Mokele-mbembe (Dinosaur in africa)

Originally posted by Nygdan
Since the world is almost certainly quite a bit older than that.....

Do you remember how long the moonlanders legs were? If not, they are about 10-12 feet long. They were that long because scientists figured the moon was about the same age as the earth. They knew the gravity well of the moon and they thought they knew the age of the earth. So they did the math. According to their calculations their should have been at lest 12 feet of dust on the moon. In actuality the dust was only 1/2 an inch deep. That would indicate an age somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 years.

Originally posted by Nygdan
But, again, if you could have all the fossils that are had in some remote period (regardless of it being 9,000 years ago or 100 million), then why no fossils ever since then?

Well I would say that after the flood the died out in all places except the parts of africa that still had the type of enviroment that they were built to survive in. And I expect that if they are still around you would find their fossils in the places that they are inhabiting. Since they are rarely seen I deduce that they must live(if they are still around) in very remote places. I can also deduce that since this place is remote that nobody is digging for fossils there. Thats my view of things, believe it or not, its no skin of my nose.

Well, it's kinda stupid. Something this large should not be hard to find/witness.

A Brachiosaur would be like 2 to 3 stories tall. It's head would easily be seen sticking out of the tops of trees above the jungle canopy. No aircraft have ever seen something this large? What about in the river's? Where is the evidence of downed Hippos, and Elephants, with unknown causes of death?

Something this huge would leave large disturbed paths though Jungle brush wouldn't you think?

There are just too many problems here. Maybe these villagers are seeing something at night and mistaking it for something else. They are not educated and would not probably know one animal from another...

I'd like to believe these creatures exist though, it just pisses me off that these claims are made and are so damn elusive...

An Elephant from a distance in the water at night with it's trunk up in the air probably looks alot like this creature, and some Elephants have been known to have bad tempers when their territory is disturbed.

Hey since when did someone say it was a brachisaur i read the 'sauropod' bit and everyone says that it would leave a trail of destructio which people would see but the amazon is one huge jungle

When some of the local people of the Likouala region would draw in the dirt or sand a representation of Mokele-mbembe they drew the shape of a sauropod dinosaur. Then when they were shown a picture of a sauropod dinosaur they said that picture is Mokele-mbembe.

They also showed the natives a picture of a rhino and they responded with "Mokele-mbembe". The natives accurately identified pictures of gorillas and elephants in their local language, but when it came to the rhino picture they got a bit confused...see www.cryptozoology.com...

It's a unique situation because the natives don't have as global of a knowledge as we do. Because they only know about the small area they live in, they are more likely to shout monster when they are faced with a new creature they've never encountered. However, we have a broader knowledge of zoology than a small jungle tribe and as such we have a broader range of species to select from to explain their monster.

But it would be neat if it were real. The article above explains that they were supposedly able to kill a (or the) Mokele-mbembe but they ate it in order to celebrate vanquishing it. Not only did they lose their proof of it by doing so, but consuming it also reportedly made many of them deathly ill.

Oh, and if you think the earth is only 10000 years old you might as well also believe it's flat.



[edit on 3-5-2005 by bilgerat]

Originally posted by Shenroon
Hey since when did someone say it was a brachisaur i read the 'sauropod' bit and everyone says that it would leave a trail of destructio which people would see but the amazon is one huge jungle

Well o.k. "Sauropod" = Dinosaur, mmppff. Not to be specific and save the argument, lets say it's not a Brachiosaur... If it was a Dinosaur they saw, it would be larger than anything else in the area.

The footprints they claim to have found also look like Elephant footprints to me.

I believe as mentioned these villagers are just seeing a "big creature" which we have a name for, but they just shout Monster! If I was there and one of my tribe got trampled or gorde by a Rhino or Elephant, I would shout Monster! As I threw spears and yelled.

Let's here from some expedition people.

Ya, ya..it all sounds good till you realize something..There couldnt just be one of them. They gotta reproduce somehow. And if it was only two of tem and they kept the blood between them, they would go extinct. So in theory there should be a whole lot of these things running around.

Same reason, I dont buy Loch Ness either. There would have to be a few of them running around to. Unless of course, they live 1000s or millions of years. Trust me...if it was there, we would have found it, and it would either be in a zoo over here, or hanging up in the Brittish History Museum (since everything in there is either from Africa, Rome or Greece)

Originally posted by Brainiac
They are not educated and would not probably know one animal from another...

Actually, they'll know a hell of a lot more about the wild-life, plants, animals, where rivers are, etc in that area. They know how to survive out there.

