Bigfoot - serious, not follies

[bruto]

Originally posted by LAL


Somehow, I think Chilcutt would have been alert to this possibility. He went in as a sceptic.

He tried to duplicate ridges and failed. He was very thorough.



[/B]

Meldrum is, and it said on the conference thread they were going to inform Chilcutt.


[/B]

I didn't see the show. Was it the one NG did? I suspect he's more careful now. Note my sig line. I e-mailed him about being shown in front of a Snow Walker still, and, modest guy that he is, he didn't even mention who exposed the hoax in his reply.



[/B]

One way that conclusion was reached was by ruling out other possibilities, including imprints of several animals combining to appear to be an imprint of a hominid. Did you see LMS? Swindler and Sarmiento were quite clearly convinced.




[/B]


What show was that on? Did they also say he exposed the hoax or were they trying to insinuate it's all a hoax and paint Meldrum as a gullible fool?



Check the other thread. I even posted information on what qualifies as appeal to authority.
I named several people, including Dr. Swindler, who is a giant in his field, with good credentials in primatology who are taking this seriously.

"2003 International Bigfoot Symposium Keynote Address
By John Green

Most of you will have noticed that I am not Jane Goodall, and you may well be wondering why I have been asked to fill her spot at this symposium. Well, you are missing the obvious. We have the same initials.

That Dr. Goodall has been unable to keep her commitment to speak here is most unfortunate. Her presence might well have focused the attention of the media on the fact, which they have so far largely succeeded in ignoring, that scientists of world-wide reputation are starting to take a serious look at the evidence that humans are not the only bipedal primates on Earth.

That, in my opinion, is the current development that holds the greatest promise for the future of Bigfoot/sasquatch investigation...

It is by no means just Jane Goodall.

In recent years I have had considerable contact with:

George Schaller, director of science for the Wildlife Conservation Society
Esteban Sarmiento, primate specialist at the American Museum of Natural History
Russel Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and chairman of the world-wide Primate Specialist Group
Daris Swindler, author of the atlas of comparative anatomy of man and chimpanzee.
All but Dr. Mittermeier have spent time examining the Skookum cast.

All of them are on our side.

They have all stated, all but one of them publicly, that the evidence already accumulated establishes the case for full scientific participation in getting to the bottom of this matter. Dr. Mittermeier told me that he has long considered taking up the hunt himself--and he told Jeff Meldrum that he would not fear being criticized for doing so, because he and his team have already discovered several other unknown primates.

Dr. Swindler, whom I have known for more than 30 years, has appeared in documentaries on this subject in the past as the obligatory skeptical scientist. Now, after careful examination of the best heel print in the Skookum cast, he has expressed the conviction that it is the heel print of a large unknown primate - and he would be here with us today if his health permitted.

With this high-profile support, and with the increasing number of less eminent but fully-qualified zoologists and physical anthropologists who are already participating at their own expense, the time may well be near when scientific institutions with resources and funding will join us in our search."

http://www.bigfootproject.org/articles/green_keynote.html

One of the posters on the Bigfoot Follies thread seemed to be claiming that scientists taking this seriously have lost all credibility and are "woos" . Another seemed more interested in accusing me of "name dropping" than in checking out what they actually had to say. [/B]

So what we have here, it seems, are five (or maybe four if you discount the one who won't make a statement publicly), who think it would be worthwhile to find out if there actually is a bigfoot - not that they actually think there is from the evidence, but that they think someone ought to find out for sure. Well, it's a start, but not exactly a running start.

I still contend that given the quality of evidence after all this time, a reasonable skeptic has two things to be skeptical of - choose either or both: neither the existence of bigfoot nor the competence of the researchers has been established to my satisfaction.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL
..................................


One of the posters on the Bigfoot Follies thread seemed to be claiming that scientists taking this seriously have lost all credibility and are "woos" . Another seemed more interested in accusing me of "name dropping" than in checking out what they actually had to say.

I did check out what they had to say..

I find nothing more than ( paraphrase )

" It should be looked into .. ( Just not by me .. ) "

If you can point to a line of inquiry by one of your eminent primatologists, that has more substance to it than this, I will gladly acknowledge it.

It is a fallacious appeal to authority, to drop the names of experts, who while well credentialed in related fields, have not done ( nor appear interested in doing ) any research into the topic at hand ..

The other thread has been put out of it's misery.. This one is even more deserving of the same fate.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
I did check out what they had to say..

I find nothing more than ( paraphrase )

" It should be looked into .. ( Just not by me .. ) "

If you can point to a line of inquiry by one of your eminent primatologists, that has more substance to it than this, I will gladly acknowledge it.

It is a fallacious appeal to authority, to drop the names of experts, who while well credentialed in related fields, have not done ( nor appear interested in doing ) any research into the topic at hand
.

Speak of the devil.........I gave you quotes and sources where I could and pointed you to LMS, where you can see some of these people giving their opinions.

Meldrum is engaged in continuing research as a sideline. Fahrenbach has devoted considerable time to it. So has Bindernagle.

May I drop some Indian names for the creatures?

