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Dinosaurs living in Africa?

The following report appeared in Australia’s Newcastle Herald on December 29, 1993, in its ‘On This Day’ column.

‘In 1919, rumours abound about a large animal seen in the interior of the Congo, in Africa.

‘The animal is claimed to be a Brontosaurus (thunder-lizard), a “reptile which has been decently buried for 8 million [sic] years”.

‘A Belgian prospector claims to have seen an animal with “large scales, a thick, kangaroo-like tail, a horn on the snout and a hump on the back”.

‘Scientists are sceptical about what the prospector saw and it is suggested "that any of these large land reptiles are now in existence is inconceivable, for they have been extinct since Cretaceous times, and there is no precedent for such an unwarranted resurrection.

‘They are, however, unsure of why the Brontosaurus and other dinosaurs disappeared. One theory is that during the development and specialisation in an animal, as for instance the Brontosaurus, there is a "waning of potential”. It cannot adapt itself to altering conditions and thus “the race dies out”.’

— Norm Barney, Newcastle Herald (Australia), 29 December 1993.

[Although the Brontosaurus has since been found to have been a mistake (the wrong head on the wrong body), there have been reports of dinosaurs in the jungles of the Congo even up to the 1980s, and other indications that some dinosaurs may still be alive. See Are dinosaurs alive today? in Creation 15(4):12–15, September–November, 1993 —Ed.]