Just because their education does not involve a slip of paper, does not make them uneducated. They will know what each animal is, how to kill it, what bits you can eat, how to cook it, skin it, etc, a lot more then we do.

Originally posted by spliff4020
Ya, ya..it all sounds good till you realize something..There couldnt just be one of them. They gotta reproduce somehow. And if it was only two of tem and they kept the blood between them, they would go extinct. So in theory there should be a whole lot of these things running around.

Same reason, I dont buy Loch Ness either. There would have to be a few of them running around to. Unless of course, they live 1000s or millions of years. Trust me...if it was there, we would have found it, and it would either be in a zoo over here, or hanging up in the Brittish History Museum (since everything in there is either from Africa, Rome or Greece)

Actually in the Oxford Museum they have a skeleton of a creature found in a quary that is just like the LockNess Monster and also they don't say there's one monster, they've found radar traces of a lot of them.

My Grandfather used to go up to Lock Ness when he was a kid, if you talk to the locals around there they all think something's in the there adn remember the Lock is massive and has access to the sea. It's not small.

Spliff, a NEW FORM OF LIFE was found in 2002 on the bottom of Loch Ness, so the monster existing is not to hard to imagine.

Also, again, sauropod, not Brachiasaur, so could be a smaller type, like Diplodocus, or the other dozen types.

Also, a picture of a sauropod was also shown, same response. It is strange that any creature they don't recognize they cry the same thing. But to say they are stupid is wrong, can you hunt an elephant with a stick? Can you navigate the rivers/swamps? I thought not.

And again, Gorillas were a myth, North America/South America were a myth(and those are entire CONTINENTS!) so to say this doesn't exist..... well, who knows. Even if you have a body doesn't prove it. A guy sent a Platypus back to Mother England and still NO ONE believed him it was real.

Originally posted by Voidmaster
Do you remember how long the moonlanders legs were? If not, they are about 10-12 feet long.

OMG you're not going to make the moon dust arguement are you

They were that long because scientists figured the moon was about the same age as the earth.

OMG you did.

I can understand finding this arguement convincing. I apologize if you are offended by the above, but its one of the 'classic' creationist arguements.
Short Refutation

Here is a bigger article related to it

There is a recent creationist technical paper on this topic which admits that the depth of dust on the moon is concordant with the mainstream age and history of the solar system (Snelling and Rush 1993). Their abstract concludes with:
"It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the postulated early intense bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists' multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it). Unfortunately, attempted counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious arguments or faulty calculations. Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the moon and the solar system."

Some people don't trust Talk Origins, which is strange, because they are pretty upfront about being an archive of information and articles written by scientists and non scientists, generally in favour of evolution over creationism. Regardless, AIG took note of the speciousness and incorrectness of the moon dust arguement also and even listed it as one of cf 10 arguements creationists should not use on
this page, with a specific linking page here
Absurdly and dishonestly, they make it out to sound like they were the ones to 'debunk' this arguement, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth

In an important paper, geologist Dr Andrew Snelling from Australia’s Creation Science Foundation [now Answers in Genesis], and former Institute for Creation Research graduate student Dave Rush, have examined in minute detail all the evidence relating to this argument.1

Voidmaster
Well I would say that after the flood the died out in all places except the parts of africa that still had the type of enviroment that they were built to survive in

Since there is no evidence for a global flood and what evidence there is seems to contradict any sort of flood, this doesn't help much.

I can also deduce that since this place is remote that nobody is digging for fossils there.

Paleontologist Paul Sereno, while not, as far as I know, doing excavations in the deep congo, is one of many paleotologists who brave incredible hazzards to go to remote locations to scout for fossils. Mark Norell is another well known one.

Could this thing be a dinosaur that was taken up on noahs ark and lived in africa? I dunno, seems extremely unlikely, but if one wants to invoke miracles, then anything is possible no?

BTW 'Hitchikers Guide' rules!

shenroonbut the amazon is one huge jungle

Congo, but yes, there are small sauropds. Still, we'd have to be talking about herds of these animals, since we know that they traveled in structured herds (across plains, not jungles and swamps)

brainiac
The footprints they claim to have found also look like Elephant footprints to me.

It would be trivially easy to compare any 'footprints' to distinctive sauropod footprints.

Odium
They will know what each animal is, how to kill it, what bits you can eat, how to cook it, skin it, etc, a lot more then we do.