"Native Names for Bigfoot Across North America

Alaska and Canada

Neginla-eh - (Alutiiq Indian/Yukon Indian) - "Wood Man"
Nantiinaq - (Native Americans from the Kenai Peninsula) - Alaska
Nant'ina - (Dena'ina Athabascan Indian) - Alaska
Urayuli - (South West Alaskan Eskimo) - Alaska
Get'qun - (Lake Iliamna Athabascan Indian) - Alaska
Kushtaka - (Southeastern Alaskan Tlingit Indian) - Alaska
Dzonoqua/Tsonaqua - (Kwakwaka'wakw Indian) "Wild Woman of the Woods"
Bukwas - (Kwakwaka'wakw Indian)- "Wild Man of the Woods."
A-hoo-la-huk - (Bristol Bay Yup'ik Indian) - Alaska
The Hairy Man - (Alaskan Athabascan Indian) - Alaska
Big Figure - (Kwakwaka'wakw Indian) [formerly the Kwakiutl]
Gilyuk - (Nelchina Plateau, south of Tyone Lake) - "Big man w/ little hat" - Alaska
Guugiit (Haidah) "Wildman that lives in the woods" Alaska- Prince of Wales
Egeiaks - Alaska

Boqs - Bella Coola Indian
Snanaik - Bella Coola Indian
Goo-tee-khl - Tinglit/Chilkat Indian
See'atco/Kauget - (Coast Salish Indian) - "One who runs and hides"

Sacsquec, Saskehavas, Sasquatch - (Sto:lo Indian) [Coast Salish inhabiting the upper Fraser Valley around Harrison Hot Springs, Hope, and Agassiz, Katzie (Port Hammond), Musqueam (N. Fork of Fraser River), Cowichan and Nanaimo (Vancouver Island)] -British Columbia.

Bushmen - (The Hare Indians) - Canada
Rugaru - (Turtle Mountain Ojibway Indian)
Windago - (Eastern Athabascan Indian)
Kitchi-sabe` (Manitoba) "The great giant or great-footed one"

Washington

Kala'litabiqw - Skagit Valley, Washington
Stick-Shower or Stick Indians - (Yakama/Klickitat/Puyallup/Puget-
Sound/Colville)
Skookum or Skoocoom - (Chinook Indian) - "Evil God of the Woods"
At'at'ahila - (Chinookan Indian)
Yi' dyi' tay - (Nehalem/Tillamook Indian) - "Wild Man"
Xi'lgo - (Nehalem/Tillamook Indian) - "Wild Woman"
Tsiatko - (Puyallup/Nisqually Indian)
Steta'l, Steetathl, Stik - (Puyallup/Nisqually Indian), Puget, Twana (Hood Canal), Quinault (Olympics)
Zamakwas - Lummi (Boundary Bay to Anacortes), Saanich (Straits of Juan de Fuca)
Seahtik or Selatik or Seeahtkoh - (Clallam Indian)
Seat-ka - (Yakama Indian)
Ste-ye-hah-[mah] - (Yakama Indian) - "Spirit hidden under the
cover of the woods", Umatilla, Sahaptin, Molalla
Shadow Indians - (Yakama Indian)
Tah-tah-kle'-ah - (Yakama/Shasta Indian) - "Owl Woman Monster"
Qui-yihahs - (Yakama/Klickitat Indian) - "The five brothers"
Qah-lin-me - (Yakama/Klickitat Indian)
Sne-nah - (Okanogan Indian) - "Owl Women"

California

Omah, Oh-mah-'ah - (Yurok, Klamath)
Olayome - Native Americans near Clear Lake California


Plains Indians

Wetiko - (Cree Indian)
Chiye-tanka - (Lakota [western] Sioux Indian) - "big elder brother"
Chiha-tanka - (Dakota [eastern] Sioux Indian) - "big elder brother"
The Big Man - (Oglala Lakota Sioux Indian)
Ot-ne-yar-heh/Stonish Giants - Iroquois Indian
Yahyahaas - Modoc Indians
The Stone Giants/Stone Coats/Ge-no-sqwa - Seneca Indian
Miitiipi - Kawaiisu Indian
Tso-apittse - Shoshone Indian
T'oylona - Taos Indian - "person big"
Atahsaia - Zuni Indian
Big Hairy Man - (Hopi Indian)
Yanahlgloshi's - Navajo
So'yoko - Hopi Indian
Loo-poo-oi'yes - Miwuk Indian
Stone Giants - Iroquois (now known as the Haudenosaunee)
Chenoo - Abnaki, Passamaquoddy and Micmac
Atshen, Atcen - Montagnai-Naskapi and Tete-de-Boule (Cree)
Stone Giants or Dzoavits - Shoshoni
Witiko, Windigo, Wendigo - Many Algonkian Nations
Spirit/Spirit of the Woods - (Many Native American Indian Tribes)
Free-man - (Various Modern Native American Indian Tribes)"
Native Names for Bigfoot Across North America

