1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:24,580 From the jungles of South America is this an unknown ape. 2 00:00:24,580 --> 00:00:29,500 In the forests of the Congo, how huge was this snake which rose up and 3 00:00:29,500 --> 00:00:32,140 ministered helicopter? 4 00:00:32,140 --> 00:00:39,000 In Mozambique, could this be an unknown species of big cat? 5 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:45,460 In the Pacific, did this man see the legendary dragon of New Guinea? 6 00:00:45,460 --> 00:00:53,300 Did the mammoth and the supposedly extinct creatures of the Ice Age really all die out? 7 00:00:53,300 --> 00:00:58,940 Mysteries from the files of Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001 and inventor of the communication 8 00:00:58,940 --> 00:01:00,260 satellite. 9 00:01:00,260 --> 00:01:05,220 Now in Sri Lanka, after a lifetime of science, space and writing, he contemplates the mysteries 10 00:01:05,220 --> 00:01:07,460 of this and other worlds. 11 00:01:07,460 --> 00:01:12,700 Even in this small island, there are reports of strange animals that have not yet positively 12 00:01:12,700 --> 00:01:14,200 identified. 13 00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:19,500 The horned jackal and the devil bird with its hideous strangled streak. 14 00:01:20,220 --> 00:01:26,340 Yet this jungle, even though it stretches as far as the eye can see, is nothing compared 15 00:01:26,340 --> 00:01:29,940 with the forests which cover much of Africa and South America. 16 00:01:29,940 --> 00:01:35,580 There's room for the whole zooful of unknown animals there. 17 00:01:35,580 --> 00:01:42,500 And looking at this, I'm reminded of a riddle posed by an old philosopher. 18 00:01:42,500 --> 00:01:49,500 This is the most cunning of all the animals that which no man has yet seen. 19 00:02:12,500 --> 00:02:29,500 In downtown Chicago, the university's professor of biology on a shopping expedition. 20 00:02:29,500 --> 00:02:43,180 Now what is all of this you have? 21 00:02:43,180 --> 00:02:49,500 Well, a jungle machete, a jungle hamlock, some medical supplies for the tropics and a backpack. 22 00:02:49,500 --> 00:02:51,180 Where are you off to with it? 23 00:02:51,180 --> 00:02:52,620 Well, you may not believe this. 24 00:02:52,620 --> 00:02:57,980 We're off to Africa to look for dinosaurs. 25 00:02:57,980 --> 00:03:02,980 Well it's in the Congo that Professor Roy Mackle and his colleague explorer James Powell 26 00:03:02,980 --> 00:03:08,660 really believe from many reports that there may exist a living dinosaur or something like 27 00:03:08,660 --> 00:03:11,300 it. 28 00:03:11,300 --> 00:03:17,620 The animal is described as being as big as an elephant or at least as big as a hippopotamus. 29 00:03:17,620 --> 00:03:21,660 It has a long head and neck and a long tail. 30 00:03:21,660 --> 00:03:28,780 It has feet that are like a hippopotamus but it has three claws on each of these feet. 31 00:03:28,780 --> 00:03:36,340 Every kind of animal that we can think of that is alive today doesn't fit this picture. 32 00:03:36,340 --> 00:03:43,540 The closest it comes to and amazing as this may seem is a dinosaur that is extinct perhaps 33 00:03:43,540 --> 00:03:46,380 65 to 70 million years. 34 00:03:46,380 --> 00:03:51,020 It does have an almost perfect resemblance to certain types of dinosaurs, particularly 35 00:03:51,020 --> 00:03:52,460 the three-clawed footprint. 36 00:03:52,460 --> 00:03:56,220 That is almost the trademark of certain long-neck dinosaurs. 