New Guinea More Species Than Meet the Eye Part III

I previously wrote in these columns of my desire to travel to New Guinea in search of cryptids spread out all over the archipelago. As if the flying reptiles known the Ropen and the Duah weren’t enough to appease the appetite of any serious cryptozoologist, the monsters of New Britain and Lake Murray have, over the past decade, been driving the local populations to despair and creating ever more of a mystery.

As recently as 2003, villagers in a marsh just outside the provincial capital of Kokopo in East New Britain reported seeing a three metre tall creature with head like a dog and a tail like that of a crocodile. The beast was as big as 900 litre water tank according to witness Christine Samei and was grey in colour. The police – armed to the teeth with M16s – were dispatched to find the beast, but found no trace of it. The beast has slunk off to some place in the wilds, hopefully to resurface when hapless villagers least expect it.

A government official assigned to look into the sightings said the winesses had identified the creature as a dinosaur after looking at books with illustrations of the saurians as well recalling movies featuring dinosaurs.

Senior Sergeant Leuth Nidung had strong words for the locals in regard to precautions they could take against a creature that had reportedly already eaten three dogs.

Things were just as bizarre on the main island of New Guinea as Lake Murray residents swore they discovered a dinosaur-like animal as big as a dump truck living in the lake. Two villagers in a canoe saw the creature, which resembled an extinct Hadrosaur, appear to be eating in the shallows of Lake Murray near Boboa on December 11, 1999.

They brought the matter to the attention of an American Seventh Day Adventist missionary who with a church elder saw the creature the next day not far from the original sighting location. The creature was two metres wide, had a long neck, slender tail, a head like a cow’s, walked on two palm tree trunk-like hind legs with the forelegs being much smaller, had big eyes, sharp teeth as long as man’s fingers, skin like a crocodiles and large triangular scoops on its back.

The creature was seen submerging in the water by two locals who had the audacity to follow it. They reported that they followed it to an underwater cave where it was dry and disappeared deeper into the cave. The two men refused to go any further and came back to make their report to the missionary.

Now with all these cryptids in New Guinea to investigate, my problem is: Where do I start?

John Kirk About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998). In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur. Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC. In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.

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