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).

FEELING BLUE ABOUT SHUKERNATURE! REVIEWING THE TOP TEN POSTS

Trunko in blue (Lance Bradshaw)

Let me confirm immediately that my blog is NOT making me feel depressed! On the contrary, thanks to the interest and comments that my posts here continue to generate from their readers, and the prospect of compiling an entire book based upon them, I have never felt more buoyant about ShukerNature since its inception just over two years ago. No, the reason for this post's blue-headed title stems from a quite remarkable, wholly unexpected, and (at least to me) truly inexplicable discovery that I have just made after reviewing the statistics for ShukerNature.

Several sets of stats concerning a person's blog are available for inspection by him/her on Blogger, and perhaps the most interesting set is the Top 10 posts of all time for that blog. In the case of ShukerNature (on which I have uploaded well over 100 posts of mine so far), I was extremely intrigued by the result - so much so, in fact, that I felt it warranted a blog post of its own!

So here is the Top Ten ShukerNature posts of all time - be prepared for some surprises!


#1: The mystery blue spider of Yorkshire (25 August 2010)

#2: Behold, Trunko!! (Trunko exclusive #1) (6 September 2010)

#3: Trunko, two more photographs (Trunko exclusive #2) (9 September 2010)

#4: South Africa's hairless blue horse (24 March 2010)

#5: Dragons of Babylon and dinosaurs of the Bible (18 January 2011)

#6: Smethwick devil (4 September 2010)

#7: Orang pendek (24 November 2010)

#8: Blue tigers (17 May 2009)

#9: The last Harpagornis (14 July 2010)

#10: A diversity of devil-fishes (6 March 2009)


And as if this listing were not already surreal enough, the post at #1 has been viewed more times than all of the next nine posts combined - but why?!

As far as I can see, the evident (and only?) moral that can be drawn from this entertaining little exercise in blog analysis is that from now on I should clearly concentrate all of my efforts on writing about blue animals!

And if I really want to maximise my readership, the ideal subject to write about would be a blue-furred devilish version of Trunko! So if anyone ever happens to encounter such an entity out there, please do let me know!

DRAGONS OF BABYLON, AND DINOSAURS IN THE BIBLE

The dragon of the Ishtar Gate (Vorderasiatisches Museum)

In the summer of 1983 I visited the Vorderasiatisches Museum, part of Berlin's Staatliche Museums, to gaze upon one of the most spectacular monuments from ancient history - the magnificent Ishtar Gate of Babylon. Many other visitors were also peering intently at this marvellous edifice, sumptuously decorated with life-like depictions of various animals, but to me it had an extra significance - for out of all of the people there, it is possible that I alone realised that we could well be looking at the portrait of a living dinosaur!


IN SEARCH OF THE SIRRUSH

During his reign (605-562 BC), King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia in Mesopotamia oversaw the creation of his empire's capital, the holy city of Babylon, dedicated to Babylonia's supreme deity - Marduk. Babylon was encircled by huge walls, wide enough for chariots to be driven along their summits, and pierced by eight huge gates. The most magnificent was the Ishtar Gate, through which visitors passed in order to enter the city.

Befitting such an important edifice, the Ishtar Gate was a spectacular sight, comprising a colossal semicircular arch, flanked by enormous walls and leading to a breathtaking Processional Way, along which visitors walked to reach the city's religious centre. The gate, its walls, and the procession walls were covered by a brilliant panoply of highly-glazed enamelled bricks, yielding a backdrop of vivid blue for numerous horizontal rows of eyecatching and very realistic bas-reliefs of animals. On the gate and its flanking walls, six rows of fierce grey bulls alternated with seven rows of grim golden dragons, and along the processional walls were two rows of haughty marching lions, but the most important member of this trio of mighty beasts was the dragon - for this was the sacred beast of Marduk.