Sure, as long as its something that they've been around for generations. They're not stupid, they recognized the animals that they can be expected to, but dinosaurs and apparently rhinos and other foreign animals, 'mokele mbembe, mokele mbembe!'. Heck, that sort of settles it don't it? If it was somethign in their area, they'd be able to identify it, because they're more than smart enough for that. But a mythical creature that doesn't exist that lots of different people thought they saw, to one guy its a rhino, another a horned sauropod, etc etc.

adn remember the Lock is massive and has access to the sea

I thought it does not have access to the sea? Or perhaps its just not a big enough access for a large animal like nessie? Anyway, nessie is sometimes thought to be a plesiosaur, but that doesn't really fit whats hypothesised about the monster.

JTL
a NEW FORM OF LIFE was found in 2002 on the bottom of Loch Ness

Er?

But to say they are stupid is wrong

I don't think anyone said that these tribespeople are stupid. THey're obviously 'uneducated' tho, nothing wrong with that, and they're also equally very knowledgeable about the world around them. That world, I think the OP was trying to point out, was just very very limited.

Yeah, in a search for Nessie they found these orange "mushrooms". They thought it was a type of sponge, but nope, completely new life form. So who knows what is out there. Will get some links if I can find them about the new life form.

During this trip, serendipity led to the discovery of hitherto unknown microbial life-forms...
www.washcoll.edu...

WTH will it let me edit this but not the one before? Anyways, it is a new form of life. How coral reefs are made of polyps, these are made by long thin hair-like creatures that clump together. Very strange, and so far only found in Loch Ness, on the Loch bottom.

[edit on 4-5-2005 by James the Lesser]

I was gonna go bitchcakes if someone made a moondust/earth is 10000 years old argument.

I'm not saying that these tribespeople are dumb because they don't have official schooling, but they're certainly not worldly by any means. They live in one very specific area, and they certainly would have to be experts on the plants and animals there. But consider if something new (like a rhino) wandered into their territory. How would they react? This is an animal that previously did not exist in their world, and because they aren't familiar with many other species and therefore have no explanation of what it could be, they simply label it a monster.

A saurapod, even if it is smaller (by the way, diplodocus is like 90 feet long) would leave some sort of evidence of it's existence...footprints, huge piles of crap, knocked down trees, etc. Even simple expeditions would have been able to uncover something if it existed.

Did they have trees fallen from elephants? They aren't small, one would think a herd of breeding elephants would leave signs.... but they don't.

Originally posted by bilgerat

They also showed the natives a picture of a rhino and they responded with "Mokele-mbembe". The natives accurately identified pictures of gorillas and elephants in their local language, but when it came to the rhino picture they got a bit confused...

Exactly . It would seem that "Mokele-mbembe" is better translated as "monster" than "dinosaur". Although I don't think we can rule out the possibility of undiscovered largish land animals, the odds seem small and get smaller every year. Eventually, sattelite based IR imaging will probably settle this one, assuming no hard evidence is found in the interim.

Am i the only 1 thinkin that maybe mokele-mbembe doesnt mean monster or dinosaur but just 'unknown' or sumutlike that so everything they dont no they they label mokele-mbembe

In an Animal X special they said that, and how the first Western Man to find this thing was a french dude in the 1700's, long before Jurrassic Park.

Anyways, elephants are there, yet they don't find traces of herds of elephants knocking trees down and such, so i guess the elephant doesn't exist. But it does, the natives hunt them, so forth, just not acres of land wiped out by elephant herds. SO to say a herd of sauropods would do that is insane.

The idea of dinos around with man....preposterous!

Or is it?


Ashanti gold figurine, Ghana


Aboriginal painting, Australia


Egyptian seal with the cartouche of Tutmosis III


Mesopotamian cylinder, 3300 BC

No reaction to the above? Ah well...

Originally posted by Gazrok
The idea of dinos around with man....preposterous!
or is it?

There've been a lot of fraudulently created 'ancient artifacts' that show man and dinosaurs interacting. What makes these not frauds?

Also, its thought thought that lots of dinosaur fossils have inspired tales about them, the discovers not knowing that they weren't recently deceased animals.

And, also, the idea of big reptilian monsters, I don't think, needs actual living dinoaurs to have come about. There're big giant snakes, big giant crocodiles, and big giant lizards, out there, and surely they were even bigger in the older stages of man's evolution (relative to man). So most of these images might, realistically, be distortions of a general dreaded concept.

Also, herds of sauropods in mesopotamia? Maybe the congo, maybe the amazon, and maybe even the jungles of south east asia and the like, but mesopotamia? And only scant mentions of it?