Living dinosaur that appeared in the Kansai Valley

by Richard Freeman

Most cryptozoologists are aware of the highly dubious story of a living dinosaur that appeared in the Rhodesia Herald in 1932. Swedish plantation owner JC Johnson claimed to have encountered a 43-foot Tyrannosaurus rex devouring a rhino in the swamps of the Kasai valley in the Congo. The story was accompanied by an unconvincing photo of what looked like a lizard, badly super-imposed onto a dead rhino.


Picture is (C) copyright to Rhodesia Herald

It showed a second purported Kasai photograph and this one showed not a lizard but a Tyrannosaurus rex. I know nothing about where the picture came from or how old it is but my guess is a modern fake in the style of the petranodon ‘thunderbird’ photo hoax of a few years back.


Picture is (C) copyright to Rhodesia Herald

The Tyrannosaur looks like it’s from some stop motion film. It could be Willis O’Brien’s 1918 movie The Ghost of Slumber Mountain in which a Tyrannosaurus kills and eats a Triceratops, or his 1925 offering The Lost World, which has both Allosaurus and a sequence with a Tyrannosaurs killing a triceratops and a Pteranodon. For my money, though, the creature in the photo looks most like the Tyrannosaur in Irving Yeaworth’s 1960 film Dinosaurus! where a living T-rex terrorises a Caribbean island.

If anyone can identify where the monster in the photo comes from it will be me old mate Alan Frizwell, a true dino-movie freak. Over to you, Alan.