Do dinosaurs still exist? The
question may sound absurd. After all, conventional wisdom holds that these giant
reptiles lapsed into extinction some 65 million years ago. Still, occasional
reports from remote regions of the earth have kept the issue alive, if only to
readers of tabloid newspapers and to the handful of scientists, adventurers, and
nature writers who have tried to make sense of the accounts and, where possible,
to investigate them. Much of the investigation has centered on a legendary
creature generally referred to mokele-mbembe and described as a sauropod-like
animal, with a long neck, small head, bulky body, and tail. The first printed
mention of the huge, plate-shaped tracks associated with the beast appears in a
1776 history of French missionaries in west-central Africa. In the next two
centuries missionaries, colonial authorities, hunters, explorers, and natives
would provide strikingly consistent descriptions of the animals supposedly
responsible for tracks of this kind. Sighting reports in recent years have been
confined to the swampy, remote Likouala region of the Congo.
In 1980 and 1981 University of Chicago biologist Roy P. Mackal led two
expeditions to the area, the first in the company of herpetologist James H.
Powell, Jr., who had heard mokele-mbembe stories while doing crocodile research
in west-central Africa. Neither expedition produced a sighting, though Mackal
and his companions interviewed a number of native witnesses. The creatures,
greatly feared, were said to live in the swamps and rivers. A band of pygmies
supposedly killed one at Lake Tele around 1959. Though the Mackal expeditions
were unable to reach the nearly inaccessible Tele, a rival group, headed by
American engineer Herman Regusters, successfully made the journey. Over a period
of two to three weeks, he and his wife Kia Van Dusen would claim, huge
long-necked animals came into view on several occasions, both in the water and
in the swampy areas around the lake...
From Arthur Conan Doyle"s "The Lost World" to "Jurassic Park" the concept of dinosaurs being alive today has been a subject for films and books for centuries, but how likely is it that any could have survived for so long ?"The idea ofstill-living dinosaurs has captured the public imagination for well over a century.
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, published a 1912 novel called "The Lost World," set in the remote Venezuelan jungle where dinosaurs still survive in modern times. Films such as "Jurassic Park" and "Land of the Lost," which opens Friday, were inspired by Conan Doyle"s vision — in fact the sequel to"Jurassic Park" was titled "The Lost World." "
A new study has suggested that a small pocket of dinosaurs somehow survived the mass extinction 65 million years ago and went on to thrive in an isolated region for up to half a million years."An isolated group of dinosaurssomehow survived the catastrophic event that wiped out most of their kind some 65.5 million years ago, a new study suggests.
Dinosaurs of this "lost world," in a remote region of the U.S. West, may have outlived their doomed relatives by as much as half a million years, according to James Fassett, an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Fe, New Mexico. "
An All News Web reader has contributed a photograph of the Ta Prohm Temple in Cambodia with what appears to be images of a Stegosaurus on it. The picture has sparked intrigue and controversy, is this really evidence that dinosaurs were alive in modern times, could the image have been misinterpreted or it simply a hoax ?"Conventional science has it that the dinosaurs were wiped out many millions of years ago either as the result of climate change or a meteorite hitting earth.
Some researchers, however, claim that dinosaurs might have continued to roam remote parts of the earth as recently as a few hundred years ago. A few even claim that there might be somesmall populations of dinosaurs, otherwise believed to be extinct, surviving in the world’s most isolated forests."
The great Tyrannosaurus, the most
feared member of the dinosaur kingdom . . . to think that this creature of such
renown, such awe, and such sheer terror could possibly be still alive today
simply baffles the human mind. Though seemingly ludicrous, could a living
Tyrannosaurus, or quite possibly, a close relative of the Tyrannosaur, really be
alive today? Is it scientifically possible? In the heart of Africa, to the
amazement of many, there have been sightings of Tyrannosaur-like creatures --
one, in particular, by a plantation owner, John Johnson, and his slave. As the
report goes, Mr. Johnson and his African slave were traveling through a swampy
marsh in the Kasai valley in 1932. Suddenly, they came across a rhinoceros, and
were cautious in not disturbing it. Then, to their immediate horror, a large, 42
foot (13 meter) long meter) long "lizard" leaped out of the trees and attacked
the rhino. As it began to feed, the African servant fled in panic while the
Swede literally fainted, falling to the ground. When he awoke, he found the
creature still feeding, and had the opportunity to carefully observe it:
"It was a large beast, at least 12-13 meters
long. It was reddish in coloration, with brackish-colored stripes going down.
