There aren’t any sauropods in the Congo Basin. There’s not a scrap of evidence that long-necked, swamp-wallowing dinosaurs are hiding somewhere in the jungles of Africa, or anywhere else. And I say that as someone who was enthralled when I saw the puppet brontosaurs of 1985′s Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (see the clip above), arguably the best movie dinosaurs before Jurassic Park stomped along. After seeing that movie, I really, really wanted there to be living sauropods, but the evidence simply doesn’t exist.
Rumors that there might be an Apatosaurus-like dinosaur in the Congo Basin have circulated for years. Young earth creationists have been especially enamored with the idea, as they wrongly believe that finding a living, non-avian dinosaur will discredit evolutionary theory. (The existence of a living sauropod wouldn’t be any worse for evolutionary theory than the discovery of modern coelacanths. These archaic fish were thought to be extinct, but once living fish were discovered, they fell perfectly well within what scientists have understood about evolutionary patterns since Darwin’s day.)
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