Mokele Mbembe en Español
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 5th, 2008
The three parts of this documentary were produced in early 2008, in Spanish. The program is about the dinosaur-like cryptid from central Africa, Mokele Mbembe. It is carried here as a special treat to our Spanish-speaking and reading audience.
Una increíble expedición tras un mito que se oculta en lo más profundo del continente negro. Muchos hablan de un dinosaurio, otros de un extraño rinoceronte. Este ser llamado Mokele Mbembe es temido y respetado por todas las tribus y su leyenda se extiende por toda África. Fernando González Sitges, naturalista y director de Explora films, y Oscar Soriano, Vicedirector del Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Madrid, expondrán qué puede haber tras esta extraña criatura.
[See below, in comments, some English notes on what occurred during the expedition.]
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Oh! Cryptomundo se hace bilingüe! (Cryptomundo has turned bilingual)
“An incredible expedition after a myth that hides in the deepest of the dark continent. Many speak of a dinosaur, others of a strange rhinoceros. This being called Mokele Mbembe is feared & respected by all the tribes and its legend spreads all over Africa. Fernando González Sitges, naturalist & director of Explora Films, & Oscar Soriano, Vicechairman of Madrid’s Museum of Natural Sciences , will expose what there might be behind this strange creature”
A bit crude, but that’s the translation for my non-spanish fellow Cryptomundians 😉
Thank you so much for this treat Loren 🙂
Ok, without pretending to make a thorough translation of the 3 vids, I can tell you that the main purpose of these guys’ expedition was to film and research gorillas & elephants in the Likouala region of Africa, and with the opportunity they also tried to find a bit more about the Mokele.
And these Spanish investigators are convinced that the Mokele Mbembe is a new species of an aquatic rhino, similar to the asian rhinoceros. The reason for this is that after presenting some drawings of dinosaurs to the local pygmies (that were randomly mixed with pics of more common animals like elephants & gorillas) none of them recognized them, but when they showed a pic of an asian rhino, the pygmies identified it as Mokele Mbembe. They also show the first modern rendition of the Mokele in an early XXth century newspaper, and the picture shows a rather weird dinosaur with two rhino-like horns. They also point out that the famous drawing of the sauropod Mokele with the pygmy does no longer concur with what now know of dinosaur morphology (i.e. sauropods didn’t drag their tails like lizards).
They seemed to have very few days to research the matter further—they took much time just to get to that secluded region of the jungle, and they had to deal not only with vicious ants and aggressive elephants, but also with other kind of nasty creatures: guerrilla fighters—but apparently they are planning a new expedition a year from now, when hopefully they’ll bring conclusive evidence to the existence of Mokele.
The spanish program “Cuarto Milenio” (4th Millenium) has indeed very good programs about cryptids, supernatural and misteries. They invite spanish-speaking experts and witnesses, and they have done some programs about the Yeti (with sightings and even a mysterious paw, which could be either bear or hominid).
They create replicas from creatures, to show the audience. They have created a replica from the Minnesota Ice Man. They have talked also about the Vietnamese apemen “Nguoi Rung” (actually a spanish naturalist, with the help of some experts from Hanoi University, believes that it lives in the forests of Central Vietnam near Laos and Cambodia).
One very mysterious chapter was about apemen in Africa. In Cameroon, a spanish explorer took pictures in the 60s of a mysterious skull. In summary, the natives told him that the skull belonged to a gorilla-human hybrid. A woman, sick from leprosy, befriended a gorilla, got pregnant and gave birth to a hybrid. The natives chased the hybrid some time later and killed him. He could not speak, but could babble and was in tears before he died.