37 00:03:56,220 --> 00:04:01,900 What really got me onto this was in 1976 I had a grant from the Explorers Club of New 38 00:04:01,900 --> 00:04:06,900 York to study rainforest crocodiles in Gabon which is a country immediately to the west 39 00:04:06,900 --> 00:04:08,540 of Congo. 40 00:04:08,540 --> 00:04:12,500 And since I had read about these reports I decided to see if I could come across any 41 00:04:12,500 --> 00:04:14,340 similar information. 42 00:04:14,340 --> 00:04:19,220 So among the Fong tribesmen I tried a little, you might say, flesh-card test. 43 00:04:19,220 --> 00:04:22,580 Most of all showed them pictures of five animals which are reasonably common in the 44 00:04:22,580 --> 00:04:23,580 Gabon jungles. 45 00:04:23,580 --> 00:04:26,180 In each case I would say, can you recognize this animal? 46 00:04:26,180 --> 00:04:27,180 What is it? 47 00:04:27,180 --> 00:04:28,180 He says, sure, of course. 48 00:04:28,180 --> 00:04:29,980 That's an elephant, that's a gorilla, that's a leopard, etc. 49 00:04:29,980 --> 00:04:31,300 These things live around here in the jungle. 50 00:04:31,300 --> 00:04:32,820 We know them. 51 00:04:32,820 --> 00:04:36,220 Then just as a control test I showed him a picture of a bear. 52 00:04:36,220 --> 00:04:38,460 Now there are no bears in Africa so far as we know. 53 00:04:38,460 --> 00:04:39,940 I said, do you know that animal? 54 00:04:39,940 --> 00:04:41,740 He said, no, we've never seen this. 55 00:04:41,740 --> 00:04:43,740 That animal now live around here. 56 00:04:43,740 --> 00:04:46,420 Then, just matter of factly, I showed him this. 57 00:04:46,900 --> 00:04:49,500 It's a picture of a platypus from a children's book on dinosaurs. 58 00:04:49,500 --> 00:04:51,860 I said, do you know that animal? 59 00:04:51,860 --> 00:04:55,740 And in several different villages representing at least two different cultural groups I would 60 00:04:55,740 --> 00:04:58,380 get consistent answers, yes, that's the Yamala. 61 00:04:58,380 --> 00:04:59,620 We know that animal. 62 00:04:59,620 --> 00:05:02,860 It lives back in the deep lakes, deep in the jungles. 63 00:05:02,860 --> 00:05:08,340 Well the evidence is strong enough that there seems to be some strange animal in this Congo. 64 00:05:08,340 --> 00:05:14,300 And if it's a dinosaur it would be interesting enough for us to leave Chicago, the bright 65 00:05:14,300 --> 00:05:19,860 lights, the ghost of Mayer daily, and go to the conglue. 66 00:05:19,860 --> 00:05:25,660 Thus inspired, Chicago's Congo expedition 1980 equips itself with the unknown. 67 00:05:25,660 --> 00:05:31,500 Well, since the hammock works, James, I think I'll try on this mosquito hat. 68 00:05:31,500 --> 00:05:36,660 It won't keep on any mosquitoes but let's see if it keeps out the snowflakes today. 69 00:05:36,660 --> 00:05:42,620 Well, that is great for eating originals. 70 00:05:42,620 --> 00:05:43,820 It feels warmer already. 71 00:05:43,820 --> 00:05:48,980 I don't feel any snowflakes so it must work on mosquitoes too. 72 00:05:48,980 --> 00:05:54,020 Somehow it doesn't look like the picture does. 73 00:05:54,020 --> 00:05:58,260 Well that may sound a little crazy and later we'll see what happened to them. 74 00:05:58,260 --> 00:06:03,820 But remember that until quite recently people refused to believe in the mountain gorilla, 75 00:06:03,820 --> 00:06:06,860 the okapi, the Komodo dragon. 76 00:06:06,860 --> 00:06:09,860 They were all discovered in this century. 77 00:06:09,860 --> 00:06:12,940 Even the pandas are recent arrival. 