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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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