Alaska and Canada

Neginla-eh - (Alutiiq Indian/Yukon Indian) - "Wood Man"
Nantiinaq - (Native Americans from the Kenai Peninsula) - Alaska
Nant'ina - (Dena'ina Athabascan Indian) - Alaska
Urayuli - (South West Alaskan Eskimo) - Alaska
Get'qun - (Lake Iliamna Athabascan Indian) - Alaska
Kushtaka - (Southeastern Alaskan Tlingit Indian) - Alaska
Dzonoqua/Tsonaqua - (Kwakwaka'wakw Indian) "Wild Woman of the Woods"
Bukwas - (Kwakwaka'wakw Indian)- "Wild Man of the Woods."
A-hoo-la-huk - (Bristol Bay Yup'ik Indian) - Alaska
The Hairy Man - (Alaskan Athabascan Indian) - Alaska
Big Figure - (Kwakwaka'wakw Indian) [formerly the Kwakiutl]
Gilyuk - (Nelchina Plateau, south of Tyone Lake) - "Big man w/ little hat" - Alaska
Guugiit (Haidah) "Wildman that lives in the woods" Alaska- Prince of Wales
Egeiaks - Alaska

Boqs - Bella Coola Indian
Snanaik - Bella Coola Indian
Goo-tee-khl - Tinglit/Chilkat Indian
See'atco/Kauget - (Coast Salish Indian) - "One who runs and hides"

Sacsquec, Saskehavas, Sasquatch - (Sto:lo Indian) [Coast Salish inhabiting the upper Fraser Valley around Harrison Hot Springs, Hope, and Agassiz, Katzie (Port Hammond), Musqueam (N. Fork of Fraser River), Cowichan and Nanaimo (Vancouver Island)] -British Columbia.

Bushmen - (The Hare Indians) - Canada
Rugaru - (Turtle Mountain Ojibway Indian)
Windago - (Eastern Athabascan Indian)
Kitchi-sabe` (Manitoba) "The great giant or great-footed one"

Washington

Kala'litabiqw - Skagit Valley, Washington
Stick-Shower or Stick Indians - (Yakama/Klickitat/Puyallup/Puget-
Sound/Colville)
Skookum or Skoocoom - (Chinook Indian) - "Evil God of the Woods"
At'at'ahila - (Chinookan Indian)
Yi' dyi' tay - (Nehalem/Tillamook Indian) - "Wild Man"
Xi'lgo - (Nehalem/Tillamook Indian) - "Wild Woman"
Tsiatko - (Puyallup/Nisqually Indian)
Steta'l, Steetathl, Stik - (Puyallup/Nisqually Indian), Puget, Twana (Hood Canal), Quinault (Olympics)
Zamakwas - Lummi (Boundary Bay to Anacortes), Saanich (Straits of Juan de Fuca)
Seahtik or Selatik or Seeahtkoh - (Clallam Indian)
Seat-ka - (Yakama Indian)
Ste-ye-hah-[mah] - (Yakama Indian) - "Spirit hidden under the
cover of the woods", Umatilla, Sahaptin, Molalla
Shadow Indians - (Yakama Indian)
Tah-tah-kle'-ah - (Yakama/Shasta Indian) - "Owl Woman Monster"
Qui-yihahs - (Yakama/Klickitat Indian) - "The five brothers"
Qah-lin-me - (Yakama/Klickitat Indian)
Sne-nah - (Okanogan Indian) - "Owl Women"

California

Omah, Oh-mah-'ah - (Yurok, Klamath)
Olayome - Native Americans near Clear Lake California


Plains Indians

Wetiko - (Cree Indian)
Chiye-tanka - (Lakota [western] Sioux Indian) - "big elder brother"
Chiha-tanka - (Dakota [eastern] Sioux Indian) - "big elder brother"
The Big Man - (Oglala Lakota Sioux Indian)
Ot-ne-yar-heh/Stonish Giants - Iroquois Indian
Yahyahaas - Modoc Indians
The Stone Giants/Stone Coats/Ge-no-sqwa - Seneca Indian
Miitiipi - Kawaiisu Indian
Tso-apittse - Shoshone Indian
T'oylona - Taos Indian - "person big"
Atahsaia - Zuni Indian
Big Hairy Man - (Hopi Indian)
Yanahlgloshi's - Navajo
So'yoko - Hopi Indian
Loo-poo-oi'yes - Miwuk Indian
Stone Giants - Iroquois (now known as the Haudenosaunee)
Chenoo - Abnaki, Passamaquoddy and Micmac
Atshen, Atcen - Montagnai-Naskapi and Tete-de-Boule (Cree)
Stone Giants or Dzoavits - Shoshoni
Witiko, Windigo, Wendigo - Many Algonkian Nations
Spirit/Spirit of the Woods - (Many Native American Indian Tribes)
Free-man - (Various Modern Native American Indian Tribes)

http://www.royalforum.com/article.php?id=46


You might want to read the article (World's Top Experts Conclude Sasquatch Exists;The Royal Forum Investigates)while you're at it.


The other thread has been put out of it's misery.

Oh? Who did that?


This one is even more deserving of the same fate.

I don't see why. I think some of you cynics......I mean, sceptics...... might be able to come up with a few good points if you actually try. Let me know if you need some help with that.

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
So what we have here, it seems, are five (or maybe four if you discount the one who won't make a statement publicly),


Read that again. It doesn't say he wouldn't; it says he hasn't. By process of elimination, it's Dr. Mittermeier, and he's said he wouldn't be afraid to investigate.



who think it would be worthwhile to find out if there actually is a bigfoot - not that they actually think there is from the evidence, but that they think someone ought to find out for sure. Well, it's a start, but not exactly a running start.

