THE EMELA-NTOUKA – NEW CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE FOR THE CONGO'S CRYPTIC 'KILLER OF ELEPHANTS'?

Reconstruction of the emela-ntouka (© David Miller under the instruction of Prof. Roy P. Mackal)

I've been promising ShukerNature readers for almost a year now that I'd write up this fascinating discovery and post it – so now I have done, and here it is!

A little over 30 years ago, the most famous creatures of cryptozoology were Nessie, the yeti, a sundry array of sea serpents, and the North American bigfoot. In 1982, however, following his return to the USA in December 1981 at the end of the second of two expeditions to the People’s Republic of the Congo (formerly the French Congo), veteran American cryptozoologist Prof. Roy P. Mackal revealed to an astonished media and general public that the elusive swamp monster that he had been searching for in the Congo may conceivably be a living dinosaur! A new cryptozoological star had been born – an elusive long-necked mystery beast bearing an extraordinary outward resemblance to a sauropod, and known to the local Congolese pygmies as the mokele-mbembe. But this wasn't the only Congolese cryptid that Mackal's team had learnt about during their forays there. Less familiar but definitely no less interesting was a second major mystery beast claimed by the pygmies to inhabit that country's vast Likouala swamplands – a truly extraordinary (and exceedingly formidable) horned creature known to them as the emela-ntouka, or ‘killer of elephants’.

Another reconstruction of the emela-ntouka (© Hodari Nundu/Deviantart.com)

The size of an elephant itself, but semi-aquatic, the emela-ntouka is said to have a long heavy tail, four sturdy legs, and, most notable of all, a very long, sharp horn borne upon its snout. On first sight, this cryptid sounds like some form of rhinoceros. However, its long heavy tail differs dramatically from the short, lightweight version possessed by all known rhino species. So too does its horn, for whereas those of rhinoceroses are nothing more than masses of compressed hair, according to native testimony the emela-ntouka’s is said to resemble the ivory tusk of an elephant. As ivory is only associated with tusks and teeth, not horns, however, it is probable that if the pygmies' claim about it is correct, the emela-ntouka's horn is composed of bone.

Its behaviour is also very distinctive. Although wholly herbivorous, the emela-ntouka is claimed to be extremely belligerent, so much so that if even something as mighty as an elephant or buffalo enters a lake in which one of these creatures is residing, the latter will not hesitate to attack the intruder - stabbing and disembowelling its hapless victim with its formidable snout-horn.

An emela-ntouka facing off a wary herd of elephants (© William Rebsamen)

Following his own investigations of this extraordinary beast, Mackal proposed, albeit cautiously, that it may actually be a surviving ceratopsian or horned dinosaur – i.e. belonging to a group of huge herbivorous dinosaurs that included such prehistoric stalwarts as Triceratops and Styracosaurus. Many ceratopsians possessed more than one horn, but at least one famous example, Centrosaurus (formerly called Monoclonius), bore only a single horn, at the end of its nose – and reconstructions of Centrosaurus certainly recall descriptions of the emela-ntouka. Moreover, because the horns of ceratopsians were true horns (composed of bone), not compressed hair, they may well have resembled ivory, just like the emela-ntouka’s; and all ceratopsians had long heavy tails, providing yet another match with the emela-ntouka.

Modern restoration of Centrosaurus in life (© Nobu Tamura/Wikipedia)

Indeed, the only major discrepancy between the pygmies' description of this cryptid and palaeontological reconstructions of ceratopsians is that the latter dinosaurs bore a huge bony frill around their neck, protecting this otherwise-vulnerable body region from attack by carnivorous dinosaurs, whereas no such frill has been reported for the emela-ntouka. However, if the latter beast is indeed a surviving ceratopsian, it is the product of 64 million years of continued evolution, i.e. from when the most recent fossil ceratopsians died out right up to the present day - a immense period of time during which evolution could readily have engineered the reduction or complete elimination of a frill (especially as such a heavy accoutrement would no longer be needed following the extinction of the mighty carnivorous dinosaurs).