78 00:06:12,940 --> 00:06:18,460 It was literally pandemonium when San Francisco gave an all-American welcome to a real VIP, 79 00:06:18,460 --> 00:06:21,020 a very important panda. 80 00:06:21,020 --> 00:06:24,060 Maybe Soo Lin is the first giant panda to be brought to captivity. 81 00:06:24,060 --> 00:06:27,060 Ah, now it's tea time with Mrs. Ruth Harkness. 82 00:06:27,060 --> 00:06:33,180 During a grueling expedition in China she found Soo Lin crying in a hollow tree. 83 00:06:33,180 --> 00:06:36,340 But ever seen a happier panda than this? 84 00:06:36,340 --> 00:06:41,180 The okapi was dismissed as a fantasy of the pygmies, the mountain gorilla too, until 85 00:06:41,260 --> 00:06:44,700 the first specimens were killed. 86 00:06:44,700 --> 00:06:49,220 Who would believe the current stories of a saber-toothed killer loose even now in the 87 00:06:49,220 --> 00:06:55,940 Australian bush if we didn't have evidence on film that the ferocious Tasmanian tiger, 88 00:06:55,940 --> 00:07:04,940 this is the last one known, was still alive in Hobart Zoo in 1933? 89 00:07:04,940 --> 00:07:09,660 Snakes that can swallow a donkey look like Swiss family Robinson fiction, except we do 90 00:07:09,740 --> 00:07:12,580 have eyewitnesses and even photographs. 91 00:07:12,580 --> 00:07:15,860 This giant anaconda was killed on the Amazon. 92 00:07:15,860 --> 00:07:20,460 According to a Rio paper it was 130 feet long. 93 00:07:20,460 --> 00:07:28,500 This one was dispatched on the banks of the Mogayachi River in the interior of Brazil. 94 00:07:28,500 --> 00:07:33,940 When this snake allegedly 115 feet in length emerged from the river Oiapoque the militia 95 00:07:33,940 --> 00:07:38,500 were called out to machine gun it. 96 00:07:38,500 --> 00:07:43,900 But it was in Africa, the Congo, that an undoubtedly monstrous specimen appeared to confront this 97 00:07:43,900 --> 00:07:49,140 Belgian helicopter pilot Remy van Leerder as he returned from a mission in 1959. 98 00:07:49,140 --> 00:07:55,060 So as we had a camera on board I decided to make several passes over the hole where the 99 00:07:55,060 --> 00:07:59,380 snake was in, enabled to let the man take a picture of it. 100 00:07:59,380 --> 00:08:05,300 And I made certainly between four and six passes right over the hole where the snake 101 00:08:05,300 --> 00:08:06,300 was in. 102 00:08:06,300 --> 00:08:12,620 By then I was already flying for 25 years so I have a very good experience of measuring 103 00:08:12,620 --> 00:08:14,820 things. 104 00:08:14,820 --> 00:08:20,180 And I would see the snake I saw there was close to 50 feet, close to 50 feet. 105 00:08:20,180 --> 00:08:26,140 I don't know you say 50 feet or 50 feet, but very close to certainly. 106 00:08:26,140 --> 00:08:36,180 And it was moving inside the hole and looking very dark green, deep green brown. 107 00:08:36,180 --> 00:08:38,060 It is belly wide. 108 00:08:38,060 --> 00:08:43,620 Now when I came down on that snake in his hole and I would see at about 25, 30 foot 109 00:08:43,620 --> 00:08:49,580 up the snake raised up by about I would say 10 foot. 110 00:08:49,580 --> 00:08:54,740 And I could very clearly and closely see the head which was looking and I could not make 111 00:08:54,740 --> 00:09:03,260 a better comparison with the very large horse with big, very, very big jaws looking triangular. 112 00:09:03,260 --> 00:09:10,540 And you're just standing up right there to me and I feel and I'm convinced if I had been 113 00:09:10,540 --> 00:09:14,700 in its range it would have struck at me, it would have been striking me. 114 00:09:14,700 --> 00:09:23,420 And yet I would see it was certainly at least on the very two foot wide and three foot long. 115 00:09:23,420 --> 00:09:26,220 It could have easily eaten up a man. 116 00:09:26,220 --> 00:09:31,660 This is one of those rare cases where we have an expert witness and an excellent photograph. 