Following the eventual fall of Babylonia, its walls and gates became buried underfoot, and their glory was hidden for many centuries - until 3 June 1887 when German archaeologist Prof. Robert Koldeway, during a visit to the site of Babylon, found a fragment of an ancient blue-glazed brick that stimulated his curiosity and led to a full-scale excavation beginning in 1899. Three years later, the animal-adorned Ishtar Gate rose up from the dust of the past like a cobalt phoenix, revealing its bulls, its lions - and its exalted but enigmatic dragons.

Most commonly referred to as the sirrush or mushrushu (two different transliterations of an Akkadian word loosely translated as ‘splendour serpent’), the Ishtar dragon was a source of great bewilderment to Koldeway. For whereas archaeologists were well aware that the depicted appearance of all other seemingly fabulous, mythical animals in Babylonian tradition had changed drastically over the centuries, depictions of the sirrush (as also present on seals and paintings predating the Ishtar Gate by at least a millennium) had remained the same - just like those of real animals, like the lion and bull. Did this mean, therefore, that the sirrush was itself a real-life species? But if it was, what could it be?

Certainly, it did not - and still does not - resemble any animal known to be alive today. After all, what modern-day species has a slender scaly body, with a small head bearing a pointed horn (or a pair - the Ishtar sirrush is only depicted in profile) on its forehead and ringlet-like flaps of skin further back, a long slender neck, a pair of forelimbs with lion-like claws, a pair of hindlimbs with eagle-like claws, and a long tail? Some authors have suggested a giant monitor lizard, but the sirrush’s horn(s), ringlets, and extremely long neck contradict this identity.

Boldly, Koldeway announced in 1913 that the creatures to which the sirrush most closely corresponded in his opinion were the dinosaurs. Moreover, he deemed it possible that in order to explain the unchanging nature of sirrush depictions, and also various mentions of dragon-like beasts in the Bible, some such creature must have been kept within one or more of Babylon's temples by the priests of Marduk. By 1918, he had refined his belief, identifying the ornithischid dinosaur Iguanodon as the closest fossil relative of the sirrush. If, however, the sirrush was truly a creature of historic, rather than prehistoric, times, where had it originally come from - there is no evidence that giant reptilians were ever native to Mesopotamia - and how could it have evaded scientific detection?

This mystery greatly intrigued cryptozoological investigator Willy Ley, who suggested that the only locality from which such a creature could have been originally transported to Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar but yet remain wholly unknown to modern-day science was Central Africa, and in his book Exotic Animals (1959) he recalled various accounts concerning the mokele-mbembe and other swamp-dwelling dinosaurian beasts reported from this portion of the Dark Continent. In addition, when Schomburgk returned to Europe from Central Africa during the early 20th Century with tales of living dinosaurs, he also brought back a glazed brick that he had found there - a brick just like those in the Ishtar Gate. Is this where the far-travelling ancient Babylonians had obtained them, along with stories - and perhaps even the successful capture from time to time - of real-life dragons?

Others have since expanded upon Ley's views, and the prospect that the sirrush was a living dinosaur has gained interest, but opinion as to the precise type of dinosaur has moved away from Iguanodon toward a sauropod dinosaur, notwithstanding the sirrush's horn(s).

Initially, the sirrush is hardly reminiscent of such creatures. If, however, the Chaldean artists responsible for the Ishtar Gate bas-reliefs and other sirrush portrayals had not actually seen a living sauropod with their own eyes but were relying solely upon descriptions of one, then it is not too difficult to accept the resulting sirrush as nothing more dramatic than a distorted depiction of a sauropod, no doubt embellished by its creators' imagination.


BEL AND THE BEHEMOTH

One Biblical reference that inspired Koldeway's belief in the onetime existence of a real-life sirrush maintained by Babylon's temple priests is an episode documented in the Apocrypha concerning Daniel, who, after discounting an earlier deity as nothing more than a brass idol, was shown a mysterious creature housed within the temple of the Babylonian god Bel, and which was venerated by the fearful populace.

