Many have heard about the fact that a real dinosaur that has survived to our times can live in Africa (in the Congo). Descriptions of the enigmatic large creature, called the mokele-mbembe in the local language, and regularly seen by the pygmy tribes, surprisingly point to a diplodocus or another dinosaur from the same family. And it was the picture with the image of the diplodocus that the pygmies pointed to when they were shown a book with images of different dinosaurs.
But living dinosaurs are seen elsewhere on the planet, including many reports from South America. As well as in Africa, there are many places where a herd of even very large dinosaurs can walk without fear of being disturbed by people. This is the dense Amazon jungle, inhabited mainly by small Indian tribes.
Fawcett's Beast
One of the most curious pieces of evidence comes from the famous British traveler Percy Fawcett, who traveled to the Amazonian jungle in 1925 in search of a mysterious lost city and vanished without a trace.
In 1919, Fawcett traveled to Bolivia and in his letter described how he was told about the mysterious beast living in the jungle.
“A riverboat merchant, whose honesty I can fully vouch for, told me that he saw in the river on the border of Bolivia and Brazil the head and neck of a huge reptile, similar in description to a brontosaurus. It was a question who was most frightened, he or this reptile, since this animal immediately went under the water and everything indicated that it was huge.
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The savages seem to have encountered both the animal itself and its tracks, although I have not seen either one or the other. But this is not surprising, these swampy areas are huge and practically impassable."
Later, in his numerous notes, Fawcett made another mention of the mysterious large beast.
“An unusual and mysterious huge beast often walks through the swamps, perhaps it is some kind of primitive monster. Its found traces cannot be correlated with the traces of known animals."
It is unfortunate that Fawcett described it all so sparingly and so briefly, especially with his passion for writing. Also, nowhere else in his journals is anything indicated about this mysterious animal, which adds even more fog to what exactly is it about?
Germans and Spinosaurus
Another, even earlier explorer of the South Amazon who also mentioned living dinosaurs, is the German Franz Herrmann Schmidt. In October 1907, he traveled through the impenetrable jungle of Peru with Captain Rudolf Pfleng, assisted by local Indian guides.
When they arrived at the Solimoes River (section of the Amazon), they noticed a strange absence in this section of water snakes, alligators and, in general, traces of the presence of any animals. But on the shore in the mud there were many large unidentified tracks.
At the sight of these traces, the Indian guides became very excited and began to beg the whites to leave this place. But in spite of everything, the Germans decided to stay there for the night. The next morning, almost near the camp, very fresh tracks of a large animal were found.
Pfleng said he wanted to know where they were leading, but he had no time to do anything. Monkeys and birds suddenly screamed loudly in the thickets, and then something very dark and large began to burst from there. The frightened Indians jumped into the boats with the Germans and began rowing away from the shore.
“One of the guides took our boat over the water and before he obeyed our orders and stopped, we were 100 feet (30 meters) from the shore. The Indians flatly refused to return to the camp. Meanwhile, something huge was moving there in the thickets, twigs and branches broke, loud slaps on the water were heard and the screaming monkeys ran away. Then it was pretty quiet for about ten minutes.
And then we saw this terrible monster when it appeared from the thickets. Its head was about 10 feet (3 meters) high and was about the size of a barrel and shaped like a tapir's head, elongated. The eyes were small and dull and looked like the eyes of an alligator. Despite the fact that it was almost completely covered with dried mud, we saw a very thick neck, similar to a snake, but knobby like an alligator.
The animal did not seem to notice us, although it was about 150 feet (45 meters) away from us. We saw his front part of the body, which was a little less than three meters at the withers, although it is difficult to say for sure, since the animal did not have front legs, but had huge fins with claws."
Having seen enough of the monster, both Germans decided to shoot him right there and fired from their guns. But they only wounded the beast, which noisily disappeared into the water. According to Schmidt, they fired at least seven bullets at the monster, but as if they did not cause serious wounds at all.
Before the animal was completely submerged and swam away, Schmidt had time to notice a short, knobby and seemingly heavy tail. The creature was about 10.6 meters long, of which 3.6 meters went around the neck with the head.
Schmidt and Pfleng two more times saw the head and neck of the animal, which it protruded from the water when diving before the dinosaur finally swam away. There was no blood in the water, and the animal also did not look wounded. Probably the bullets from the rifles did not even scratch him and only frightened him with noise.
