Category // 8 files

Relict

What if an extinct species had survived? Congo basin dinosaurs, Amazonian giant sloths, Tasmanian thylacines: relicts are the explorers' favourite cryptids — and the most loaded ones, between sincere zoological hope and Western projections onto local traditions.

• Case file Nº057 1909

  Mokele-mbembe

  Relict / 1.34°N 17.15°E

  A water being of Likouala tradition, recast by Westerners as a living dinosaur; every expedition has returned empty-handed.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº059 Années 1900

  Nandi Bear

  Relict / 0.10°N 35.18°E

  Colonial Kenya's night predator; behind the monster, the spotted hyena accounts for most of the file.

  Class 4

• Case file Nº060 1954

  Emela-ntouka

  Relict / 1.35°N 17.46°E

  Congo's one-horned 'killer of elephants', most plausibly a displaced memory of the rhinoceros; no scientist has ever seen it.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº065 1980

  Mbielu-mbielu-mbielu

  Relict / 1.25°N 17.25°E

  A Congo animal said to bear planks on its back, cast as a stegosaur by creationists; the file rests on a few local accounts.

  Class 1

• Case file Nº081 Folklore ancien

  Mapinguari

  Relict / 9.97°S 67.81°W

  Amazonia's reeking forest giant, argued by one zoologist to be a surviving giant ground sloth — never proven.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº082 1847

  Minhocão

  Relict / 27.82°S 50.33°W

  Brazil's giant burrowing 'worm', blamed for huge trenches in the 1800s — reports stopped entirely after 1880.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº084 Folklore ancien

  Giant anaconda

  Relict / 9.70°S 65.36°W

  The anaconda is real; only the extraordinary sizes — Fawcett's 19 metres — have never been backed by a shred of proof.

  Class 2

• Case file Nº093 1936

  Thylacine (alleged survival)

  Relict / 41.05°S 144.95°E

  Officially extinct in 1936, the Tasmanian tiger keeps being reported — hundreds of sightings, no confirmed proof of survival.

  Class 3