poisoned somehow. The chief told them they had found a dead mokele mbembe and ate it, then he told them legends of the elusive beast who had never been caught and in true Hollywood fashion they found a baby one straight away!

a reply to: peter vlar

Yeah, yeah... spoilsport. : ) But as I understood it, it was not "fossilized" soft tissue, but soft tissue itself. If wrong, then I apologize and differ to your expertise with actual due respect. A quick search said an explanation was that a high iron content preserved it. Huh.

But really, in my misspent decades of pouring over anomalies, I've come to some strange questions and not a single satisfying answer.

Some of the seemingly biological critters reported by non-delusional non-idiots defy any scientific model I've encountered and a sufficient breeding population is the very least of the problem!

And it begs the question, from whence the first "sufficient breeding populations" came from at the start?

When we live in a world where fish and amphibians rain from the blue sky on occasion, I'd be careful when making blanket proclamations... with respect and fully admitting you are likely correct. Likely.

Nice to hear from you, btw.