I still contend that given the quality of evidence after all this time, a reasonable skeptic has two things to be skeptical of - choose either or both: neither the existence of bigfoot nor the competence of the researchers has been established to my satisfaction.

Read Krantz.

How much evidence are you aware of? What do you find wrong with it? By referring to "a" Bigfoot, you seem to reveal a lack of knowlege on this. There's certainly evidence for a breeding population, and there may be more than one species.

Green is referring to some who took an interest after the Skookum Cast. There have been many more over the years.

Science wants a body, or a big hunk of one. All evidence short of that gets dismissed as "inconclusive".

The "bosh" reaction of many mainstream scientists has not done much to further the effort.

[Skeptical Greg]

An ' opinion ' of someone else's work is not research ..


Still, no research by the respected scientists ( Goodall, Sarmiente, etc.. ) you like to name, in connection with your Bigfoot folklore...



Nothing to see here, move along..

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
An ' opinion ' of someone else's work is not research .

Swindler and Sarmiento examined the Skookum Cast themselves. How is that an "opinion of someone else's work"?


Still, no research by the respected scientists ( Goodall, Sarmiente, etc.. ) you like to name, in connection with your Bigfoot folklore...


Word is Sarmiento wants to look into it when he's finished the Bili Ape project. Goodall's back in Africa. She had to miss the Willow Creek Symposium because of an important meeting with officials. Chimpanzees come first. With no grant money forthcoming, it's asking a bit much to expect a working scientist to drop everything and go into full-time Sasquatch research.

Folklore does not leave footprints.


Nothing to see here, move along..

Nothing you're willing to look at..........

I told you who's been doing research. They just don't happen to be world-famous. I'm glad they've persisted despite baseless ridicule.

I just checked the other thread and posted on it, in fact. Erik's been suspended again and the kids seem to have taken their baseball gloves and gone home.

It is not dead, it's just away.

Now, do you have anything better to do than nitpick over what you perceive as a logical fallacy?

[Hitch]

What do you think listing a bunch of names for Bigfoot proves?

With a few minutes effort i could produce a really long list of names for Santa Claus. Does that make him real?

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL
Swindler and Sarmiento examined the Skookum Cast themselves. How is that an "opinion of someone else's work"?

And I may review the papers they submitted based on that examination, where ?

Word is Sarmiento wants to look into it when he's finished the Bili Ape project. Goodall's back in Africa. She had to miss the Willow Creek Symposium because of an important meeting with officials. Chimpanzees come first. With no grant money forthcoming, it's asking a bit much to expect a working scientist to drop everything and go into full-time Sasquatch research.

Then it might not be too much to ask that you don't bring up her name to support your position..

Folklore does not leave footprints.

Nothing you're willing to look at..........

I told you who's been doing research. They just don't happen to be world-famous. I'm glad they've persisted despite baseless ridicule.

Again, then you might restrict your references to those actually doing research.

I just checked the other thread and posted on it, in fact. Erik's been suspended again and the kids seem to have taken their baseball gloves and gone home.

It is not dead, it's just away.

You missed the point. The thread died, because no one was interested any longer..
I was interested to find you engaging UFO'ers , so I thought I'd drop in and see if there was anything new. There wasn't...

Now, do you have anything better to do than nitpick over what you perceive as a logical fallacy? Nope.. Bye. :w2:

[LAL]

Originally posted by Hitch
What do you think listing a bunch of names for Bigfoot proves?

With a few minutes effort i could produce a really long list of names for Santa Claus. Does that make him real?

I was surprised by how many there are. I'm not trying to prove anything, but it's a pretty interesting article. Perhaps I can induce someone to read it.

For those who think Ray Wallace started the "legend" in 1958, the the lore of the Native Americans might be enlightening.

My favorite comment by one was, "Oh, is the White Man just getting around to that?"

[FFed]

Originally posted by LAL
I was surprised by how many there are. I'm not trying to prove anything, but it's a pretty interesting article. Perhaps I can induce someone to read it.

For those who think Ray Wallace started the "legend" in 1958, the the lore of the Native Americans might be enlightening.

My favorite comment by one was, "Oh, is the White Man just getting around to that?"


In my part of the world we have the legendary lake monter Ogopogo. The native elders from the local indian bands talk about how their parents used to tell them about the lake monster when they were children to keep them from going into the lake by themselves. Scare them so they don't go swimming without an adult around.
It seems reasonable to me how a bush monster story could be created in the same way to keep children from wondering off by themselves. Like the boogeyman.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
Nope.. Bye. :w2:

:w2:

[LAL]

Originally posted by Gorillagator
Not only that LAL, but fake prints are easily differentiated from a real animals tracks by an expert ichnologist, because fake tracks generally are stomped into the snow and leave an uplifted ridge around the track's perimeter, whereas normal walking or even running do not. Besides how is this dude going to make steps five feet apart unless he is more than seven to eight feet tall?

Yep. They're 10' apart running.

Oh, stilts of course. Never mind no marks where the hoaxer fell down and went "boom".

[LAL]

Originally posted by FFed
In my part of the world we have the legendary lake monter Ogopogo. The native elders from the local indian bands talk about how their parents used to tell them about the lake monster when they were children to keep them from going into the lake by themselves. Scare them so they don't go swimming without an adult around.
It seems reasonable to me how a bush monster story could be created in the same way to keep children from wondering off by themselves. Like the boogeyman.

Sure, except that they're seldom portrayed as dangerous, Cannibal Woman notwithstanding.

" How People Were Made

All the birds and animals of the mountains went to Hocheu to make People. Eagle, chief of all the animals, asked each animal how they wanted People to be. Each animal took a turn and said what they had to say.

Fish said, "People should know how to swim, like me, so let them be able to hold their breath and swim very deep."

Hummingbird said, "People should be fast, like me, so let them have good feet and endurance."

Eagle said, "People should be wise, wiser than me, so People will help animals and take care of the Earth."

Turtle said, "People should be able to protect themselves, like me, so lets give them courage and strength."

Lizard said, "People should have fingers, like me, so that People can make baskets, bows and arrows."

Owl said, "People should be good hunters, like me, so give them knowledge and cunning."

Condor said, "People should be different from us, so give them hair, not feathers or fur to keep warm."

Then Coyote said, "People should be just like me, because I am smart and tricky, so have them walk on all fours."

Hairy Man, who had not said anything yet, shook his head and said, "No, People should walk on two legs, like me."

All the other animals agreed with Hairy Man, and Coyote became very angry. He challenged Hairy Man to a race, and they agreed who ever won could decide how People should walk.

They gathered at the waterfall, below Hocheu, to begin the race. Coyote started and took a shortcut. Hairy Man was wiser than Coyote and knew that Coyote would cheat to win and People would have to walk on all fours, so Hairy Man stayed behind and helped Eagle, Condor, and the others to make People. They went back to the rock and drew People, on two legs, on the ground. The animals breathed on them, and People came out of the ground. Hairy Man was very pleased and went to People, but when they saw Hairy Man, they were scared and ran away. That made Hairy Man sad. When Coyote came back and saw what they had done, he was very angry and drew himself on the rock eating the moon (he is called Su! Su! Na). All the other animals drew their pictures on the rock as well, so People would remember them. Hairy Man was sad because People were afraid of him, so he drew himself sad. That is why Hairy Man's picture is crying to this day. That is how people were made.

http://www.bigfootproject.org/articles/mayak_datat.html

[Ashles]

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was[a] on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

6Then God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." 7Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.

9Then God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so. 10And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

11Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so. 12And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13So the evening and the morning were the third day.

14Then God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; 15and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. 16Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. 17God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20Then God said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." 21So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." 23So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind"; and it was so. 25And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

26Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all[b] the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."



Hmmm, my myth disagrees with your myth.

Maybe there's some form of innate problem with quoting myths as evidence for something.

[bruto]

Originally posted by FFed
In my part of the world we have the legendary lake monter Ogopogo. The native elders from the local indian bands talk about how their parents used to tell them about the lake monster when they were children to keep them from going into the lake by themselves. Scare them so they don't go swimming without an adult around.
It seems reasonable to me how a bush monster story could be created in the same way to keep children from wondering off by themselves. Like the boogeyman.

There's a fundamental difference, though. I mean, everyone knows lake monsters are real, right? Right? Aw, come on, it would be so neat if they were real that it must be so! It's just bad luck that nobody with anything better than an instamatic has managed to bag one. Probably a conspiracy of some kind. Same with the extensive underwater research. Some doubter probably fiddled with the side-scan sonar to make it less sensitive.

When I go sailing on Lake Champlain I always take at least a halfway decent camera. If Champ appears, I'll get something that can't be reasonably dismissed as a cormorant! I'll be rich and famous. Unless it turns out that Champ is a shape-shifting alien like sasquatch, of course. If it comes out blurry, that will be a reasonable conclusion, much more plausible than forgetting to focus or something.

[LAL]

Hmmm, my myth disagrees with your myth.

Maybe there's some form of innate problem with quoting myths as evidence for something.

My point was that the legends don't necessarily protray them as monsters to scare children. I feel sorry for Hairy Man.
The pictograph may represent an actual animal.

Notice how kind of mundane the modern "stories" from your area are:

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_county_reports.asp?state=ca-bc


If I were trying to frighten a child, I'd add some menacing gesturing and a gruesome detail or two, such as child-eating.


Parent: "Sasquatches cross the road."
Child: "Big deal."

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
Unless it turns out that Champ is a shape-shifting alien like sasquatch, of course. If it comes out blurry, that will be a reasonable conclusion, much more plausible than forgetting to focus or something.

No one in their right mind thinks Sasquatches are shape-shifting aliens.

[LAL]

Originally posted by BronzeDog
He was suspended (again), last I heard. They're debating whether or not to upgrade that to banning.

I see some of his posts have been removed on Bigfoot Follies. He was getting overboard on his insulting remarks about me. Maybe that's what did it. He can't say he wasn't warned.

[Skeptical Greg]

Hi ! I'm Back ! :w2:

( you keep feeding me )


Originally posted by LAL
My point was that the legends don't necessarily protray them as monsters to scare children. And how would you make that point with the story you chose?

.... Hairy Man was very pleased and went to People, but when they saw Hairy Man, they were scared and ran away.....

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
Hi ! I'm Back ! :w2:

( you keep feeding me )


And how would you make that point with the story you chose?

He didn't do anything to them to make them run away. The story doesn't give his height, but the sight of an 8' hairy hominid seems upsetting to some people even today, strangely.......He seems a gentle beast who cried. Why would such a story be invented to frighten kids? Did you read the article or am I posting all these links in vain?

"Puget Sound tribes shared a knowledge of a race of hairy giants that came down from the mountains to steal salmon from their nets and drying racks. They called these creatures tse-at-ko.

The Indians of the Blue Mountain region of southeastern Washington told of the frightening stiya-hama-tall, smelly, manlike monsters that lurked deep in the mountain forests. The very word Sasquatch is an anglicization of sas-kets, the term used by the Salish-speaking tribes of southwestern British Columbia's lower Fraser River Valley to describe the hairy, manlike giants they believed lived nearby and communicated among themselves with shrill screams and whistles.

Perhaps the earliest recorded mention of Sasquatch can be found in a letter written in April 1840 by the Reverend Elkanah Walker, a Protestant missionary to the Spokane Indians. Preserved today in the archives of the Holland Library on the WSU campus, Walker's letter offers a skeptical but detailed interpretation of the Indians' lore:

...I suppose you will bear with me if I trouble you with a little of their superstition, which has recently come to my knowledge. They believe in the existence of a race of giants which inhabit a certain mountain off to the west of us .... The account that they give of these Giants will in some measure correspond with the Bible account of this race of beings.

They say their track is about a foot and a half long. They will carry two or three beams upon their back at once. They frequently come in the night and steal salmon from their nets and eat them raw. If the people are awake they always know when they are coming
very near, by their strong smell, which is most intolerable. It is not uncommon for them to come in the night and give three whistles and then the stones will begin to hit their houses. The people believe that they are still troubled with their nocturnal visits. We need the prayers of the church at home ..."

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/bigfootlives.htm

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

Somehow, I think Chilcutt would have been alert to this possibility.

What is Chilcutt's response to the investigation results as reported here:
http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=11363&st=0&hl=

Was he aware that dermal ridges could be artificially created so easily? This recent investigation seems to point out that dermal ridge appearances may be deceiving.

He [Chilcutt] tried to duplicate ridges and failed

Did he use the same methods, materials and procedures as described in the link above? How many casts has Chilcutt examined after that investigator's findings?

Meldrum is [aware a possible problem exists], and it said on the conference thread they were going to inform Chilcutt.

In other words, Chilcutt was NOT aware of the techniques that can produce 'fake' dermal ridges.

I e-mailed him [Meldrum]...

I too have e-mailed Meldrum concerning his statements and findings on the Skookum cast, and I remain unconvinced it's the butt print of a bigfoot.

One way that conclusion was reached was by ruling out other possibilities, including imprints of several animals combining to appear to be an imprint of a hominid.

I wasn't aware they used other animals in their testing of the imprint. Which animals did they rule out, and how?

Did you see LMS? Swindler and Sarmiento were quite clearly convinced.

No, I have not viewed Legend Meets Science. I am aware that scientists worldwide have been previously convinced of something that later turned out to be untrue, however.

What show was that on? Did they also say he exposed the hoax or were they trying to insinuate it's all a hoax and paint Meldrum as a gullible fool?

Don't honestly remember the name of the show, I caught it only by channel-surfing, so I missed the beginning, and didn't watch it through to the end. They showed the footage and then cut to Meldrum commenting on the footage. He called it "compelling", and I don't believe the show was presenting it as a hoax or that Meldrum was gullible.

I even posted information on what qualifies as appeal to authority.

Then you must understand that using Goodall to support your argument is an appeal to authority.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

An appeal to authority is a type of argument in logic also known as argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it, where an unsupported assertion depends on the asserter's credibility). It is one method of obtaining propositional knowledge and is often a logical fallacy...Sometimes, an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. This is the case when a person[LAL] presenting a position on a subject[Bigfoot] mentions some authority who also holds that position[Goodall], but who is not an authority in that area.

They have all stated, all but one of them publicly, that the evidence already accumulated establishes the case for full scientific participation in getting to the bottom of this matter.

That's quite different from claiming that the Skookum cast is evidential proof of bigfoot. If the Skookum cast leads to further investigation into the phenomenon, that's well and good, but believing the cast is the Holy Grail of bigfootdom is not warranted.

Another seemed more interested in accusing me of "name dropping" than in checking out what they actually had to say.

I only commented on the 'name-dropping' after you used Goodall in what appeared to be an attempt to defend name-dropping. I was not referring to any of the other scientists you had named. (Though I fail to see how ANY of them could be classified as 'authorities' on bigfoot.)

RayG

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
Is she known from several jawbones and a thousand teeth?

What bigfoot jawbones and teeth do you mean? Some have speculated that bigfoot is a living example of the Gigantopithecus, or at least a living relative. There's no conclusive evidence to support that speculation however.

RayG

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
.

May I drop some Indian names for the creatures?

Not sure how that shows evidential proof of bigfoot. If you visit http://www.godchecker.com/ you'll see their "encyclopedia currently features over 2,100 deities", but that doesn't prove they exist.

http://www.royalforum.com/article.php?id=46

You might want to read the article (World's Top Experts Conclude Sasquatch Exists;The Royal Forum Investigates)while you're at it.

Experts at what? Another bigfoot article on that same website was authored by:

Sharon Eby is a single mother of three children, with a genetic background of Anglo-Saxon-Celtic/Native American (1/5 Cherokee/Choctaw). She is the West Regional Leader for the Texas Bigfoot Research Center (TBRC) and also does independent research on Bigfoot, UFO’s (also as a Saber “Dream Team” Member with Derrel Sims), alleged alien abductions, the paranormal, esoteric, and human spirituality. Her website is www.unifiedworlds.com and she more recently has returned to college to take courses in geology and anthropology to study our earth and human origins, and volunteers at SaveTheChimps.org. She owns her own solar energy business; implements contracted work in Office Management, and writes and speaks publicly on all topics ranging from her personal experiences, abductions and UFO’s, Bigfoot, Earth Lights (Marfa Lights), and more.

Sounds like she has a lot more on her plate than just bigfoot.

RayG

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL


Read Krantz.

I have. His book is sitting less than 10' from my computer.

Green is referring to some who took an interest after the Skookum Cast. There have been many more over the years.

If you mean scientists, I don't believe there have been many more, there've been a few more, but not many. That's unfortunate, I say the more scientists that have an opportunity to examine the cast, the better.

Science wants a body, or a big hunk of one. All evidence short of that gets dismissed as "inconclusive".

Exactly. What YOU accept as evidence for an undiscovered species differs from what science will accept.

RayG

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL
He didn't do anything to them to make them run away. The story doesn't give his height, but the sight of an 8' hairy hominid seems upsetting to some people even today,


Uhhh, what 8' hairy hominid would that be ?

Or did you mean " the thought of an 8' hairy hominid " ?



strangely.......He seems a gentle beast who cried.


If he " seems a gentle beast who cried ", then why were they " .... scared and ran away..... " ?

Besides, if one reads further into your source, it really contradicts the point you were trying to make in refuting FFed 's ' boogey man ' analogy ...
Children are cautioned not to make fun of his picture on the painted rock or play around that place because he would hear you and come after you.

Parents warned their children, "You are going to meet him on the road if you stay out too late at night." The children have learned always to come home early.

Thanks for the snack..

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
What is Chilcutt's response to the investigation results as reported here:
http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=11363&st=0&hl=

Was he aware that dermal ridges could be artificially created so easily? This recent investigation seems to point out that dermal ridge appearances may be deceiving.

Did he use the same methods, materials and procedures as described in the link above? How many casts has Chilcutt examined after that investigator's findings?

In other words, Chilcutt was NOT aware of the techniques that can produce 'fake' dermal ridges.

Anyone familiar with casting should be aware of the possibility of artifacts. I'm not certain which casts Chilcutt found compelling, but at least one was not that one. I don't know if he knew about the conditions on that particular cast. Perhaps more information will be forthcoming on BFF.

Napier thought the bunionettes on the right Bossburg track cast were an artifact. He may not have seen photos of the prints at the time.


I too have e-mailed Meldrum concerning his statements and findings on the Skookum cast, and I remain unconvinced it's the butt print of a bigfoot.

I didn't ask him about that. Does he have plans to publish on it, do you know?
I know you're unconvinced. What other explanation do you have to offer?


I wasn't aware they used other animals in their testing of the imprint. Which animals did they rule out, and how?

Elk, bear, coyote......there were traces of them but the print was altogether different. I don't know the exact methods used, but I'll see what I can find. There's a mention of elk below and why that doesn't work.



No, I have not viewed Legend Meets Science. I am aware that scientists worldwide have been previously convinced of something that later turned out to be untrue, however.

I suggest you do. The close-up of the heel print Swindler examines clearly shows the tendon of Achilles.

Don't drag in Piltdown Man, please.


Don't honestly remember the name of the show, I caught it only by channel-surfing, so I missed the beginning, and didn't watch it through to the end. They showed the footage and then cut to Meldrum commenting on the footage. He called it "compelling", and I don't believe the show was presenting it as a hoax or that Meldrum was gullible.

If you only saw part of it, how do you know what the overall tone was?

NG did one recently. They had a woman on who claimed to have been raised by Bigfeet. I suppose that was some kind of balanced reporting. I haven't seen it, but a cyber-friend's wife, who has a degree in anthropology, changed her tune after seeing BH in the Morris suit. She's now more inclined to accept the film as authentic.


Then you must understand that using Goodall to support your argument is an appeal to authority.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority



Read the other thread, please. I even mentioned she hasn't done the research.

It's rather difficult to find an expert in "Bigfootology" when there's no such field. Primatology is close enough for me.

I mentioned Goodall among others and posted a link to her introduction to the Willow Creek Symposium. I've never presented her as an authority on Sasquatches, only as someone with standing who has looked into it to some extent for thirty years who believes they exist. Posters kind of latched on to her, presumably because they'd never heard of any of the others.

You've seen this?

