THE CAMBODIAN 'STEGOSAUR' - AN ANACHRONISM FROM ANGKOR WAT?

The enigmatic Cambodian 'stegosaur' glyph at Ta Prohm, Angkor Wat, with the external decorative plate motif clearly visible encircling its circle's outer perimeter (© John and Lesley Burke)

Mystery creatures, and evidence in support of their existence, can turn up in the most unlikely places, but few can be as unexpected, surely, as Cambodia's centuries-old carving of an alleged stegosaurian dinosaur!

Stegosaurs constituted a taxonomic suborder of ornithischian ('bird-hipped') dinosaurs that existed from the mid-Jurassic Period to the early Cretaceous Period, i.e. approximately 170-120 million years ago. They lived predominantly in North America, Europe, and China, but at least one species is known from Africa, and possibly one from India too. Herbivorous and quadrupedal, the most famous morphological attributes of the stegosaurs were the double (occasionally single) row of very large, flat, upright plates running down the centre of their back, and the arrangement of long spikes (the so-called thagomizer) borne upon their tail. Proportionately, their head was very small relative to the rest of their body. Indeed, in the most famous genus, North America's Stegosaurus, their brain was only the size of a walnut whereas their body was the size of a van!

Whereas the last confirmed stegosaurs died out over 100 million years ago, one of Cambodia's most beautiful edifices, the jungle temple of Ta Prohm, was created a mere 900 years or so ago, and forms part of the Angkor Wat temple complex, which collectively is internationally famous for being the largest religious monument in the world. Dedicated to the Hindu deity Vishnu by the Khmer King Suryavarman who built it during the early 12^th Century, Angkor Wat did indeed begin as a Hindu temple, for the Khmer Empire and in what was then its capital, Yasodharapura, now Angkor, but by the end of that century it had been transformed into a Buddhist temple.

Ruined temples and giant overgrown tree roots at Ta Prohm, Angkor Wat (public domain)

Like other temples from this time period and Angkor Wat complex, Ta Prohm is intricately adorned with images from Hindu and Buddhist mythology as well as many depictions of animals. These latter include numerous circular glyphs each containing the carving of some local creature - but Ta Prohm also has one truly exceptional glyph unique to itself. Near to one of this temple's entrances is a circular glyph containing the carving of a burly quadrupedal beast ostensibly bearing a row of upright plates along its back - an image irresistibly reminiscent of a stegosaurian dinosaur!

This anomalous carving is very popular with local guides, who delight in baffling Western tourists by asking them if they believe that dinosaurs still existed as recently as 900 years ago and then showing this glyph to them. Could it therefore be a modern fake, skilfully carved amid the genuine glyphs by a trickster hoping to fool unsuspecting tourists? Or is it a bona fide 900-year-old sculpture? Having spoken to a number of people who have visited Angkor Wat and have viewed this glyph close-up at Ta Prohm, I am assured by all of them that it looks of comparable age to the other glyphs surrounding it, with no visible indications that it has been carved any more recently than any of the others there.

So how can this very intriguing, seemingly anachronistic depiction be explained? Some cryptozoologists cite it as proof that a stegosaurian lineage must have survived into modern times somewhere in this vicinity but has remained undiscovered by science (the notion that this carving may portray a living stegosaur appears to have been first promoted during the late 1990s, in a couple of books on Angkor Wat written by Michael Freeman and Claude Jacques). Others have suggested that perhaps it was inspired by the temple's architects having seen some fossilised stegosaur remains. And there also is the option that it is a stegosaur only by accidental design, i.e. that its plates are not a physical component of the creature, but merely background decoration inside the circle containing it, and that to associate them with the animal is therefore a mistake. Let's consider each of these possibilities.

The Cambodian stegosaur glyph in close-up (© John and Lesley Burke)

If we ignore its plates, the rest of the creature does not actually look much like a stegosaur as depicted in palaeontological restorations, certainly not as depicted in modern restorations (i.e. in contrast to those dating from several decades ago, but which are still the ones commonly brought to mind by laymen who may not be familiar with up-to-date versions in palaeontological publications). In particular, its apparent lateral cranial horns are decidedly non-stegosaurian, and the stegosaurs' distinctive, characteristic thagomizer is conspicuous only by its absence in this glyph. Also contrasting with fossil stegosaurs are its relatively large head and short tail – the reverse condition to that more commonly exhibited by the former dinosaurs.

Then again, if a stegosaurian lineage has indeed somehow persisted into modern times, such differences from fossilised stegosaurs as those noted above are certainly not so radical that they could not have arisen during the 100 million years or so of continuing evolution that will have occurred from the early Cretaceous to the present day. One only has to compare, for instance, the relatively unspecialised range of mammals or birds existing during the early Cretaceous to the vast morphological diversity of mammalian or avian forms alive today to see just how extensively evolution can modify outward morphology during that particular period of time.

However, if anything as dramatic as a living stegosaur does indeed exist (or has done until very recently) anywhere within the area of Cambodia, one might reasonably expect rather more pictorial evidence of such existence than a single small carving tucked away amidst a myriad of other animal carvings. Yet I am not aware of any comparable design anywhere else in Asian art. To my knowledge, there is no suggestion of stegosaurian creatures in Cambodian mythology or folklore either, nor, indeed, in that of any other corpus of Asian traditions (thus contrasting very markedly, for example, with the extensive native beliefs associated with the mokele-mbembe in the Congo). And there is certainly no documented physical evidence for such a creature's reality – no preserved plates, skeletal remains, etc, described in any publication that I have ever encountered or seen any mention of during my researches.

Fossil skeleton of a Late Jurassic Chinese stegosaur, Tuojiangosaurus (© Ayca Wilson/Wikipedia CC BY 2.0 licence)

Moreover, even fossil stegosaur remains so far disinterred in Asia are restricted to China (predominantly) and India (very controversially – much of these proved upon closer inspection to be derived from plesiosaurs instead!). This in turn reduces the likelihood that the 'stegosaur' glyph was carved 900 years ago by a local sculptor who had previously seen fossil remains of such a creature, unless (and which is certainly not impossible but unlikely) the sculptor had visited China and had seen such remains there?

Yet even if it does not represent a living contemporary (or a prehistoric fossil) stegosaur, might it conceivably depict some still-undiscovered modern-day animal that superficially resembles a stegosaur? If so, however, there do not appear to be any local sightings or lore on record concerning it

Another option is that it may be some local mythological creature (though I am unaware of any from this region of the world that match its appearance). Certainly, there is a varied mixture of the factual and the fictitious among the fauna depicted at Angkor Wat.

Scaly(?) ridge-backed mystery beast – a stylised pangolin? – depicted directly below the stegosaur glyph at Ta Prohm (© John and Lesley Burke)

Directly below the stegosaur glyph, for instance, is one portraying a mystifying unidentified quadruped with cross-hatching on its body that may be meant to represent scales, plus a distinct series of dorsal ridges that in this instance are definitely part of the animal. Its somewhat pointed head is reminiscent of that of a pangolin or scaly anteater, which could also explain the cross-hatching.

Yet unless the depiction as a whole is very stylised (particularly its dorsal ridges), it does not closely resemble a pangolin (or indeed any other real, whole creature) in other morphological respects. However, as suggested elsewhere by German cryptozoologist Markus Bühler, might it represent the head of a wild pig? There is certainly a degree of resemblance. Alternatively, it may be some type of mythological entity.

Oriental demon depicted directly below the putative pangolin glyph at Ta Prohm (© John and Lesley Burke)

Directly below that glyph, moreover, is one that portrays a typical Oriental demon, grinning maniacally at anybody spotting it there.

To my mind, however, by far the simplest and most plausible explanation for the enigmatic stegosaur glyph is that its resemblance to one of those plate-backed dinosaurs is an artefact – i.e. it is simply some form of local present-day known creature that has been carved with a plate-like decorative motif in the background, but which in turn has been wrongly associated directly with the creature. The reason that I favour this explanation is that such a motif can also be seen surrounding other carved animals of several different types enclosed within their respective glyph circles at Angkor Wat. These include birds, a water buffalo, deer, monkeys, and even mythological demons, as noted above (and in certain of these glyphs, moreover, the motif bears a resemblance to lotus leaves).

The stegosaur glyph (arrowed) in situ with other animal glyphs, including a water buffalo directly above it, an unidentified animal directly below it, and a mythological demon directly below that - click picture to enlarge it (© John and Lesley Burke)

Although the plates surrounding the alleged stegosaur do seem somewhat more well-defined (but might this indicate some very selective modern-day enhancement by a hoaxer seeking to enhance its superficial stegosaur appearance?), their general shape and size are much the same as those surrounding other carved animals. In addition, this same plate motif is also present encircling the outer perimeter of the glyph circles enclosing the carved animals, including that of the 'stegosaur', as readily seen in the photograph opening this present ShukerNature blog article.

Looking closely at the latter creature, its head in particular is shaped very like that of a rhinoceros, as has also been commented upon elsewhere by Markus Bühler and various others. Even its 'cranial horns' resemble the long pointed ears of such mammals. Conversely, its back seems more arched than is true of rhinos, but this discrepancy could merely be due to stylising, or once again may simply be a design artefact, the creature having been depicted in this unnatural, hardly life-like pose (for a rhino) simply in order for it to fit more readily inside its circular setting.