"And in that same place there was a great dragon or serpent, which they of Babylon worshipped. And the king said unto Daniel, Wilt thou also say that this is of brass? Lo, he liveth, he eateth and drinketh; thou canst not say that he is no living god: therefore worship him. Then said Daniel. I will worship the Lord my God: for he is a living God. But give me leave, O king, and I shall slay this dragon without sword or staff. The king said, I give thee leave."

True to his word, Daniel accomplished his vow - via the unusual if effective expedient of choking the creature to death by forcing lumps of bitumen, hair, and fat down its throat - a brave act if genuinely faced by a conflagrating dragon, but one that will not endear him to cryptozoologists if it is ever shown that his adversary was nothing more rapacious than a morose mokele-mbembe a long way away from its home amid the Congolese swamplands.

Another biblical monster that has never been satisfactorily identified with any known animal alive today is the behemoth, which is described in the book of Job (40:15-24) as follows:

"Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
Lo, now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.
He is the chief of the ways of God; he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.
Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.
He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.
The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.
Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.
He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares."

Over the centuries, four principal identities have been touted by theological and zoological scholars - the ox, Nile crocodile, elephant, and hippopotamus. Least popular is the ox - apart from its herbivorous nature, it has no similarity to the behemoth. Only the New English Bible supports the crocodile's candidature - certainly, the concept of a vegetarian crocodile is an implausible one, to say the least. The elephant's supporters are also few - only Prof. George Caspard Kirschmayer in Un-Natural History of Myths of Ancient Science (1691) and Dr Sylvia Sikes in The Natural History of the African Elephant (1953) have seriously attempted to link the two great beasts with one another.

The most popular and (until recently) most favourable pairing of the behemoth has been with the hippo - whose cavernous mouth, prodigious drinking capacity, mighty build, sturdy skeleton, swamp-dwelling lifestyle, herbivorous diet, and status as the largest animal native to the Bible lands compare satisfactorily with the behemoth - but not conclusively. How, for example, can the hippopotamus "moveth his tail like a cedar"? This description implies a very long, powerful tail - not the puny, inconspicuous appendage sported by the hippo.

And then came a late entry in the identity stakes - a living sauropod. As veteran cryoptozoologist Prof. Roy Mackal, seeker of the elusive Congolese mokele-mbembe during the 1980s, persuasively pointed out in A Living Dinosaur?, not only the description of the behemoth's tail but also all of the features hitherto likened to the hippopotamus are equally applicable to one of these giant vegetarian dinosaurs. Moreover, the great size attributed to the behemoth, while far exceeding that of the hippo would be much more compatible to a sauropod of mokele-mbembe proportions. Compare the Bible's description of the behemoth (given above) with Mackal's defence of his sauropod identity for it (given below), and judge for yourself.

"The behemoth's tail is compared to a cedar, which suggests a sauropod. This identification is reinforced by other factors. Not only the behemoth's physical nature, but also its habits and food preferences are compatible with the sauropod's. Both live in swampy areas with trees, reeds and fens (a jungle swamp). Indeed, the identification of the biblical behemoth as a sauropod dinosaur provides excellent correspondence between the descriptive features in the biblical text and the characteristics of these dinosaurs as inferred from the fossil record."

Equally interesting concerning this sauropod link is that the book of Job was written sometime between 700 and 2000 BC, thereby considerably predating the Ishtar Gate's depictions of the sirrush. Clearly, then, the gate did not inspire the behemoth account - instead, this was based upon something very large and visually impressive that was known in the Middle East long before the birth of Nebuchadnezzar.

Initially, the Bible must seem the last place where zoologists would expect to find details of living dinosaurs - but if living dinosaurs (or travellers' reports of them) were known in this region of the world at this particular time in man's history, the Bible is unquestionably the first place where zoologists should look for evidence of their existence.

Perhaps now, then, thanks to a long-overdue cryptozoological scrutiny of this ancient treasure trove of natural history lore, the vital evidence has at last been disclosed.

This is an excerpt from one of my books-in-progress, The Creatures That Time Forgot: Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors