The Mushkushu of the Ishtar Gate

Willy Lay thought the beast which inspired the Mushkushu of the Ishtar gate might still be out there. Hans Schombirk, the same big game hunter whom Carl Hagenbeck cited in his article, says that he heard about the half dragon half elephant while trying to locate the pygmy hippo in Liberia. The lozy people of western Zambia called the animal Lao, and while in some accounts the whole body was that of a snake, in others it's only the neck and head that are serpentine. They look, at least to the sauropod-obsessed Europeans of the mid 20th century, quite a lot like dinosaurs.