The Cambodian 'moa' carving at Angkor Wat (public domain)

Incidentally, adapting the shape of an animal during its depiction in order to fit it more snugly within a designated space for it is an option that I have already explored elsewhere on ShukerNature (click here) in relation to a second anomalous Angkor Wat carving - the so-called Cambodian moa.

Returning to rhinos and the suspect stegosaur: on the latter creature's body are indications of the skin pleats exhibited by Asian rhinos of the genus Rhinoceros (i.e. the great Indian R. unicornis and the Javan or scaled R. sondaicus, the latter of which definitely still existed in Cambodia 900 years ago, with the former possibly doing so too). Even the creature's lack of a nasal horn is not an obstacle to identifying it as a rhino of this genus, because female Javan rhinos are sometimes hornless.

19^th-Century chromolithograph of a very short-horned Javan rhinoceros exhibited at London Zoo in 1877, showing its skin pleats (public domain)

Another line of speculation that has been proposed by some investigators is that the creature actually represents a very stylised portrayal of some form of lizard, suggestions having included a chameleon (though there is none in southeast Asia) or one of the several species of southeast Asian agamid known as mountain horned dragons Acanthosaura sp. However, any similarities between the carving and such reptiles seem far less apparent (if indeed present at all) to me than those readily visible between the carving and a stylised and/or modified-to-fit rhinoceros. Equally, whereas an even better fit for the creature's 'cranial horns' than the pointed ears of a rhino would be the horns of a wild ox, the rest of the creature's depiction is a better fit for a rhino than for an ox.

Of course, we shall never know for sure the intended taxonomic identity of the supposed stegosaur in this perplexing carving. However, it does seem much more likely to be a stylised depiction of some local known species rather than anything more radical. After all, it surely couldn't have been based upon a sighting of a real-life stegosaur...could it?

Life-sized model of a Stegosaurus (© Dr Karl Shuker)

My sincere thanks to John and Lesley Burke for specifically seeking out and photographing for me the 'stegosaur' glyph at Ta Prohm in Angkor Wat during their visit to Cambodia in 2001.

This ShukerNature blog article is excerpted and enlarged from my forthcoming book Still In SearchOf Prehistoric Survivors…coming very soon.

If the Cambodian stegosaur were indeed real… - 'Angkor's Way' (© Michael J. Smith)

A NEW ZEALAND MOA IN CAMBODIA?

Bayon glyph depicting mystery long-necked bird between rhinoceros and ox at Angkor Wat, Cambodia (public domain)

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the same has certainly been true of cryptids on many occasions in the past. The following case may – or may not – constitute a further example of this cryptozoological rule of thumb.

In terms of their current native zoogeography, modern-day ratites all have very precise distributions on the continental level. The ostrich is nowadays entirely confined to Africa (its contingent in Asia Minor was hunted into extinction by the mid-20^th Century), the rheas to South America, the emu to Australia, the now-extinct moas to New Zealand, the now-extinct elephant birds to Madagascar, and the cassowaries to Australia and New Guinea. However, there are no known modern-day ratites native to mainland Asia (nor are there any to Europe or North America either, for that matter), which makes a certain enigmatic carving present on a famous Indochinese temple of particular interest.

Vintage illustration of a giant moa Dinornis sp. alongside a kiwi (public domain)

Dating from the 12^th Century and richly decorated with countless numbers of bas-relief glyphs carved upon its numerous sandstone columns and walls, depicting a wide range of deities and animals, Angkor Wat is a celebrated temple complex in Cambodia and constitutes the world's largest religious monument. It also lays claim to cryptozoological fame, courtesy of a specific glyph carved on a wall at Ta Prohm, one of the temples in this complex, because the animal portrayed by this glyph bears a remarkable superficial resemblance to one of the classic plate-backed stegosaurian dinosaurs from prehistoric times. Not surprisingly, this anomalous, ostensibly anachronistic carving has attracted considerable discussion and dissension as to what creature it does truly depict, and I have documented it in a number of my own publications.

Angkor Wat's 'stegosaur' glyph (© Jon and Leslie Burke)

However, there is also a second glyph at Angkor Wat that, although far less famous than the 'stegosaur', is no less intriguing from a cryptozoological viewpoint, because one identity scientifically proposed for the notably long-necked bird that it depicts is a New Zealand moa. This glyph can be found in a temple known as the Bayon, with the mystery bird in question being sandwiched between a carving of a rhinoceros to its immediate left and one of an ox (possibly a gaur) to its immediate right.

