Re: HERBIVORES TO CARNIVORES..

[bz050@freenet.carleton.ca (Ben S. Roesch)]

>
>
>>
>>I love the idea...but then, Conan Doyle's THE LOST WORLD 
>and the African
>>mkole mbembe stories are just as seductive.
>>
>
>  Regarding mokele-mbembe... saw in a recent National 
>Geographic a photo of an artist showing a drawing of the 
>beast to some locals whose descriptions the illustration was 
>based on.
>
> THIS time the thing didn't come out even remotely 
>dinosaurian.... looked like a rhinoceros with a really 
>extreme horn....
The Mokele-Mbembe has various "looks". In some areas it is regarded as
having a horn, but in tohers not. And in some regions it has a long neck,
and is others no. Roy Mackal who did research and went searching for the
beast(documented in his book, A Living Dinosaur?), thinks its a sauropod,
albeit not as big as a apatosaurus or diplodocus(and certainly not as
n=big as the siesmosaur!), or possibly a water-loving species of rhino. 
The painting was just a regional intrepertation of the animal... but it
does remind me of the water-loving rhino... 
Obviously, a new species of rhino would be less romantic (but still very
very exciting) than a living sauropod, but it is probably more likely.

Once again, we'll never know until we catch this beast, or observe it with
ease....

Ciao!

Ben...