What happened
Mokele-mbembe – in Lingala, “one who stops the flow of rivers” – is, according to inhabitants of the Congo Basin, a large animal with a long neck and tail that lives in rivers and swamps. In 1980 and again in 1981, Roy Mackal, a biologist at the University of Chicago, set out for the Likouala region in the north of the Republic of the Congo. The expeditions obtained no physical evidence, but collected many accounts from residents who, when shown illustrations of animals, reportedly pointed to a sauropod. Mackal regarded the consistency of the accounts as an argument for the creature's existence and described the expeditions in the 1987 book “A Living Dinosaur?” In 1983, Congolese zoologist Marcellin Agnagna claimed to have seen mokele-mbembe at Lake Tele and to have filmed it, but the film failed. Further expeditions were organized well into the 21st century.
Witnesses
Villagers of the Likouala region interviewed by the expeditions; in 1983, Marcellin Agnagna.
Explanations and hypotheses
Zoologists stress that a population of large sauropods could not have survived 66 million years without a trace in the fossil record, nor remained unnoticed by hunters and biologists. The accounts may refer to elephants crossing rivers with their trunks above the water, hippopotamuses, crocodiles or large monitor lizards, as well as to suggestion prompted by showing illustrations of dinosaurs. In 2001, local hunters looking through an animal atlas identified a rhinoceros as mokele-mbembe – perhaps a memory of animals long gone from the region. Many researchers consider Agnagna's account doubtful.
Unexplained There is no convincing explanation.
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