Close-up of Bayon glyph depicting rhinoceros, mystery long-necked bird, and ox at Angkor Wat, Cambodia (public domain)

As seen in the illustration reproduced here of this glyph's animal trio, the bird has stout legs, a noticeably plump winged body, and an extremely long slender neck with a small head atop. In the April 1986 issue of the German scientific periodical Natur und Museum, Drs G.H. Ralph von Koenigswald and Joachim Steinbacher correctly pointed out that the above morphology ruled out any of the local heron species (the same is true of storks, because both storks and herons possess very long, slender, bayonet-like beaks, whereas the carved bird's is shorter, stouter, and has a hooked tip). They also noted that the glyph carver's placing it between two such large mammals as a rhinoceros and an ox (and with its head almost as high as theirs despite the fact that its neck was not even upright but was being held at an angle of approximately 45°) was probably done specifically to demonstrate just how big this bird was.

April 1986 issue of Natur und Museum, featuring on its cover the avian subjects in the von Koenigswald-Steinbacher paper (© Natur und Museum)

Reflecting upon these factors, the authors suggested that perhaps the bird was a New Zealand moa, and, if so, quite probably the sturdy, relatively short-legged coastal moa Euryapteryx curtus (as opposed to the more famous and taller but much slimmer and longer-legged giant Dinornis moas). The moas were not believed to have become extinct in their native New Zealand domain until the mid-1400s (seemingly as a result of over-hunting and habitat destruction by the Maoris), i.e. around 250 years after the creation of Angkor Wat. Due to the extensive trade links and maritime travel that had been occurring in the southeast Asian-Australasian region for many centuries, the authors believed it likely that New Zealand's mighty moas would have been known about in Indochina at the time of Angkor Wat's creation, and that their spectacular appearance might well have inspired a carving of one to be produced amid the many other depictions of striking wildlife and mythological monsters present here.

Restoration of Euryapteryx (© FunkMonk/Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0)

Moreover, as the authors also noted, traders throughout history have transported preserved and living specimens of unusual, exotic-looking animals far from their native homelands to those of the traders as curiosities for exhibition purposes. Hence it is remotely possible that merchants travelling between Australasia and Indochina brought a preserved or perhaps even a living moa back with them to Cambodia at some point during the quarter-millennium spanning Angkor Wat's completion and the moas' extinction in New Zealand.

Alongside a life-sized statue of a sturdy moa in Auckland, New Zealand (© Dr Karl Shuker)

And indeed, there are some very pertinent precedents for transporting living ratites from Australasia to Asia, because cassowaries are known to have been transported westwards by mariners in bygone centuries from their native Australian and New Guinea homelands to Indonesia and China. Indeed, as the authors also discussed in this same paper, there is even a glyph of a cassowary-like bird at the Tjandi-Panataran, a Hindu temple not far from Wadjak in Java and dating from around the 12^th-15^th Century, which may offer further evidence of such transportations. Additional details regarding this subject are contained in my book The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003) and also in a ShukerNature blog article on cassowaries (click here).

Glyph of cassowary-like bird at Java's Tjandi-Panataran temple (public domain)

Having said that, there might be an altogether much more mundane, prosaic explanation for the long-necked mystery bird of Angkor Wat. Namely, that its appearance may not be due so much to any taxonomic identity as a moa but rather to the fact that there was a space needing to be filled between the rhino and the ox, and a non-specific long-necked bird simply made an ideal space-filler, with any perceived similarities to Euryapteryx or any other moa being merely coincidental. In short, the bird's morphology was moulded by the specific shape of the space needing to be filled, nothing more.

Alongside a life-sized statue of a giant moa Dinornis sp. at Chester Zoo, England (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Indeed, a telling suggestion that this may well be the case is that whereas the wings of all moas were non-existent, the Angkor Wat bird has a very large, conspicuous wing readily visible. In addition, moa beaks were not hook-tipped. Such notable discrepancies as these would not be expected if the glyph provides as accurate a representation of the bird as it does for the rhinoceros and the ox, both of which are portrayed realistically and are readily recognisable.

Life-sized restoration of Dinornis moa at Tring Natural History Museum (© Dr Karl Shuker)

This ShukerNature blog article is excerpted from my latest book, A Manifestation of Monsters.

SHUKERNATURE'S TOP TEN LIVING DINOSAURS OF CRYPTOZOOLOGY

Spectacular painting of the mokele-mbembe (William Rebsamen)

Time for another ShukerNature Top Ten!