117 00:09:31,660 --> 00:09:37,860 Examples of the ground features suggest that this animal was indeed at least 40 feet long. 118 00:09:37,860 --> 00:09:41,460 So monstrous snakes do exist. 119 00:09:41,460 --> 00:09:47,020 On the other hand, there's been a reward out for at least 60 years initiated by Theodore 120 00:09:47,020 --> 00:09:54,460 Roosevelt, now worth $15,000 for any snake over 30 feet long and no one has yet claimed 121 00:09:54,460 --> 00:09:56,340 it. 122 00:09:56,340 --> 00:10:03,260 Another controversial animal for which an excellent photograph exists is Lois' monkey. 123 00:10:03,260 --> 00:10:09,420 It was 1920 when from the Maracaibo jungle of Venezuela these four gaunt and desperate 124 00:10:09,420 --> 00:10:15,140 figures emerged, the last remnants of a 20 strong expedition of Europeans who set off 125 00:10:15,140 --> 00:10:19,900 up the Rio Catatumbo three years before. 126 00:10:19,900 --> 00:10:27,620 All the rest had died, victims of fever or of the poisoned arrows of the Motoloni Indians. 127 00:10:27,620 --> 00:10:33,780 But one of them, geologist Dr. Francis De Lois, still had with him one extraordinary picture 128 00:10:33,780 --> 00:10:37,140 which was to divide the zoological world for 50 years. 129 00:10:37,140 --> 00:10:39,860 Could it really be an unknown ape? 130 00:10:39,860 --> 00:10:46,100 Yes, said Georges Montendant, Francis' most eminent zoologist. 131 00:10:46,100 --> 00:10:52,060 But he christened it, Améir anthropoidis Loisie, Lois' ape, though no ape had ever 132 00:10:52,060 --> 00:10:54,900 been known in America. 133 00:10:54,900 --> 00:10:59,500 But his deadly rival across the channel, Sir Arthur Keith, fellow of the Royal Society, 134 00:10:59,500 --> 00:11:02,900 denounced the whole thing as a fraud or a nonsense. 135 00:11:02,900 --> 00:11:08,020 With academic scorn, he quoted De Lois' own account in the Illustrated London News, telling 136 00:11:08,020 --> 00:11:13,420 of two creatures which had attacked De Lois' party by the unorthodox means of defecating 137 00:11:13,420 --> 00:11:17,300 into their hands and throwing their droppings at the foe. 138 00:11:17,300 --> 00:11:23,540 The creature was merely a South American spider monkey, said Sir Arthur, with the tail either 139 00:11:23,540 --> 00:11:25,580 cut off or hidden. 140 00:11:25,580 --> 00:11:29,260 Dr. Montendant was not to be intimidated. 141 00:11:29,260 --> 00:11:34,140 He got his cousin, who worked for Standard Oil in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to send him a standard 142 00:11:34,140 --> 00:11:38,260 petrol tin packing case, as seen in the original photograph. 143 00:11:38,260 --> 00:11:47,420 On this, Montendant placed first a standard spider monkey, and then a standard Frenchman. 144 00:11:47,420 --> 00:11:51,220 Comparisons seemed to make Lois' ape well over four feet tall. 145 00:11:51,220 --> 00:11:55,260 For Montendant, it was convincing proof. 146 00:11:55,260 --> 00:12:00,380 Since that day, no further evidence of a great ape has emerged from South America to vindicate 147 00:12:00,380 --> 00:12:03,900 Dr. Montendant or destroy theories of a hoax. 148 00:12:03,900 --> 00:12:06,660 But the question remains. 