The legs were thick; it reminded me of a lion, built for speed. It had a long
snout and numerous teeth. It gorged itself on the rhinoceros, which twitched
with life still in it. (Note: the rhino was probably dead, but the Swede
probably didn't know about involuntary muscle spasms.) After the creature had
eaten its fill, it returned to the jungle slowly, its belly full of flesh."In reality, very few people have reported seeing what has
been titled the "Kasai Rex," but the reports of those who have are all
strikingly similar; the size differs slightly, but the color of the creature
remains the same . . . a dark red. It may not be the Tyrannosaurus, but the
Tarbosaurus, a close relative to the Tyrannosaurus. It well-fits the description
of the Kasai Rex. If the animals do exist, it is believed that the beast, or
beasts, live very deep within Congo jungles, only venturing out when food is
scarce. In brief, the Tarbosaurus was a slightly larger specimen than the
Tyrannosaur...
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(Read the FULL Article here... | 5624 bytes more | comments? | Score: 3.5 ) Posted by nuke on Saturday, October 06 @ 13:11:15 CDT (749 reads)
Today in Africa, in the People's Republic of the Congo,
there lies a vast, hot and humid area covered with thick forests and dotted with
streams and swamps. Of these swamps, there exists one that is undisputedly the
largest in the entire world . . . the Likouala Swamp. Approximately 55,000
square miles, larger than the entire state of Florida, the government has
officially declared it 80% unexplored. To the scientific community, this area is
as foreign as an entirely new planet.
Early Years: Reports of dinosaur-like creatures in Central
Africa go back for more than 200 years, according to William "Bill" Gibbons. In
1776, French missionaries passing through the forests reported finding huge
footprints in the ground. The clawed prints were three feet in circumference and
were spaced about seven feet apart. This would have made the animal as big as an
elephant, but it was common knowledge to the locals that the tracks were not
from an elephant, since elephants do not posses claws. One of the priests,
amazingly, even gave claim to have seen several specimens chewing on vegetation
while wading in the rivers. Regardless, it was certain that these were an
entirely new group of animals. At that time, however, they were neither
"dinosaurs" nor "prehistoric," the words waiting to be invented nearly one
hundred years later.
In 1913, a German explorer reported stories of, what the natives called, "Mokele-mbembe,"
which he had heard while in the Congo. Hearing the reports, a few scientists
noticed that the descriptions of the creatures made them sound much like
sauropod dinosaurs. Sauropods were the giants of the dinosaurs world, averaging
about 70 feet (21 meters) long and standing 12-15 feet (3.7 to 4.8 m) tall at
the hips. In 1932, a British scientist, exploring near the Likouala region where
the creatures are said to live, came across some abnormally huge footprints.
Later, when he went down one of the rivers in a canoe, he heard strange sounds,
but did not see anything...
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(Read the FULL Article here... | 18882 bytes more | comments? | Score: 0 ) Posted by nuke on Saturday, July 14 @ 15:04:18 CDT (996 reads)
A psychologist at a university in Central China asserts that he saw, in 1971, a prehistoric-looking creature flying in Papua New Guinea. Brian Hennessy of the Chongqing University of Medical Sciences described the creature as black or dark brown with a "longish narrow tail" and a beak that was "indistinguishable from the head." In the daylight of an early morning on Bougainville Island, on a dirt road that led down to the coast, Hennessy heard a slow "flapping" and looked up to see a "very big" creature with a "horn" at the back of its head. There was "not a feather in sight." After thirty-five years, in the summer of 2006, a friend of Hennessy referred him to the American, Jonathan Whitcomb, author of the book "Searching forRopens," who interviewed him.
The eyewitness account was added to the second edition of the book, which was published on May 30, 2007. Until 2006, Hennessy had been unaware of cryptozoological expeditions related to what he had seen. (Whitcomb's book tells how, in the 1990's, a few Americans began investigating, in Papua New Guinea, creatures described like living pterosaurs, commonly called, by Americans, "pterodactyls.") Hennessy was also unaware that many natives have names for giant flying creatures: One of those names is "ropen." The American author noticed similarities between Hennessy's description and that of a creature reported 500 miles to the west, near Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea, twenty-seven years earlier. In 1944, Duane Hodgkinson, now living in Montana, saw a giant "prehistoric" creature flying over a clearing where he and another soldierwere standing. Whitcomb had interviewed Hodgkinson in 2004 and realized, two years later, that both the American veteran and the psychologist had seen a dark flying creature with a long tail but no sign of feathers. Both men used the word "prehistoric." In 2006, Whitcomb showed Hennessy a series of sketches for determining the shape of the head, including the beak and the head appendage. (A similar questionnaire had been given to Hodgkinson two years earlier.) Whitcomb then drew a sketch based on Hennessy's answers, and concluded that Hennessy had seen, in 1971, the same type of creature that Hodgkinson had seen in 1944.
