EXCLUSIVE: Real LIfe Dinosaur Sighting!

Ever dreamed of seeing a dinosaur in the flesh?  Some people claim dinosaurs still live in remote regions of the world.  The following is a story that came from one of our readers,  Weldon Abbot, M.D., about a frightening encounter he had with young T-Rex many years ago:

I once saw a living dinosaur in the Kalahari Desert just a few miles north of Windhoek in 1949. I was in Cape Town South Africa when I saw in the newspaper that there was an epidemic of bubonic plague in Windhoek.

Read the rest of this exciting story after the jump …

I am a physician and since I had never seen a case of bubonic plague, I took the next plane from Cape Town to Windhoek, I went and met the English physician there who had remained there after the war and who had the cases of bubonic plague in a makeshift hospital there.

Here’s a map of the area for those of a geographic state of mind.

You can see the city that Dr. Weddon is referring to at the center of the map.  Now back to the story:

When I landed in Windhoek it was raining and the locals told me that it was the first time it had rained in seven years. The day after I went to see the cases of bubonic plague I decided to take a hike out into the Kalahari Desert. I hiked for an hour or two north of the small town and while walking in a dry stream bed there suddenly came around a bend in the dry bed  and, about40 yards ahead of me,  stood a dinosaur that looked like a small tyrannosaurus rex.  Same body configuration, shape, rough skin and color. Its mouth was closed so I did not see any teeth. It was about my eighth, about 5′ 8″, I would judge since eye levels were about the same.

Dr. Abbot  may not be aware of this, but modern paleontologists suggest that the tyrannosaurus rex was at least this small or small well into adolescence.  Unlike modern mammals, they didn’t see slow growth over many years, but had a massive growth spurt prior to adulthood.  For more on this theory, click  here.  But now back to our exciting story:

Shocked and surprised, we both froze.   Our eyes fixed on each other.  This must have lasted about 5 seconds.  Then the dinosaur turned and took off up the wade in the direction from which it had come. I went on up to the bend in the dry stream bed and then watched the dinosaur running  for 200 yards and then it turned to the left and disappeared. The locals that I spoke with when I got back to Windhoek had never heard of such a thing around there. The next day I boarded a plane back to Cape Town and did not say anything more to anyone about the incident because the few people that I mentioned it to found the story hard to believe, which is understandable but it remains a true story, nevertheless.

It’s a wonderful story.  And we’re so glad Dr. Abbot  shared it with us.