149 00:12:06,660 --> 00:12:12,300 Why should a Swiss geologist, not much interested in zoology, his companions dying or being 150 00:12:12,300 --> 00:12:16,540 murdered all around him, be bothered to fake a picture? 151 00:12:16,540 --> 00:12:21,900 For that reason, if for no other, Lois' ape remains a mystery. 152 00:12:21,900 --> 00:12:37,820 But the mystery of the King Cheetah, for 50 years the obsession of white hunters in Southern 153 00:12:37,820 --> 00:12:42,940 Africa, does now seem near a solution. 154 00:12:42,940 --> 00:12:47,620 Paul and Lena Botriel sold everything they had, even their house, in order to pursue 155 00:12:47,700 --> 00:12:54,460 the legend of a beast ferocious and striped, more like a tiger, which ran with the cheetahs. 156 00:12:54,460 --> 00:12:59,780 The normal cheetah we've known of for 5,000 years, and they've been absolutely identical. 157 00:12:59,780 --> 00:13:03,380 The Kubla Khan had a thousand in his kennels. 158 00:13:03,380 --> 00:13:09,060 And many of these great princes and kings have had paintings and walled edgings done, 159 00:13:09,060 --> 00:13:15,300 and they've all shown the cheetah, as we know, the normal spotted cheetah used for hunting. 160 00:13:15,300 --> 00:13:17,700 And there's been no difference for 5,000 years. 161 00:13:17,700 --> 00:13:24,220 And suddenly, in the last 50 years, we've come up with a cheetah, which has these stripes, 162 00:13:24,220 --> 00:13:26,700 and it's completely different. 163 00:13:26,700 --> 00:13:29,220 There are some 26 skins. 164 00:13:29,220 --> 00:13:32,500 And as I say, everyone is absolutely standard. 165 00:13:32,500 --> 00:13:36,780 Stripes here, and the final part of the towel being ringed as with the tiger, which is a 166 00:13:36,780 --> 00:13:41,260 striped cat. 167 00:13:41,260 --> 00:13:47,700 The Botriels hired a balloon to search silently over the bush, until on the Mozambique border, 168 00:13:47,700 --> 00:13:49,580 they cornered their prey. 169 00:13:49,580 --> 00:13:56,180 And it was finally in Kroger Park that we found a live king cheetah that had been there for 170 00:13:56,180 --> 00:13:59,500 a number of years, and no one had really known about it. 171 00:13:59,500 --> 00:14:04,140 Photographed it and filmed it. 172 00:14:04,140 --> 00:14:09,940 This is the only known film of the striped king cheetah, running here with ordinary spotted 173 00:14:09,980 --> 00:14:10,940 cheetahs. 174 00:14:10,940 --> 00:14:29,060 The theories are that it could be a hybrid, or alternatively, it's a mutation, being a 175 00:14:29,060 --> 00:14:35,540 strange pattern thrown up once in every few generations, or thirdly, a species, which in 176 00:14:35,540 --> 00:14:41,780 fact is a voided man, and is living in the area of Rhodesia Mozambique, South Africa 177 00:14:41,780 --> 00:14:50,980 Mozambique. 178 00:14:50,980 --> 00:14:55,740 We could find a completely different species of animal, we don't know, and that in itself 179 00:14:55,740 --> 00:15:00,100 is enough to fight for and try and achieve. 180 00:15:00,100 --> 00:15:06,140 That may be a baby version of the legendary New Guinea dragon, has also been filmed. 181 00:15:06,140 --> 00:15:12,500 It is said to kill dogs and wallabies, and to grow to 20, 30, even 40 feet. 182 00:15:12,500 --> 00:15:18,020 In 1979, a six foot specimen was shot near the river fly, and naturalist, Ian Redman, 183 00:15:18,020 --> 00:15:20,780 determined to look for a full grown dragon. 