Local Pygmy and Bantu residents have for generations reported a long-necked, long-tailed creature the size of a hippopotamus that moves in water. Locals call it Mokele-Mbembe, meaning "one who stops the flow of rivers." In the 1970s, American explorer Terry Pratchett photographed a blurry image in the Congo rainforest, showing a long-necked creature in the water. Since then, Roy Mackal of the University of Chicago and others organized multiple expeditions to the Lake Tele area, interviewing dozens of witnesses, but never obtained physical evidence or a clear photograph.
Account
Local Pygmy and Bantu residents have for generations reported a long-necked, long-tailed creature the size of a hippopotamus that moves in water. Locals call it Mokele-Mbembe, meaning "one who stops the flow of rivers." In the 1970s, American explorer Terry Pratchett photographed a blurry image in the Congo rainforest, showing a long-necked creature in the water. Since then, Roy Mackal of the University of Chicago and others organized multiple expeditions to the Lake Tele area, interviewing dozens of witnesses, but never obtained physical evidence or a clear photograph. In cryptozoology, the creature is speculated to be a surviving sauropod dinosaur.
Debunked
From the 1970s to the present, all expeditions have failed to obtain hair, bone, fecal, or living evidence. The so-called blurry photo is too low-resolution to identify any species. Mainstream paleontology holds that non-avian dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous and could not have survived in Central African rainforests. Witness descriptions are attributed to misidentification of rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, or African forest elephants in water.
Sources
- American expedition reports to the Congo rainforest, 1970s-1980s
- cryptozoology academic publications