The emela-ntouka envisaged as a reptile (© Sebastian Tawil)

Equally interesting is that, as with the mokele-mbembe, reports of creatures resembling the emela-ntouka are not confined to the Congo’s Likouala swamplands. 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. Moreover, several notable East African lakes, including Lakes Bangweulu, Mweru, and Tanganyika, as well as the Kafue swamps, are said to be inhabited by a very comparable cryptid known as the chipekwe, which kills hippopotamuses with its horn, but does eat them. Occasionally, one of these aggressive animals has itself been killed by native hunters, but, sadly, no remains have ever been made available for scientific analysis. However, the ivory-like horn is said to be highly prized by them, so perhaps there is a chipekwe horn or two preserved in a local chief’s dwelling somewhere in East or Central Africa and awaiting discovery by a sharp-eyed Western explorer, scientist, or missionary?

The emela-ntouka/chipekwe as portrayed in its jungle swampland domain, complete with hippos! (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Meanwhile, French cryptozoologist Michel Ballot has lately found what may be the next best thing. Since 2004, he has conducted a number of excursions into Cameroon, seeking evidence for the existence of unknown aquatic beasts. In 2005, during his second expedition, travelling through a region of northern Cameroon bordering the Central African Republic, he visited a village where he saw (and purchased) a large, truly remarkable wooden carving. It depicted in great detail a strange beast with four sturdy legs, a long heavy tail, and a head whose nose bore a long horn.

Although this carving doesn’t match any known animal alive today, as can be seen from the photograph of it reproduced below in this present ShukerNature blog article (and also click here for Michel's own account of it, with additional photos) it is a faithful representation of the emela-ntouka.

Photograph of the more detailed, better-known of the two emela-ntouka carvings encountered by Michel Ballot in Cameroon (© Michel Ballot)

Interestingly, this carving portrays the emela-ntouka with a pair of small frilly ears, almost like miniature elephant’s ears, a feature not previously reported for this cryptid but which, if genuinely possessed by it, indicates a mammalian rather than a reptilian identity. Moreover, in his own account Michel revealed that in 2005 he had actually found not one but two such carvings, in separate locations and created by separate artists, but identical in appearance. Judging from the photo below of the second one, however, it is less detailed and less well-executed than the first, more famous carving.

Photograph of the second, less-publicised emela-ntouka carving encountered in Cameroon by Michel Ballot (© Michel Ballot)

Now, in a ShukerNature world-exclusive, I can reveal a third, independently-obtained but undeniably corroborative piece of iconographical evidence for the veracity of this specific morphological identikit relative to the emela-ntouka.

And here is where that remarkable piece of evidence came to light. Situated in the Central African Republic (CAR), to quote from their website (click here) the Dzanga Sangha Protected Areas or APDS:

"…are internationally known for their beautiful rainforests, host to a remarkable diversity of wildlife, comprising western lowland gorillas, forest elephants, bongo antelopes, forest buffalos and a multitude of bird species. Furthermore, a rich local culture, comprising the Sangha Sangha fishermen as well as hunting and gathering BaAka, are present in the area. Apart from conservation and local development efforts, Dzanga Sangha operates as an eco-tourism and research centre. A variety of well developed tourism activities and a beautiful hotel complex, overlooking the Sangha River, are at your disposal.

"Sharing borders with Cameroun and Congo, the Dzanga Sangha Protected Areas are part of the Trinational Sangha (TNS) complex, currently in the process to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Roundtrips to the other National Parks (Lobéké in Cameroun and Nouabalé Ndoki in Congo) can be organized with ease."

Dzanga Sangha (public domain)

On 8 August 2012, I receieved a fascinating email and attached set of four photographs from Anette Stichnoth of Hannover, Germany. The photographs, taken by a friend of hers from the above-mentioned APDS and named Cem Kok, were of four drawings on display at the first, now-dismantled Dzanga Sangha Exhibition (Cem was currently working on the second one), held in the APDS - with whom Anette was working in the capacity of utilising its exhibition's artworks as designs on souvenirs, such as t-shirts and mugs, that could be sold to APDS visitors in order to raise money for the area's continuing conservation. In relation to this, she asked me if I had any idea what the entities were that the drawings depicted, because she wanted to produce an information card for each one but no-one whom she had previously contacted had been able to identify them.

The artist responsible for these four drawings was a Frenchman named Jean Claude Thibault, who had produced them during the early 1990s or late 1980s. He had lived in the Central African Republic (a former French colony) for a number of years, but could not be contacted personally concerning his drawings because he had died in Bangui, the CAR's capital, a couple of years ago.