Today, the only known living dinosaurs are of the avian variety – birds. However, the chronicles of cryptozoology are bulging with reports of mystery beasts that have been likened or potentially identified with other, supposedly long-vanished dinosaur forms. Here, then, in no particular order is my personal Top Ten of putative living dinosaurs of the non-avian, cryptozoological kind.

THE MOKELE-MBEMBE – A CONGOLESE WATER DRAGON, OR A DINOSAUR OF THE ISHTAR GATE?

According to the resident pygmies here, the vast, remote, and virtually inaccessible Likouala swamplands of the People's Republic of the Congo (formerly the French Congo) are home to a 27-ft-long amphibious 'water dragon' known as the mokele-mbembe ('one that capsizes boats'). They describe it as reddish-brown in colour, with a small head but very long neck and tail, an elephantine body, four sturdy limbs that leave behind large three-clawed footprints, and an appetite for the Landolphia gourds, which it browses upon like a reptilian giraffe, sometimes while still partly submerged in water. It is most frequently sighted by the native people in or near a very large body of freshwater known as Lake Tele.

The mokele-mbembe has been sought unsuccessfully by a number of Western expeditions since the 1980s, its most famous and tenacious seekers being now-retired Chicago University biochemist and spare-time cryptozoologist Dr Roy Mackal, and Scottish field cryptozoologist Bill Gibbons (via two Operation Congo expeditons and who has also sought similar beasts in Cameroon). Of particular interest is that when a range of animal images have been shown to the natives in an attempt to gain more information concerning the mokele-mbembe's appearance in the hope of identifying it, the images consistently claimed by alleged eyewitnesses to be closest to it have been ones depicting sauropod dinosaurs from prehistory, such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus (formerly called Brontosaurus).

Roy Mackal's book documenting the mokele-mbembe and other Congolese 'neo-dinosaurs' (Dr Roy Mackal/E.J. Brill)

Indeed, Mackal and Gibbons both consider a species of living, modern-day sauropod, surviving undisturbed in the Likouala's secluded and relatively inaccessible, inhospitable terrain, to be a plausible identity for this elusive creature. Another popular suggestion is that it may be a very large monitor lizard with an exceptionally long, elongated neck, but no such form of monitor is known from either the present day or the fossil record. And whereas monitors are almost exclusively carnivorous, the mokele-mbembe is entirely herbivorous.

Adding veracity to its eyewitnesses' testimony, similar creatures (known by such names as badigui, amali, and n'yamala) have been recorded elsewhere in tropical Africa too - including the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Gabon.

The mushussu or sirrush portrayed upon the Ishtar Gate of Babylon (Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin)

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect concerning the mokele-mbembe is how closely it resembles the Babylonian mushussu dragon as depicted on the Ishtar Gate. And it is known that early glazed bricks identical to those used in this gate's creation have been recorded from Central Africa - leading some naturalists to suggest that perhaps the early Babylonians visited this African region to obtain bricks for the gate, saw mokele-mbembes there, and upon their return to Mesopotamia their descriptions of this creature inspired the depictions of the mushussu on the gate. Boldest but most fascinating of all is the suggestion that at least one young mokele-mbembe may even have been transported back to Mesopotamia alive, explaining the so-called dragon that was worshipped in a temple by the Babylonians until killed by Daniel.

KULTA AND BURRUNJOR - DINOSAURS OF THE DREAMTIME?

This is how Rex Gilroy, a veteran investigator of Australian mysteries, has referred in his book Mysterious Australia to two of this island continent's least-publicised but most fascinating mystery beasts - the kulta and the burrunjor.

According to ancient Central Australian aboriginal lore, the kulta inhabited the great swamps that existed long ago in the far north, browsing inoffensively upon the region's lush vegetation. It possessed a small head, an exceedingly long neck and tail, an enormously bulky body, and four sturdy legs. This description is irresistibly similar to that of the sauropod dinosaurs, such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. Yet the aboriginals have no palaeontological knowledge, so how are they able to describe so accurately a type of reptile that officially died out millions of years ago - unless at least one lineage did not die out, but persisted undisturbed in this remote locality right into historic times? Yet whatever it was, it is no longer - centuries ago the swamps dried up, and the kulta died out.

Is this what the kulta may look like? (Charles Knight)

Even more extraordinary, however, is the burrunjor, a terrifying tyrannosaur-lookalike named after Burrunjor - a remote expanse of Arnhem Land in northern Australia where, according to longstanding Aboriginal testimony, this huge reptilian monster is said to live. Here it is even depicted in local Aboriginal cave art, portrayed as a gigantic bipedal creature, and enormous unidentified tracks have been reported from this region.