Do dinosaurs still exist? The
question may sound absurd. After all, conventional wisdom holds that these giant
reptiles lapsed into extinction some 65 million years ago. Still, occasional
reports from remote regions of the earth have kept the issue alive, if only to
readers of tabloid newspapers and to the handful of scientists, adventurers, and
nature writers who have tried to make sense of the accounts and, where possible,
to investigate them. Much of the investigation has centered on a legendary
creature generally referred to mokele-mbembe and described as a sauropod-like
animal, with a long neck, small head, bulky body, and tail. The first printed
mention of the huge, plate-shaped tracks associated with the beast appears in a
1776 history of French missionaries in west-central Africa. In the next two
centuries missionaries, colonial authorities, hunters, explorers, and natives
would provide strikingly consistent descriptions of the animals supposedly
responsible for tracks of this kind. Sighting reports in recent years have been
confined to the swampy, remote Likouala region of the Congo.
In 1980 and 1981 University of Chicago biologist Roy P. Mackal led two
expeditions to the area, the first in the company of herpetologist James H.
Powell, Jr., who had heard mokele-mbembe stories while doing crocodile research
in west-central Africa. Neither expedition produced a sighting, though Mackal
and his companions interviewed a number of native witnesses. The creatures,
greatly feared, were said to live in the swamps and rivers. A band of pygmies
supposedly killed one at Lake Tele around 1959. Though the Mackal expeditions
were unable to reach the nearly inaccessible Tele, a rival group, headed by
American engineer Herman Regusters, successfully made the journey. Over a period
of two to three weeks, he and his wife Kia Van Dusen would claim, huge
long-necked animals came into view on several occasions, both in the water and
in the swampy areas around the lake...
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(Read the FULL Article here... | 26250 bytes more | comments? | Score: 0 ) Posted by nuke on Thursday, February 01 @ 09:16:51 CST (1287 reads)
There is a picture of a dinosaur fighting a mammoth from the book Buried Alive
by Dr. Jack Cuozzo (click to enlarge). It was taken by the author in
the Bernifal Cave, one of the caverns in France that is renowned for
Neanderthal artifacts. The cave has been closed to the public. Science
News was given the opportunity to publish the remarkable photo, but
declined. It seems that evidence against the prevailing paradigm of
naturalistic origin was selected against. It is buried alive by the
scientific establishment. As Cuozzo says, this is natural selection in
the most literal sense!
"Fran Barnes, a recognized authority
on rock art of the American South-West, writes, ‘In the San Rafael
Swell, there is a pictograph [picture symbol] that looks very much like
a pterosaur, a Cretaceous flying reptile’..." (Swift, Dennis, "Messages
on Stone," Creation Ex Nihilo, vol. 19, p. 20). This figure,
about 7 feet long from wing-tip to wing-tip, is actually painted with a
dark-red pigment. Indians of the Fremont culture are thought to have
inhabited the "Swell" between 700 and 1250 A.D. Black Dragon Canyon is
named for the pictograph which resembles a large winged reptile with a
headcrest. In
600 BC, under the reign of King Nebuchanezzer,a Babylonian artist was
commissioned to shape reliefs of animals on the structures associated
with the Ishtar Gate. Centuries later, in 1887 AD, when German
archaeologist Robert Koldeway stumbled upon the blue-glazed brick, that
gate was rediscovered. The animals appear in alternating rows with
lions, fierce bulls (rimi or reems in Chaldean), and curious
long-necked dragons (sirrush). The lions and bulls would have been
present at that time in the Middle East. But, on what creature did the
ancient Babylonians model the dragon? The same word, sirrush, is
mentioned in the book of Bel and the Dragon, from the Apocrypha. Both
the description there and the image on these unearthed walls (see
right), which are now displayed in the Berlin Vorderasiatisches Museum,
appear to fit a sauropod dinosaur...
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(Read the FULL Article here... | 31867 bytes more | comments? | Score: 0 ) Posted by nuke on Tuesday, August 01 @ 06:06:29 CDT (1035 reads)