Case file · Cryptid
Mokele-mbembe
A water-dwelling being of Bantu traditions of the Congo River Basin, which cryptozoologists recast as a living sauropod dinosaur.
1981 CE · 1.34, 17.15 · status: claim
The account
Expeditions, many funded by young-Earth creationists hoping to disprove evolution, have searched for it, including Roy Mackal's in the 1980s and Herman Regusters's 1981 trip to Lake Tele, where he claimed a photo and a sound recording. A 2018 Danish expedition with a DNA scientist also went to Lake Tele.
The sceptical view
No expedition has found anything beyond testimony. Paleontologist Donald Prothero notes that the searchers are creationist ministers, not wildlife biologists.
Connections in the atlas
- The 'Kasai rex' photograph
- Mokele-mbembe
- "Do Prehistoric Monsters Still Exist?"
- Proyart's giant footprints in Loango
- Von Stein’s report of the "Mokele-mbembe" from Cameroon
- Blancou's 'elephant killer'
- The Lungfish and the Unicorn
- The Japanese film over Lake Tele
- Marcellin Agnagna’s undeveloped Mokele-mbembe film
- Marcellin Agnagna at Lake Tele
- A Living Dinosaur? In Search of Mokele-Mbembe
- Kongamato