Varanids (monitor lizards) will sometimes rear up and run for a time on their hind legs, and there are some notably large varanid species native to Australia. So could this be the true explanation for the burrunjor - or should we be seeking an animate anachronism thriving amid the primeval wildernesses of Arnhem Land?

EMELA-NTOUKA – THE CONGO'S 'KILLER OF ELEPHANTS'

The mokele-mbembe may well be the most famous Congolese 'neo-dinosaur', but it is not the only one. Sharing the latter’s inaccessible swamp-dwelling habitat in the People’s Republic of the Congo are several other mystifying creatures still awaiting formal identification by science, of which the most extraordinary must surely be the emela-ntouka (‘killer of elephants’). According to the local pygmies, this is a truly ferocious beast, reddish-brown in colour, hairless, and almost as large as an elephant itself, with massive legs, but able to submerge itself completely underwater. If an elephant attempts to cross a swamp or lake containing this formidable beast, the emela-ntouka will attack it savagely, disembowelling the hapless elephant with the long sharp ivory-like horn mounted on the emela-ntouka’s snout. It does not devour the elephant afterwards, however, as it is strictly herbivorous.

In the past, some cryptozoologists have attempted to identify the emela-ntouka as an unknown type of aquatic, swamp-dwelling rhinoceros. However, whereas the horn of all other modern-day rhinos is formed of compressed hair, the emela-ntouka’s is said to be solid ivory, just like the tusks of elephants. Also, it is described as having a very long, heavy tail, which is very different from the short, inconspicuous tail of all known living rhinos.

The emela-ntouka as depicted in Roy Mackal's book (David Miller/Dr Roy Mackal)

During his two separate 1980s expeditions to the Congo’s Likouala swamplands in search of the mokele-mbembe, Roy Mackal collected several reports and descriptions of the emela-ntouka too. These led him to speculate whether this remarkable beast could conceivably be an undiscovered, modern-day descendant of the ceratopsian dinosaurs, exemplified by such famous prehistoric stalwarts as Triceratops and Styracosaurus. Moreover, the one-horned Monoclonius would have borne a very close resemblance to the emela-ntouka, right down to the latter’s long heavy tail and its horn of bone, not compressed hair. Its only major difference is that whereas ceratopsians were known for the long bony frill protecting their neck, no such structure has been reported for the emela-ntouka.

THE ANOMALY OF ANGKOR WAT - A STEGOSAUR IN CAMBODIA?

Cryptozoological riddles can turn up in the most unlikely places, but few can be as unexpected as Cambodia's perplexing dinosaur carving. One of this country's most beautiful monuments is the jungle temple of Ta Prohm, created around 800 years ago, and part of the Angkor Wat temple complex. Like others from this time, it is intricately adorned with images from Buddhist and Hindu mythology, but it also has one truly exceptional glyph unique to itself. Near one of the temple's entrances is a circular glyph containing the carving of a burly, small-headed, quadruped beast bearing a row of diamond-shaped plates along its back - an image irresistibly reminiscent of a stegosaurian dinosaur!

The 'stegosaur' petroglyph at Angkor Wat (John and Lesley Burke)

This anachronistic animal carving is reputedly popular with local guides, who delight in baffling western tourists by asking them if they believe dinosaurs still existed as recently as 800 years ago and then showing this glyph to them. Could it therefore be a modern fake, skilfully carved amid the genuine glyphs by a trickster hoping to fool unsuspecting tourists? Or is it a bona fide 800-year-old artefact?

Angkor's Way - Michael J. Smith's spectacular artistic impression of cryptic, modern-day stegosaurs cared for by Cambodian monks (Michael J. Smith)

If so, perhaps it was inspired by the temple's architects having seen some fossilised dinosaur remains? After all, it surely couldn't have been based upon a sighting of a real-life stegosaur...could it?

THE GOLDEN DRAGONS OF TASEK BERA

Tasek Bera or Bera Lake is a very large, deep lake in the Malaysian state of Pahang, and according to the traditions of the local Semelai people it was (and still may be?) home to a number of huge water dragons whose scales were slate-grey when young but became golden as they matured. They had very long necks, serpentine heads bearing a pair of snail-like horns, sturdy bodies, and long tails. As they never emerged onto land, however, no-one had ever seen their limbs. These beasts' presence was confirmed by their loud, trumpeting cry.

Stewart Wavell's book, documenting Tasek Bera's dinosaurian 'water dragons'

As documented in his book, The Lost World of the East (1958), explorer Stewart Wavell paid two visits here during the 1950s to search for them, but he never saw one.

However, on one occasion he did hear a strident, twice-uttered staccato sound emanating from the centre of the lake that matched the native description of these creatures' cry. Was it just the trumpeting of an elephant – or the voice of a golden dragon?

