I do not believe a horn was mentioned, but still, it seems coincidental.

As to artists’ depictions of large vs small ears, ears vs frills, and so on, this is going to have to take some sorting out between eyewitness accounts, the sculpture artists, and cryptozoologists on site.

Good discussion here.

I discussed this only three weeks ago with Roy Mackal, who still believes that the heavy tail may have been a confusion with the Mokele-mbembe proper. Depending on the tribal group, Mokele-mbembe is sometimes used as a generic term for any strange or odd animal they may occasional encounter.

In any case, I have always felt that dealing directly with first-hand eye witness accounts is by far the best approach. Thus far I have interviewed about ten eye-witnesses in Cameroon and another dozen in the Congo who are familiar with these animals. Going on the information received, there appears to be two different types of animal involved.

A) The river dwelling creature is described in the Congo as possessing one large ivory horn and is known by the Lingala name as Emela-Ntouka or “killer of elephants.”

B) The same river dwelling hippos/elephant killer in Cameroon is known in the Baka language as N’goubou or “horned one” and is often said to possess two horns side-by-side near the top of the head, rather than a single horn on its nose. The Baka chief, Timbo and his hunters trapped and killed a river dwelling horned animal in 1995. They dug an elephant trap near the Boumba River and were astonished to see a few days later that they had caught a river Ngoubou in the trap. They still decided to butcher and eat the animal just the same. Timbo speculates that the animal had exited the river and fell into its trap as it made its way through the forest on an elephant trail.

C). The savannah Ngoubou is often described as being as large as an elephant and possessing a distinctive neck frill with between three and six horns protruding from the head armor. In December 2000 just one month after Dave Woetzel and I departed from our first Cameroon expedition, Pierre Sima visited a village on the border with the Central African Republic and actually ate the meat of a savannah Ngoubou which, apparently, tasted like pork.

D) Roy Mackal and I are convinced that we are dealing with two different horned animals here. One is a river-dwelling elephant and hippo killer and the other is strictly a very large savannah animal which still has a dislike for elephants. Whether this is a surviving ceratosian dinosaur or an unusual armored rhino remains to be seen. I personally believe that the mystery animal is most probably the latter.

Mokele-mbembe proper, of course, remains elusive, However, my three American colleages, Milt Marcy, Peter Beach and Rob Mullin are currently in the target area. Let’s hope they have some exciting news for us when they emerge from the the interior of Cameroon at the end of the month!

Bill Gibbons