Mokele-Mbembe Expeditions — Scientists Search Congo Swamps for Living Dinosaur

Mokele-mbembe is a creature reported from the Congo Basin of Central Africa, described by indigenous Baka and Boha people as a large, long-necked animal that lives in remote rivers and swamps and is capable of killing hippopotami. The creature's description—a massive body with a long neck and tail and a small head—is consistently compared to a sauropod dinosaur. Beginning in 1980, American zoologist Roy Mackal led two major expeditions into the Congo looking for Mokele-mbembe. His team documented extensive testimony from indigenous witnesses and found what appeared to be large tracks, but did not directly encounter the creature. Mackal concluded the reports were too consistent and numerous to dismiss as fabrication. Further expeditions in the 1980s and 1990s collected additional testimony and in some cases reported distant sightings of large animals in the water that could not be identified. In 1992, a Japanese film crew claimed to have captured video footage of an unidentified large creature in Lake Tele, though the footage was indistinct. The Congo Basin contains some of the most remote and unexplored territory on Earth. Conventional biologists argue that a population of large animals could not survive without being detected by modern surveys, while proponents note that the okapi—a large mammal—remained unknown to science until 1901 despite living in the same region. No specimen of Mokele-mbembe has been collected.