It is difficult to say who exactly they saw, but judging by the relatively small size and clawed flippers, this is not a Diplodocus or Brontosaurus, but something like a Spinosaurus (pictured below). Although the Germans did not mention the crest on the back, but maybe they simply did not have time to notice it, if, like all animals, it was covered in mud.
Spinosaurus would feel great in the jungle and rivers of the Amazon, as it ate fish, knew how to swim well and lived in floodplains and river deltas.
Who was killed in Bolivia?
The Germans failed to kill the dinosaur they saw, but others did. In 1883, Scientific American published an article entitled "A Bolivian Saurian". In it, the Brazilian minister, while in the capital of Bolivia, La Paz, claimed that a strange beast was killed in the Beni River area.
“The Brazilian minister sent from La Paz to Rio to the Minister of Foreign Affairs photographs of drawings depicting a beast killed on the Beni River after 36 shots. By order of the President of Bolivia, the dried body of the beast, which was stored in Asuncion, was sent to La Paz.
The monster was 12 meters long from muzzle to tail. Its head was like a dog's, its legs were short and with claws. On the legs and on the belly there was something like a very strong skin, like armor, and on the back there was an even thicker carapace, going from the ears to the tail. The animal's neck was long and the legs were so short that the belly almost touched the ground."
According to the description, this is something turtle-like, but huge turtles were found only in prehistoric times, and even then there were no ones that would reach a length of 12 meters. Also, the Pareiasaurus lizard fits the description (in the picture below), but it reached a maximum of 4 meters in length.
It also remains a question where the drawings and the carcass of the monster have disappeared since then.
More modern observations
In 1931, researcher Harald Westin claimed to have seen 20 feet (6 meters) long snake-like reptiles at Rio Marmore in Brazil.
In 1946, a report by researcher Leonard Clarke, who traveled to Brazil, indicated that he heard stories from local Indians about large animals with long necks that feed on plants.
In 1975, a Swiss businessman visited the Amazon accompanied by a local guide, Sebastian Bastos, and he told him about the huge long-necked animals that the Indians have known for a long time and that hide where the deep parts of the rivers are.
According to Bastos, he personally encountered one of these animals on his boat and the animal broke the boat like a match in anger.
In 1995, a group of geology students observed two creatures with long necks in the Brazilian Paraguazu River near Mount Sincora. The creatures were more than 9 meters long.
Between 1997 and 1980, Silvano Lorenzoni published a series of articles about a mysterious plesiosaur-like beast that supposedly lives in the waters off the Auyan Tepui plateau in southeastern Venezuela. Auyan Tepui is such an incredible place that many call it the Lost World from the novels of Conan Doyle.
Two-legged Atacama lizards
One of the last sightings was in July 2004, and not in the jungle, but in the Atacama Desert (Chile), whose landscape looks more like a moon.
Chilean soldier Hernan Cuevas with his wife, two small children and his acquaintances was driving in a car when he noticed two two-legged gray lizards ahead. It was evening and it was dark, but the man got a good look at them. Their skin was bare, without hair and without feathers, and they were over 2 meters high.
Cuevas has described the beasts as bipedal dinosaurs with very powerful hips. The lizards quickly crossed the road in front of the braked car and disappeared into the darkness. The people in the car were shocked and sat for a while. Then they went out and saw three-toed footprints on the ground.
In the same July 2004, the Abett de la Torre Diaz family observed lizards in the same area on the same road. They saw two two-meter lizards, similar to large kangaroos. The lizards jumped over the car of people, and then two more lizards appeared from somewhere and also ran away. The astonished eyewitnesses from the details managed to notice in their appearance only sharp teeth.
Later, they looked through a book about dinosaurs and indicated that most of the lizards they saw were similar to those of the Dromaeosaurid family.
Eyewitness accounts prompted the creators of a series of programs about the unknown "Destination Truth" to come to this area in 2009 and there they found several more people who saw two-legged lizards here. The creatures were nicknamed "The Arica Monster" because the road where they were seen passed between the two villages of Arica and Iquique.
It also turned out that two-legged lizards with "heads like a dog" were seen here back in 1980. The creatures moved with great speed and jumped like kangaroos. Their appearance also reminded many of a kangaroo, so there were opinions that a group of kangaroos who escaped from a circus or a zoo live somewhere in this part.
However, the kangaroo does not have sharp teeth. Maybe it seemed to people? Or it wasn't kangaroos after all. Who knows.