After examining Thibault's drawings, it was clear to me that they were nothing if not interesting from a cryptozoological standpoint. Three of them depicted humanoid or semi-humanoid beings, and are exclusively documented in a separate ShukerNature blog article (click here) - but the fourth one was very different, and is reproduced below.

Thibault's fourth drawing from the first Dzanga Sangha Exhibition (©  Jean Claude Thibault)

As can be seen, it portrays one elephant fleeing in the background, plus a second one that has been stabbed in its underside by a horned beast bearing an uncanny resemblance to Michel Ballot's Cameroon-procured emela-ntouka carvings!

In order to compare those works of art directly, I have horizontally flipped one of Michel's photographs of the more detailed of the two Cameroon emela-ntouka carvings, thereby enabling its orientation to match that of the creature in Thibault's drawing. So here now are the two images placed alongside one another:

Michel Ballot's Cameroon-procured emela-ntouka carving (top); and Thibault's Dzangha Sangha Exhibition drawing, cropped to concentrate upon the horned beast depicted in it (bottom) (© Michel Ballot/(©  Jean Claude Thibault)

And as can be readily discerned, there is no doubt whatsoever that these two artworks are indeed depicting the same species of animal – whatever that may be! Every major morphological feature - from those strange little frilly ears, and sharp vertical snout-horn, to the very long, broad, sweeping tail with its distinctive dorsal ridge or keel, and the relatively short, sturdy, bent legs with well-differentiated digits - is portrayed in an identical manner by the carving and the drawing. Even the seemingly stylised, non-differentiated pointed teeth are the same in both pieces.

Fascinated by this extraordinary correspondence between works of art created in two entirely different countries by artists very unlikely to have ever seen each other's work, I swiftly emailed Anette for additional information. Unfortunately, however, she didn't have anything further of substance to offer me at that time, but promised to contact me again once she had obtained more details – and almost exactly a year later, she did so.

On 18 August 2013, Anette emailed me a series of descriptions for the four drawings that she had lately been given by a CAR local with knowledge of his country's legendary creatures and entities. The one depicting the emela-ntouka was labelled as 'Mokele-Mbembe', and the creature was said to inhabit the deepest stretches of the River Ndoki. Referring to it as a mokele-mbembe may seem strange on first sight. However, as I discussed in my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors, in central Africa (i.e. not just the CAR but also the two Congos, Cameroon, etc) the long-necked lake-dwelling cryptid (mokele-mbembe) and the horned lake-dwelling cryptid (emela-ntouka) are often conflated in local reports, with features of one sometimes being wrongly attributed to the other, so this is not as surprising as it might otherwise seem.

Cropped version of Thibault's emela-ntouka drawing (© Jean Claude Thibault)

Due to how astonishingly similar Thibault's CAR emela-ntouka drawing was to Michel Ballot's Cameroon emela-ntouka carvings in terms of the creature's morphology, I had initially wondered whether the former had been directly copied from the latter. Perhaps Thibault had seen online images of the Cameroon carvings? However, when I learnt that Thibault had produced the drawing a decade or more before Michel had even encountered the carvings, let alone photographed them and brought them to public attention by uploading the photos onto the internet, it is surely evident that they are of independent origin, neither one influenced by the other. After all, it is highly unlikely that the Cameroon villagers responsible for the carvings had ever seen Thibault's drawing, which had only been exhibited publicly within the CAR, never outside it.

Equally relevant is that although the carved animals and the drawn one possess identical morphologies, the specific poses respectively adopted by them are not the same at all. Both carved animals are standing stationary, in a neutral behavioural pose, with the head held at a normal height, the hind limbs close together, and the tail (curving to the right in the original, non-flipped version of Michel's photograph of the first carving, to the left in the second carving) held laterally for much of its length and very close to the body. The drawn animal, conversely, is in ferocious attack mode, with its head lowered as it belligerently drives its horn into the body of its hapless pachyderm victim, its hind legs splayed well apart in order to brace itself as it performs the powerful thrusting stab with its horn, and its tail (curving to the left) held out further away from its body in a much wider arc and portrayed throughout its length from above. In short, the two carved animals and the drawn animal indisputably portray the same species, but the two carved animals' shared pose is very different from the drawn animal's - thereby further indicating that the drawing was not copied from or influenced by the carvings or vice-versa.

