Mokele-Mbembe
Once again the footpath on Symonds Street is covered with those big yellow leaves. Once again, the ultra-rainy season has hit, meaning the footpath is always covered in puddles. Walking up Symonds Street means wending your way between them, hoping that the leaves your walking through aren't covering one. Once again there is a small sea outside one of the main entrances to Engineering, meaning that anyone who uses that door has wet socks for the rest of the day.
And the wind's back. That cold, biting wind that gets to you even when you're completely wrapped up!
Welcome to Autumn. My least favourite time of year.
Sucks.
------
From the Evening News, January 1 1970:
"A fantastic mystery has developed over a set of cave paintings found in the Gorozomzi Hills, 25 miles from Salisbury. For the paintings include a brontosaurus - the 67-foot, 30-ton-like creature scientists believed became extinct millions of years before man appeared on earth. Yet the bushmen who did the paintings ruled Rhodesia from only 1500 b.c. until a couple of hundred years ago. And the experts agree that the bushmen always painted from life. This belief is borne out by other Gorozomzi Hills cave paintings - accurate representations of the elephant, hippo, buck and giraffe. The mysterious pictures were found by Bevan Parkes, who owns the land the caves are on. Adding to the puzzle of the rock paintings found by Parkes is a drawing of a dancing bear. As far as scientists know, bears have never lived in Africa."
-"Bushmen's Paintings Baffling to Scientists", Evening News, January 1 1970, London Express Service.
And from Science-80 journal:
"In the swampy jungles of western Africa, reports persist of an elephant sized creature with smooth, brownish greyish skin, a long, flexible neck, a very long tail as powerful as a crocidile's, and three-clawed feet the size of frying pans. Over the past three centuries, native Pymies and western explorers have told how the animals feed on the nutlike fruit of a riverbank plant and keep to the deep pools and subsurface caves of waters in this largely unexplored region.
"After a recent expedition there, two American researchers conclude that these stories refer to a real animal... called "Mokele-Mbembe" by the natives, may actually be a dinosaur, perhaps one resembling brontosaurus, which is thought to have died out 70 million years ago...
"There are precendents. No one believed that the prehistoric coelacanth could still be living until one fished up off the Affrican coast in 1939. The paleotragus, a giraffe-like creature that lived 20 million years ago was thought to be extinct until one turned up in the Congolese rainforests at the turn of the century."
- "Living Dinosaurs" Science-80, vol 1, November 1980, pp 6 - 7
"When Alexander the Great (c.330BC) and his soldiers marched into India, they found that the Indians worshipped huge hissing reptiles that they kept in caves.
"A tenth century Irishman wrote of his encounter with what appears to be a Stegosaurus.
"In the 15oo's, a European scientific book, Historia Animalium, listed several animals that we would call dinosaurs, as still alive. A well known naturalist of the time, Ulysses Aldrovandus, recorded an encounter between a peasant named Bapista and a dragon whose desription fits that of the small dinosaur Tanystropheus. The encounter was on May 13 1572, and the peasant killed the dragon."
- Paul Taylor, "The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible" Denver, CO: Accent Publications Inc., 1989
A creature exists in the almost totally unexplored (by westerners) Congoese rainforests, that natives call "Mokele-Mbembe". The region, called the Likouala Swamp, is the largest swamp in the world, and also one of the few remaining places in the world that are almost totally unexplored (the Likouala Swamp is officially 20% explored). The body of this creature has been reported as being 5 - 10 meters long, with a neck and a tail, each 1.6 - 3.3 metres long. Reports from Cameroon indicate that there it may be up to 75 feet (15 metres) long. It has also been reported as having a frill (or a horn) on the top of its head. Many books have been written on what this remarkably dinosaur-like creature may be, for example:
A Living Dinosaur? In Search of Mokele-mbembe by Dr. Roy P. Mackal
Drums Along the Congo: On the Trial of Mokele-mbembe, the Last Living Dinosaur by Rory Nugent.
Results of the First Congolese Mokele-Mbembe Expedition by Agnagna, Marcellin
On the Track of Unknown Animals by Dr.Bernard Heuvelmans
Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique (The Last Dragons of Africa) by Dr.Bernard Heuvelmans
In Search of Prehistoric Survivors: Do Giant 'Extinct' Creatures Still Exist by Dr. Karl Shuker
This an aerial photo of Lake Tele, a lake in the Likouala region. The photo was taken by Japanese photographers in 1992. Lake Tele is the legendary home of the mokele-mbembe, and also the place where sightings are most commonly reported. Something large is swimming in the water, leaving a fairly long wake. Is it the mokele-mbembe? Or just a boat?
This site takes an objective look at the existence of the mokele-mbembe, and is worth a read. It describes the creature (based on reports) and details all(or most of) the expeditions that have been undertaken in search of it.