THE CHIPEKWE, IRIZIMA, AND OTHER EMELA-NTOUKA COUNTERPARTS

Worthy of note is that reports of creatures very like the Congolese emela-ntouka have emerged from elsewhere in tropical Africa too. Zambia’s Lake Bangweulu is reportedly home to the single-horned chipekwe (‘monster’), with similar creatures also reported from Lake Mweru, Lake Tanganyika, and the Kafue swamps. The Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) also has its own counterpart, dubbed the irizima, and there are even reports from as far west as Liberia.

Do emela-ntouka counterparts exist far beyond the Likouala swamplands? (Dr Karl Shuker)

In 2004, a French mokele-mbembe seeker called Michel Ballot photographed a stunning wooden sculpture of what can only be an emela-ntouka-type beast while visiting a village in northern Cameroon. It clearly depicts the animal’s elephantine body, single snout-horn, and long hefty tail, as well as a pair of small frilly ears not previously alluded to in accounts of this cryptid.

Moreover, I have recently made a remarkable discovery of an entirely independent piece of native artwork that substantially corroborates the veracity of this sculpture, including the unusual ears. So look out for my revelation in a future ShukerNature article!

SOUTH AMERICAN NEO-SAUROPODS

Although reports of sauropodian cryptids are less numerous from South America than they are from tropical Africa, they are by no means unknown.

When traveller Leonard Clark journeyed up Amazonia's Perene River in 1946, for example, he encountered several tribes of Indians east of the Ucayali who described to him gigantic long-necked beasts of plant-eating persuasion that recalled the giant sauropod Diplodocus.

In 1975, while holidaying in the Amazon, a Geneva businessman (name unknown) met Sebastian Bastos - a 75-year-old guide who, by a lucky coincidence, had been educated in Switzerland and was therefore able to converse fluently with him. During one conversation, Bastos stated that some of his Indian acquaintances had claimed that beasts of this type frequent certain deep water holes in the jungle's heartlands, and occasionally come out onto land at night. Their heads, necks, and backs are about 18 ft long, and the Indians take great pains to avoid them.

Frustratingly brief is a reference in Exploration Fawcett (1953) by lost explorer Lt-Colonel Percy Fawcett - alluding to still-unfamiliar beasts in the forests of Bolivia's Madidi, he noted:

"...some mysterious and enormous beast has frequently been disturbed in the swamps - possibly a primeval monster like those reported in other parts of the continent. Certainly tracks have been found belonging to no known animal - huge tracks, far greater than could have been made by any species we know."

The mention of tracks suggests footprints - which favour dinosaurs over flippered plesiosaurs - but little else can be deduced from such a brief description.

Exploration Fawcett, documenting the lost explorer Lt-Colonel Percy Fawcett's South American expeditions (Arrow Books)

An earlier, slightly more detailed Fawcett-authored account on this same subject also exists – a letter by him that was published in London's Daily Mail on 17 December 1919. The relevant portion is as follows:

"A friend of mine, a trader in the rivers and for whose honesty I can vouch, saw in somewhere about Lat. 12 S. and Long. 65 W. [Bolivia-Brazil borderland] the head and neck of a huge reptile of the character of the brontosaurus. It was a question of who was scared most, for it precipitately withdrew, with a plunging which suggested an enormous bulk. The savages appear to be familiar with the existence and tracks of the beast, although I have never come across any of the latter myself...These swamps over immense areas are virtually impenetrable."

According to media reports from early 1995, a party of geology students investigating quartz deposits in the Sincora Mountain range of eastern Brazil had lately spied two strange dinosaur-like creatures bathing in the shallows of the Paraguaçu River passing through the Plain of Orobo. According to these eyewitnesses, the animals were each around 30 ft in total length, with a huge body, fearsome head, a long neck measuring approximately 6 ft, and an 8-ft tail.

THE MBIELU-MBIELU-MBIELU AND CO - SURVIVING STEGOSAURS?

In addition to the mokele-mbembe and the emela-ntouka, a third dinosaur-lookalike of the Likouala swamps is the mbielu-mbielu-mbielu. According to one of its alleged eyewitnesses - a young woman called Odette Gesonget, from the village of Bounila - this triple-named anomaly is a semi-aquatic creature "with planks growing out of its back". In a bid to identify it, Roy Mackal showed Gesonget several illustrated books depicting animals from the present day and also from the distant past - the picture that she unhesitatingly selected was that of the prehistoric plate-bearing dinosaur Stegosaurus. Comparable descriptions were offered, independently of one another, by natives encountered elsewhere during Mackal's Congolese travels too. Yet there is no suggestion from fossil evidence that stegosaurs exhibited any aquatic inclination.