184 00:15:20,780 --> 00:15:26,500 We were staking out water holes, because the lizard has to come for water every day, and 185 00:15:26,580 --> 00:15:30,980 some of the water holes are in a creek bed, so you're below the level of the forest floor, 186 00:15:30,980 --> 00:15:33,180 in a creek bed, by a pool. 187 00:15:33,180 --> 00:15:38,940 And one day, there were two of us, a few hundred yards apart, I was sitting by one pool, and 188 00:15:38,940 --> 00:15:42,780 another chap by another pool, and I'd been sitting there for several hours, nothing happening, 189 00:15:42,780 --> 00:15:49,180 it was about 10 o'clock in the morning, and I heard these footsteps, it's a forest floor, 190 00:15:49,180 --> 00:15:54,180 so there's lots of dry leaves on the floor, this is quiet, softly scrunching of dry leaves. 191 00:15:54,180 --> 00:15:57,980 Now if you hear a lizard moving through the forest, it's a scurrying sound, it doesn't 192 00:15:57,980 --> 00:16:01,900 sound like footsteps, and I thought it must be, as the other chap coming over, whether 193 00:16:01,900 --> 00:16:05,780 it was playing about and trying to sneak up on me, I didn't know, but it sounded very 194 00:16:05,780 --> 00:16:10,820 stealthy, so I'm sitting down there, and I hear this coming up behind me, and obviously 195 00:16:10,820 --> 00:16:14,140 you decide at some point you've got to have a look. 196 00:16:14,140 --> 00:16:17,500 So as they were getting closer, I thought, well, person or animal, I'm going to see what 197 00:16:17,500 --> 00:16:23,100 it is, so I slowly sat up and looked around, and about 10 feet away, my eyes were about 198 00:16:23,100 --> 00:16:26,860 on the level of the bank, about 10 feet away there was a log, and just over the log was 199 00:16:26,860 --> 00:16:28,260 this great lizard head. 200 00:16:28,260 --> 00:16:32,060 Now I couldn't see the whole body, but I could see that the head and shoulders were a lot, 201 00:16:32,060 --> 00:16:35,900 lot bigger than the one which had been shot, so I went down from the camera again, and 202 00:16:35,900 --> 00:16:42,380 as I went down to get my camera, the lizard moved away. 203 00:16:42,380 --> 00:16:47,260 But the hunt for another of the world's tantalising missing creatures has helped from all the 204 00:16:47,260 --> 00:16:54,380 latest gear that Japanese technology can master. 205 00:16:54,380 --> 00:16:59,820 These Japanese are in Fjordland in the far southwest of New Zealand, looking for the 206 00:16:59,820 --> 00:17:12,820 largest bird that ever lived, the 12 foot high mower. 207 00:17:12,820 --> 00:17:21,460 The moors all over South Island have produced the massive bones of the mower. 208 00:17:21,460 --> 00:17:27,460 Flocs of their skeletons dominate New Zealand's museums. 209 00:17:27,460 --> 00:17:32,180 The mower certainly seems to have been seen as late as 1860, and one witness, Mrs Alice 210 00:17:32,180 --> 00:17:37,020 McKenzie, said she saw one on the sand at Martins Bay in 1883. 211 00:17:37,140 --> 00:17:44,100 It took no notice to me when I came near it, and I got nearer and nearer until I sat down 212 00:17:44,100 --> 00:18:04,780 on the sand behind it, and it was a bluish colour, just a faded, bluish grey colour. 213 00:18:04,780 --> 00:18:09,020 On the structure of the neck and head bones, and with the help of a computer, the Japanese 214 00:18:09,020 --> 00:18:24,020 have ingeniously constructed what they believe may have been the call of the mower. 215 00:18:24,020 --> 00:18:28,740 Armed with the tape and stories that the call has indeed been heard in recent times, they 216 00:18:28,740 --> 00:18:34,740 set off into the forest, hoping for, yet perhaps fearing, a response from a bird that was supposedly 217 00:18:34,740 --> 00:18:48,140 able to split a man's skull with its beak or kill him with a kick. 218 00:18:48,140 --> 00:19:00,260 Sadly there was no reply. 