This site gives several examples of historical artifacts that show pictures of living dinousaurs and of people interacting with dinosaurs.
Night~
And the wind's back. That cold, biting wind that gets to you even when you're completely wrapped up!
Welcome to Autumn. My least favourite time of year.
Sucks.
------
From the Evening News, January 1 1970:
"A fantastic mystery has developed over a set of cave paintings found in the Gorozomzi Hills, 25 miles from Salisbury. For the paintings include a brontosaurus - the 67-foot, 30-ton-like creature scientists believed became extinct millions of years before man appeared on earth. Yet the bushmen who did the paintings ruled Rhodesia from only 1500 b.c. until a couple of hundred years ago. And the experts agree that the bushmen always painted from life. This belief is borne out by other Gorozomzi Hills cave paintings - accurate representations of the elephant, hippo, buck and giraffe. The mysterious pictures were found by Bevan Parkes, who owns the land the caves are on. Adding to the puzzle of the rock paintings found by Parkes is a drawing of a dancing bear. As far as scientists know, bears have never lived in Africa."
-"Bushmen's Paintings Baffling to Scientists", Evening News, January 1 1970, London Express Service.
And from Science-80 journal:
"In the swampy jungles of western Africa, reports persist of an elephant sized creature with smooth, brownish greyish skin, a long, flexible neck, a very long tail as powerful as a crocidile's, and three-clawed feet the size of frying pans. Over the past three centuries, native Pymies and western explorers have told how the animals feed on the nutlike fruit of a riverbank plant and keep to the deep pools and subsurface caves of waters in this largely unexplored region.
"After a recent expedition there, two American researchers conclude that these stories refer to a real animal... called "Mokele-Mbembe" by the natives, may actually be a dinosaur, perhaps one resembling brontosaurus, which is thought to have died out 70 million years ago...
"There are precendents. No one believed that the prehistoric coelacanth could still be living until one fished up off the Affrican coast in 1939. The paleotragus, a giraffe-like creature that lived 20 million years ago was thought to be extinct until one turned up in the Congolese rainforests at the turn of the century."
- "Living Dinosaurs" Science-80, vol 1, November 1980, pp 6 - 7
"When Alexander the Great (c.330BC) and his soldiers marched into India, they found that the Indians worshipped huge hissing reptiles that they kept in caves.
"A tenth century Irishman wrote of his encounter with what appears to be a Stegosaurus.
"In the 15oo's, a European scientific book, Historia Animalium, listed several animals that we would call dinosaurs, as still alive. A well known naturalist of the time, Ulysses Aldrovandus, recorded an encounter between a peasant named Bapista and a dragon whose desription fits that of the small dinosaur Tanystropheus. The encounter was on May 13 1572, and the peasant killed the dragon."
- Paul Taylor, "The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible" Denver, CO: Accent Publications Inc., 1989
A creature exists in the almost totally unexplored (by westerners) Congoese rainforests, that natives call "Mokele-Mbembe". The region, called the Likouala Swamp, is the largest swamp in the world, and also one of the few remaining places in the world that are almost totally unexplored (the Likouala Swamp is officially 20% explored). The body of this creature has been reported as being 5 - 10 meters long, with a neck and a tail, each 1.6 - 3.3 metres long. Reports from Cameroon indicate that there it may be up to 75 feet (15 metres) long. It has also been reported as having a frill (or a horn) on the top of its head. Many books have been written on what this remarkably dinosaur-like creature may be, for example:
A Living Dinosaur? In Search of Mokele-mbembe by Dr. Roy P. Mackal
Drums Along the Congo: On the Trial of Mokele-mbembe, the Last Living Dinosaur by Rory Nugent.
Results of the First Congolese Mokele-Mbembe Expedition by Agnagna, Marcellin
On the Track of Unknown Animals by Dr.Bernard Heuvelmans
Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique (The Last Dragons of Africa) by Dr.Bernard Heuvelmans
In Search of Prehistoric Survivors: Do Giant 'Extinct' Creatures Still Exist by Dr. Karl Shuker
This an aerial photo of Lake Tele, a lake in the Likouala region. The photo was taken by Japanese photographers in 1992. Lake Tele is the legendary home of the mokele-mbembe, and also the place where sightings are most commonly reported. Something large is swimming in the water, leaving a fairly long wake. Is it the mokele-mbembe? Or just a boat?
This site takes an objective look at the existence of the mokele-mbembe, and is worth a read. It describes the creature (based on reports) and details all(or most of) the expeditions that have been undertaken in search of it.
This site gives several examples of historical artifacts that show pictures of living dinousaurs and of people interacting with dinosaurs.
Night~
posted by David | 12:15 am
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