Reconstruction of the mbielu-mbielu-mbielu (David Miller/Dr Roy Mackal)

It is possible that this beast, whatever its taxonomic identity may be, is one and the same as another mystery animal from the Likouala swamplands - the nguma-monene, reported from the Mataba tributary of the Ubangi River. According to native descriptions, it resembles a colossal snake (at least 130 ft long!), but bears a serrated ridge along most of its body's length consisting of numerous triangular protrusions, and can walk upon land, with a low-slung body and forked tongue. Could this be a snake-like dinosaur, or, alternatively, a primitive reptile descended from the ancestral forms that gave rise to lizards and snakes?

Reconstruction of the nguma-monene (David Miller/Dr Roy Mackal)

Mackal favours a single, very large, and radically new species of monitor lizard as the most satisfactory explanation for both the nguma-monene and the mbielu-mbielu-mbielu. Nonetheless, the latter's stegosaurian suggestions are evidently difficult to dismiss absolutely - as he confessed in his book A Living Dinosaur? (1987): "For me, mbielu-mbielu-mbielu remains an enigma."

IT’S THE DINOSAUR KANGAROO OF ARICA!

It’s always good to learn of a novel cryptid, and Chile’s Arica Beast is novel in every sense! As recounted in a number of media articles from 2004, several different motorists driving along the main road linking Iquique and Arica, through the Atacama Desert, have reported witnessing an extraordinary bipedal creature over 6 ft tall, with sharp teeth and three-toed footprints, which has been variously likened to a velociraptoresque dinosaur or even a ‘dinosaur kangaroo’!

Bring me the head of the Arica Beast! (Dr Karl Shuker)

In the words of one eyewitness, Hernan Cuevas: “A weird animal looking like a dinosaur with two legs and huge thighs crossed the road in front of my car”. Not surprisingly, the local authorities were, and remain, very puzzled.

THE NGOUBOU – A SECOND CONGOLESE NEO-CERATOPSIAN?

When Bill Gibbons conducted his initial expedition to Cameroon in November 2000, he discovered not only that this country apparently possessed its own version of the mokele-mbembe but also that it allegedly harboured an extraordinary horned mystery beast akin to but even more spectacular than the emela-ntouka.

Looking through pictures of living and fossil animals, the local Batu people and pygmies pointed to pictures of prehistory’s famous three-horned ceratopsian dinosaur Triceratops, and stated that a beast somewhat similar to that animal lived here. They called it the ngoubou, and claimed that it inhabited savannah areas to the west of the Boumba River. It is also known in the Sanga region near the Central African Republic. They stated that it was the size of an ox, sported a large frill around its neck (which differs slightly in the female), a beaked mouth, and bore several horns, but in a different manner from those of Triceratops.

Life-size reconstruction of Styracosaurus (Dr Karl Shuker)

This baffled the team, until one of the locals drew an image of what the ngoubou looked like, revealing that it bore a series of six horns around the edge of its frill, which, as team member John Kirk later realised, made it look irresistibly similar to a ceratopsian called Styracosaurus. As this particular fossil dinosaur was not depicted in any of the pictures shown to the native people by the team, they clearly had not been influenced in that way, thus making the correspondence all the more remarkable.

Of course, based upon current palaeontological beliefs, many of the creatures reported here display lifestyles very different from that of their purported prehistoric antecedents, especially with regard to the frequent claims by eyewitnesses that these neo-sauropodian, neo-ceratopsian, and neo-stegosaurian cryptids are amphibious. If, however, such mystery beasts are truly modern-day dinosaurs, this means that they have undergone 65 million years (or more) of continuous evolution from their fossilised antecedents, which may conceivably have engineered all manner of behavioural and ecological as well as morphological changes, so such lifestyle discrepancies or deviations would by no means be implausible or, indeed, unexpected.

Proudly wearing my Operation Congo 1985 t-shirt (Dr Karl Shuker)

Nevertheless, as with all cryptids it is unwise, pointless even, to speculate too specifically in relation to these mystery beasts' zoological identities without any physical, tangible evidence to examine. And, unfortunately, they all appear to exist amid some of the world's most inaccessible and inhospitable localities. Let us hope, therefore, that one day soon, a future expedition by Bill Gibbons or some other tenacious, enterprising explorer will return with this long-awaited proof of their reality, and then at last we shall know the true identity of at least one of this ShukerNature article's tantalising selection of anachronistic anomalies. The last of the dinosaurs, or merely the first of an entirely new flourish? Who can say?

For an extensive survey of putative living dinosaurs worldwide, check out my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995).