219 00:19:00,260 --> 00:19:06,460 The most puzzling of all the stories of missing animals comes from the snowy regions of Siberia, 220 00:19:06,460 --> 00:19:10,460 the disappearance of the great Harry Mammoth. 221 00:19:10,460 --> 00:19:23,460 Professor Virish Shagun has been on the trail of the Siberian mammoth for 40 years. 222 00:19:23,660 --> 00:19:31,060 When I was camping beside the river Indigirka in Yakutia, it seemed to me that at any moment 223 00:19:31,060 --> 00:19:38,020 from out of the dense undergrowth, the head of a mammoth with its hairy trunk might appear 224 00:19:38,020 --> 00:19:43,380 and wander into one of the clearings among the valleys. 225 00:19:43,380 --> 00:19:48,900 It is ideal mammoth country. 226 00:19:48,900 --> 00:19:54,260 On expeditions to Yakutia in the far north of Siberia, Professor Virish Shagun and other 227 00:19:54,260 --> 00:19:59,780 Soviet scientists have found the tusks and bones of hundreds of thousands of mammoths, 228 00:19:59,780 --> 00:20:04,540 which seem to have died in some sudden catastrophe. 229 00:20:04,540 --> 00:20:09,500 But back in Leningrad, Professor Virish Shagun does have one of the remarkable specimens which 230 00:20:09,500 --> 00:20:16,060 just occasionally emerge from the frozen soil of the tundra, a whole mammoth, fresh frozen 231 00:20:16,220 --> 00:20:19,020 for 10,000 years. 232 00:20:19,020 --> 00:20:23,220 This is the Berasovka mammoth, just as it was found having fallen down a ravine and 233 00:20:23,220 --> 00:20:28,220 been asphyxiated. 234 00:20:28,220 --> 00:20:35,220 Its pelvis was broken and in its mouth there was still a piece of food, a clump of grass 235 00:20:35,220 --> 00:20:38,540 which had not yet been chewed. 236 00:20:38,540 --> 00:20:43,060 There have always been tales that mammoths still live in Siberia. 237 00:20:43,060 --> 00:20:50,540 Then in 1977, some Soviet gold miners found a baby mammoth in almost perfect condition. 238 00:20:50,540 --> 00:20:55,020 Amid great excitement, it was brought back to the Leningrad Museum. 239 00:20:55,020 --> 00:21:02,260 But Professor Virish Shagun is sure it died at least 10,000 years ago. 240 00:21:02,260 --> 00:21:05,100 The mother was killed by hunters. 241 00:21:05,100 --> 00:21:09,100 This baby was wounded by a spear in the right leg. 242 00:21:09,140 --> 00:21:14,420 It managed to get away, but died of starvation. 243 00:21:14,420 --> 00:21:19,380 But the discovery of the baby mammoth has produced a possibility even more exotic than 244 00:21:19,380 --> 00:21:23,300 the thought that the mammoth could be still alive. 245 00:21:23,300 --> 00:21:28,220 Next time a mammoth is found, Russian scientists are going to take some of its frozen body 246 00:21:28,220 --> 00:21:31,180 cells and try to clone it. 247 00:21:31,180 --> 00:21:37,860 That is, grow, as is now theoretically possible, a new living mammoth from the cells of a body 248 00:21:37,860 --> 00:21:41,860 dead but preserved for 10,000 years. 249 00:21:41,860 --> 00:22:10,620 Meanwhile, in the winter gloom of Kennedy Airport, the two intrepid dinosaur hunters 250 00:22:10,620 --> 00:22:12,620 return from their quest in the Congo. 251 00:22:41,620 --> 00:22:50,420 We were looking for eyewitness observers, and we gradually began to zero in on the geographical 252 00:22:50,420 --> 00:22:55,820 part of this area where eyewitness observers were concentrated. 