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originally posted by: Frocharocha
It' been a while since i don't see a thread like this. I really liek cryptid dinosaurs, they are my favourite since ever.
Anyway native americans weren't wrong about the Okapi or the Mountain Gorillas, but their histories weren't actually true. According to them gorila rape women and ate men. But that was just a story.
My bet is that, if this creature ended up being real, it would be a small sized reptile.
Isiququmadevu Dinosaur-like animal of central Afirca, similar to the Mokele-Mbembe. . . .
Variant names: Ig'ondotuya, Lengolengole, Lingongole.
Physical description: Length, 20 - 40 feet. Larger than an elephant. Head like a snake's. Long neck. Lizard like legs. Behavior: Amphibious.
Tracks: Makes wide furrows in the reeds and mud.
Habitat: Swamps, rivers.
Distribution: Zambezi River from the Barotse Floodplain to Victoria Falls, Zambia.
Significant sightings: Lewanika, king of the Barotsel in western Zambia in the early twentieth century, went to the spot where a huge, aquatic reptile had been seen. He found a large space where reeds had been flattened and a channel as large as a trek wagon where it had crawled through the mud.
In the southern summer of 1925, a river-transport manager named V. Pare saw a 30 to 40 foot, snake like animal with a slate gray head resting on a rock in the flooded Zambezi River near Victoria Falls, Zambia. It disappeared into a deep cave.
Africa’s largest snake species and one of the world's largest, the typical African rock python adult measures 4.8 m (16 ft). Rumors of specimens over 6 m (20 ft) are considered reliable, although larger specimens have never been confirmed. Weights are reportedly in the range of 44 to 55 kg (97 to 121 lb), with a few weighing 91 kg (201 lb) or more.
A 20ft-long African rock python is being hunted by the police and snake catchers after it swallowed a 10-year-old boy near Durban, the first recorded "man-eating" incident for its species. For three hours other children hid up mango trees near the township of Lamontville, too terrified to flee, as the snake first trapped the young boy and squeezed the life out of him before consuming him whole. The hunt found no trace of the child, or his clothing, except for a trail of flattened grass leading down to a nearby stream.
chief Lewanika reported years ago to the British Resident in Zululand that a huge lizard, "ten times as big as a crocodile, which has made a trail in the reeds like that of a large trek-wagon from which the wheels had been removed " (he meant, made by something large dragged along, and the size of what to him was the familiar Boer veld wagon), and that he had given strict orders to his warriors to keep watch for the beast that he might see it for himself; but it was never seen again.
No less a personage than Lewanika, King of the Barotse, saw the beast in the marshes of his land, and set a special warrior watch to capture it. 'A monster,' says he in his official report to the British Government, 'with a head like a snake, making a huge track in the reeds as large as a full-sized wagon would make were its wheels removed.' He speaks of course, of the old Boer trek-wagon, a big, lumbering concern pulled by twenty or more oxen.
originally posted by: MichiganSwampBuck
Here's a story I just found today about a dinosaur type monster that lived near a swamp in Africa. An explorer in the early 20th century claimed the natives believed that it lived in a giant sinkhole and they were forbidden to visit it. It lived in a pit but would come out to the swampland near by as well. With all the clues offered in a story that I can actually believe, I think I know just about where this "lost" pit actually was.
Here is a quote form the website . . .
In the early 1920s, several news publications of the time shed light on a curious location in Africa, . . . It was reported that in what was referred to as North Rhodesia, there was a mysterious pit in the ground measuring at least a hundred feet wide that the native Mashona and Matabele people of the area shunned, a place only known as The Forbidden Pit.
Yeah. Just leave it alone. Drop it completely. Whatever is there, IS there. They are the only reason why no diamond mining has happened there. Despite the potential "gold mine". Just leave it alone. Thanks.
It was said that the pit was home to some horrific, reptilian beast that would emerge to terrify the local tribes. Apparently somewhat like a dinosaur in appearance, the creature’s appetite was said to be ravenous, and that it would ferociously hunt and kill whatever it could catch, including human beings.
The story was covered by a newspaper called the "New Zealand Guardian" in their October 17, 1925, issue. You can find the original source article called, "Mystery of Big Hole" "Pit in Darkest Africa" at this link.
Now where is this mysterious place in Africa with the forbidden pit? Here are all the clues I have found.
Firstly, the country said to have this pit was referred to as North Rhodesia, now present day Zambia.
The tribes in the area stated in the article were, The Mashona or Shona of Zimbabwe and Matabele of Rhodesia, and the Ila, who seemed to live the closest to this pit and the monster that lived there.
One tribe, the Ila, had allegedly become so distressed by the horror from the pit that a group of tribesmen were tied together and flung into the craggy black hole as a sacrifice in an attempt to appease the monster that lurked within.
The Ba-Ila tribe, inhabited the Kafue river valley in Zambia during the 1920s. The Kafue river is feed by the huge Lukanga Swamp, a primordial area indeed.
The following quote is from wikipedia . . .
The Lukanga Swamp . . . It then again develops intricate meanders and a maze of channels in a swampy floodplain, with oxbow lakes and lagoons. It flows 20 km west of the permanent part of the Lukanga Swamp which fills a circular depression, and which drains through a channel into the Kafue.
Also, the upper reaches of the Kafure river is a limestone karst area with numerous caves, under ground rivers and sinkholes. So many sinkholes that to this day they have a big problem with them.
So if some cave divers in Zambia, diving a sinkhole near the Kafue, fed by an underground river, find the bound bodies of human sacrifice victims, then they had better keep an eye out for the monster they were meant to feed.
This all leaves one to wonder, just what in the world was the Forbidden Pit of Africa? If these reports are to be believed, then is it still out there hidden away from the world in some remote place in Africa? We may never know. It seems that whatever these reports were describing, this monster infested pit is a place that has faded into a mere forgotten historical news curiosity.
I think it is still there, I know where the area is, and this sinkhole is probably known by both tourists and guides who may have even heard the story. IMO, if the author of this article would have dug just a little harder he never would have made that final statement at the end.