Yet as the carvings and the drawing correspond with one another so closely morphologically speaking, we must conclude that the image of the emela-ntouka provided by them is an accurate one – that it really does possess small frilly ears, a vertical snout-horn, bent legs, and a very broad, lengthy, powerful tail. The ears alone are enough to demonstrate that it is clearly mammalian in nature (as they are clearly bona fide ears and not, for instance, an abbreviated ceratopsian frill), thereby eliminating a surviving ceratopsian dinosaur from serious consideration in the future. Yet it does not compare with any known species of mammal. Indeed, it is not even possible to allocate this mysterious creature with ease to any existing taxonomic order of mammals. Having said that, however, the image of it yielded by the carvings and the drawing does remind me a little of Arsinoitherium zitteli.

Restoration of Arsinoitherium zitteli in life (© Dmitry Bogdanov/Wikipedia)

Dating from the late Eocene, this was a massive elephantine horn-bearing species of fossil African ungulate belonging to the extinct order Embrithopoda. Named after eminent palaeontologist Dr Karl Alfred von Zittel and Queen Arsinoe I, the wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II (its remains were found in present-day Egypt's Faiyum Oasis), it was believed to have been aquatic in lifestyle, spending much of its time wading and swimming in rainforest swamps rather than walking on land, as it was unable to straighten its legs (thus recalling the emphatically bent legs of the emela-ntouka depicted in the drawing and carvings). Moreover, it is particularly famous for its pair of truly enormous, laterally-sited snout horns, composed of bone but hollow and covered in keratinised skin.

Skeleton of Arsinoitherium zitteli (© Dr Karl Shuker)

According to their known fossil record, embrithopods officially died out almost 30 million years ago (Arsinoitherium was their last known genus), but could the emela-ntouka possibly be a single-horned, scientifically-undiscovered, modern-day representative? The hefty, lengthy tail, however, poses a notable problem - why would an embrithopod evolve such a decidedly non-ungulate feature? Going full circle, a more conservative alternative would be a species of semi-aquatic water rhinoceros, as first suggested by certain cryptozoologists many years ago. Yet in spite of its single horn, the heavy-tailed creature portrayed by the carvings and drawing bears scant resemblance to any of the diverse array of rhino forms on record from either the present day or prehistoric times.

Currently, therefore, the emela-ntouka remains an enigma, but at least it is one that now appears to have a well-defined albeit extremely perplexing morphology.

Swedish artist Richard Svensson's delightful take on the emela-ntouka (© Richard Svensson)

If you wish to learn more about or offer assistance to the Dzanga Sangha Protected Areas (APDS), please visit their website here.

For an extensive account of the emela-ntouka, chipekwe, and other African counterparts, check out their coverage in my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995).

UPDATE: A SECOND THIBAULT DRAWING OF THE EMELA-NTOUKA

Today, 9 July 2014, I received an extremely interesting email from French cryptozoologist Michel Raynal (thanks Michel!), which provided me not only with additional information concerning the emela-ntouka drawing by Jean Claude Thibault documented here, but also with sight and details of a second one prepared by him, as now revealed.

The drawing already documented here was #12 of twelve Thibault drawings of mythological/legendary entities from the CAR that in 1996 were featured in a special calendar produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the CAR to raise funds for the Doly-Lodge Project in Bayanga, the largest village within the APDS. So this was not a worldwide calendar, but one specifically for the APDS in the CAR. The emela-ntouka drawing subsequently reappeared in 2000 within an article concerning this cryptid published in issue #3 of the Bangui-based anthropological periodical Zo, and written by Alfred J-P. Ndanga, from Bangui University's Department of Anthropology and Palaeontology. Intriguingly, throughout the article Ndanga referred to the creature not as the emela-ntouka but rather as the mokele-mbembe - another instance of conflating these two great water cryptids of central Africa. 

As for the second Thibault drawing of the emela-ntouka: this appeared in a Congolese newspaper (date and title currently unknown to me), and is reproduced below (note that once again this cryptid is mis-labelled as a mokele-mbembe):

The emela-ntouka (© Jean Claude Thibault)

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).