253 00:22:55,820 --> 00:23:00,660 Using that technique, we were able to come to the center of the reports to a place where 254 00:23:00,660 --> 00:23:04,220 actually the animals are alleged to be. 255 00:23:04,220 --> 00:23:08,820 They told us about 1959. 256 00:23:08,820 --> 00:23:14,980 Three of these animals, possibly two, had been coming into Lacteli. 257 00:23:14,980 --> 00:23:17,780 And this had disturbed the fishing of the pygmies. 258 00:23:17,780 --> 00:23:21,740 So the pygmies decided they're going to stop this and started to drive stakes in across 259 00:23:21,740 --> 00:23:24,420 the opening into the lake. 260 00:23:24,420 --> 00:23:28,220 This prevented the animals from coming in, but while it was attempting to get through 261 00:23:28,220 --> 00:23:31,140 the stakes, was speared by the pygmies. 262 00:23:31,140 --> 00:23:34,980 They proceeded to kill the animal and cut it up into slices. 263 00:23:34,980 --> 00:23:40,380 The report from the observer was that it took forever because of the long tail and the long 264 00:23:40,380 --> 00:23:41,380 neck. 265 00:23:41,380 --> 00:23:46,060 They described it as being about 30 feet long with a head and neck, 2 to 3 meters long, 266 00:23:46,060 --> 00:23:51,020 some 6 to 9 feet, looking much like a large snake but attached to a thick body. 267 00:23:51,020 --> 00:23:56,860 What was maddening about it was that with Adi Pena, we were, I would say, about 25 airline 268 00:23:56,860 --> 00:24:03,940 miles from Lacteli, which is one of the places where there might conceivably still be living 269 00:24:03,940 --> 00:24:06,100 specimens of this creature. 270 00:24:06,100 --> 00:24:09,740 We were unable to reach the lake because it would have taken from 2 to 3 days to get into 271 00:24:09,740 --> 00:24:12,420 the lake, a comparable amount of time to march out. 272 00:24:12,420 --> 00:24:16,340 And we would have wanted to stay, you know, some time at the lake. 273 00:24:16,340 --> 00:24:20,220 And we would not have had time to get out of the country before our visas expired. 274 00:24:20,220 --> 00:24:24,380 As we went along and gathered this information, I became more and more convinced that we are 275 00:24:24,380 --> 00:24:26,820 dealing with a real animal. 276 00:24:26,820 --> 00:24:30,580 Animals extinct in a very recent past but still a real animal. 277 00:24:30,580 --> 00:24:35,660 Yet if we believe what the Congolese and the Pygmies told us, the animals are still alive 278 00:24:35,660 --> 00:24:40,660 today in certain parts of the Bay River, which is a tributary of the Liquecuala, perhaps 279 00:24:40,660 --> 00:24:44,060 even in the Liquecuala and perhaps Lake Teli. 280 00:24:44,060 --> 00:24:50,540 We conclude that there is indeed a real animal and that this animal is a species which is 281 00:24:50,540 --> 00:24:52,980 unknown to science in the living form. 282 00:24:52,980 --> 00:24:56,140 So this case remains not proven. 283 00:24:56,140 --> 00:25:01,140 But if our exhausted heroes had been able to get their visas extended, they might have 284 00:25:01,140 --> 00:25:04,220 found what they were looking for. 285 00:25:04,220 --> 00:25:11,620 I think they've given enough evidence to suggest that very large, strange and possibly amazing 286 00:25:11,620 --> 00:25:16,180 creatures may still exist in the remote places of this world. 287 00:25:16,180 --> 00:25:21,100 But while they're protected by jungles and swamps and various African bureaucracies, 288 00:25:21,100 --> 00:25:23,740 they may be safe from detection for a long time to come. 289 00:25:51,100 --> 00:25:59,900 Next week, the Star of Bethlehem and the Canals of Mars.