Congolese Jungles are said to be inhabited by dinosaurs. One of them, and the most famous one also, is named Mokele-Mbembe, and is said to be a sauropod. However, we can't be sure of this...
In 1913, a German expedition in the Congo met a some pygmies who described an animal they called Mokele-Mbembe, which means "one who stops the flow of rivers." (The name vary from an area to another: N'yamala in Gabon, Mbokäle-Muembe for Cameroun and northern Congo. In Centrafrica, it have differents name from differents peoples: Diba for the Bayas, Songo for the Banziris, Badigui for the Bandas (that mean water's devil) and Guanerou in the Birao district.) Everyone said this beast was about the size of an elephant or hippopotamus, with a long, flexible neck and a long tail like an alligator's. They claimed that the animal would attack and kill any humans that got too close to it, but it would not eat them, because of its strictly herbivorous diet. Similar descriptions have been given time and time again throughout central Africa, consistent with a sauropod or other small dinosaur.
In 1981 Roy Mackal explored the Likouala and Lake Tele regions of the Congo, reputed hot spots of dinosaur sightings. However, he didn't found anything. However, he had many sighting reports, including one exciting story of how one Mokele-Mbembe was attacked and killed. Pascal Moteka, who lived near Lake Tele, said that his people had once constructed a barrier of stakes across a river to keep the giant beasts from interfering with their fishing. When Mokele-Mbembe tried to break through the barrier, the assembled villagers managed to kill it with spears. Celebrating their triumph, the people butchered and cooked the carcass, but everyone who ate the dinosaur meat reportedly died soon afterwards.
Marcellin Agnagna, a Congolese biologist who had accompanied Mackal on his searches, led his own expedition in 1983. Agnagna claimed to have a firsthand sighting of a Mokele-Mbembe as it waded in Lake Tele. He described it as having the long-necked form typically attributed to the creature, although he could not see its legs or tail, which remained underwater. Agnagna had a movie camera, but he later reported that there was little film left when the creature appeared, and he began filming it without realizing that the lens cap was left on. Thus, even though he says he observed the animal for about 20 minutes before it submerged and vanished, Agnagna was sadly left with no photographic evidence. We easily can talk of hoax, but, we don't know...
In 1992, a Japanese film crew captured some of the best photographic evidence of a Mokele-Mbeme ever presented. They were filming aerial footage from a small plane over the area of Lake Tele to obtain some panoramic landscape shots for a documentary. They noticed a large shape moving across the surface of the lake and leaving a V-shaped wake behind itself. The cameraman zoomed in and got about 15 seconds of the object in motion before it dives under the surface.
The resulting footage is very jumpy and indistinct, but it shows a vertical protuberance at the front of the object that could be a long neck. It is also possible to see a humped back or tail. If the object is not a dinosaur, it's difficult to say what animal it could be, since a crocodile would not have two such protrusions above the water, and an elephant would not submerge like the object does. Actually, skeptics says that this is two men paddling a canoe, although the object is going too fast to be a non-powered boat.
The dinosaur survivance is something really hard to believe, but Africa's a land full of mysteries, so maybe one day we'll get the ultimate proof of their survivance. And after all, why not?
Source:www.parascope.com/en/cryptozoo/predator07.htm
perso.wanadoo.fr/cryptozoo/vedettes/mokele.htm (french page)
perso.wanadoo.fr/cryptos/LacAfrique.htm
Cryptozoologix 2001