"Sunday, January 05, 2003

Bigfoot Believers: Legitimate scientific study of legend gains backing of top primate experts

By Theo Stein
Denver Post



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday, January 05, 2003 - EDMONDS, Wash. - After enduring decades of ridicule, Bigfoot researchers are enjoying support from some of the world's most respected scientists in their efforts to prove the hulking creatures of legend are no myth.

The persistence of reported sightings of Bigfoot-type creatures in North America and elsewhere has convinced leading researchers on primates - including Jane Goodall, made famous by her studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania - to call for something never seriously considered before: a legitimate scientific study to determine whether the greatest apes that ever lived persist in the world's moist mountainous regions.

Skeptics, who include those in the scientific mainstream, scoff at such ideas. They say reported Bigfoot encounters, tracks and other evidence are either hoaxes or mistakes, and that people who believe such nonsense are soft-headed.

But dedicated amateurs and a smattering of professionals are trying to change that attitude. Using accepted scientific methods, they believe they can show at least some of the claimed evidence for Bigfoot - footprints, hair, voice recordings and a 400-pound block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast - are authentic traces of a rare giant primate.

Recently they have received support from a handful of the field's top experts.

Daris Swindler, for example, is not the typical Bigfoot believer.

When he retired in 1991 after more than 30 years at the University of Washington, Swindler was an acclaimed expert in the arcane study of fossilized primate teeth.

His book, "An Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy," went through several printings and was among the standard references in the field.

So it comes as a surprise to some of his peers that Swindler believes that the Skookum Cast, discovered by amateur Bigfoot researchers in 2000, is a genuine record of a hairy giant that sat down by a mudhole to eat some fruit.

"Daris said that?" asked Russell Ciochon, a prominent paleoanthropologist and professor at the University of Iowa. "He's an important figure. But I still don't think Bigfoot exists in any form."

Mythical giant apes lurk in the traditions of nearly every Native American linguistic group and in legends handed down through the ages from Europe and Asia. Each year, Bigfoot or similar creatures are reported by hundreds of hunters, hikers, motorists and others from central Asia to the central Rockies. But no one has provided the minimum proof required by science: a type specimen or remains that researchers can pick up, measure and argue over.

Nevertheless, Goodall is intrigued.

"People from very different backgrounds and different parts of the world have described very similar creatures behaving in similar ways and uttering some strikingly similar sounds," she said. "As far as I am concerned, the existence of hominids of this sort is a very real probability."

George Schaller, director of science at the Wildlife Conservation Society, has spent 40 years studying rare animals in remote places, including pioneering studies of Central Africa's mountain gorilla, which Western scientists first discovered in 1903.

THE SCIENTISTS:

JANE GOODALL

A world-famous primate researcher and author, she revealed, in studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe National Park, surprising behaviors in humanity's closest living relative. Goodall has won numerous international awards for her contributions to conservation, anthropology and animal welfare. Currently affiliated with Cornell University, she serves as the National Geographic Society's explorer-in-residence.

GEORGE SCHALLER

International science director for the Wildlife ConservationSociety. His pioneering field studies of mountain gorillas setthe research standard later adopted by Goodall and gorillaresearcher Dian Fosse. Schaller's 1963 book, "The Year of theGorilla," debunked popular perceptions of the great ape andreintroduced "King Kong" as a shy, social vegetarian.

Schaller's studies of tigers, lions, snow leopards and pandasalso advanced the knowledge of those endangered mammals.

In 1973, he won the National Book Award for "The SerengetiLion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations," and in 1980 wasawarded the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal for his contributionsto the understanding and conservation of endangered species.During the past decade, he has focused on the little-knownwildlife of Mongolia, Laos and the Tibetan Plateau.

RUSSELL MITTERMEIER

A trained primatologist, herpetologist and biologicalanthropologist, he has discovered five new species of monkey,including two last year. Mittermeier has conducted fieldwork inmore than 20 countries around the tropical world, with specialemphasis on Brazil, Guyana and Madagascar.

Since 1989, Mittermeier has served as president ofConservation International, which has become one of the mostaggressive and effective conservation organizations in the worldduring the last decade. His publications include 10 books andmore than 300 scientific papers and popular articles.

DARIS SWINDLER

Emeritus professor of anthropology at the University ofWashington, Swindler is a leading expert on living and fossilprimate teeth and one of the top primate anatomists in general.His book, "An Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy," has become astandard reference in the field. A forensic anthropologist,Swindler worked on the Ted Bundy and Green River murder casesalong with hundreds of others.

ESTEBAN SARMIENTO

A functional anatomist affiliated with the American Museum ofNatural History, Sarmiento focuses on the skeletons of hominids.In 2001, he participated with George Schaller in a search forCongo's Bili ape, a possible species super-chimp reported bynatives but unknown to Western science. Sarmiento has alsostudied the Cross River gorilla, a critically endangeredsubspecies on the Nigeria-Cameroon border whose population isthought to be numbered in the hundreds. He has taught in theU.S., South Africa and Uganda.


Schaller remains troubled by the fact no Bigfoot remains have been produced, nor have any samples of feces whose DNA can be chemically poked and prodded to unlock the identity of their maker. And he is mindful of hoaxing.

But he, too, considers Bigfoot an open question.

"There have been so many sightings over the years," he said. "Even if you throw out 95 percent of them, there ought to be some explanation for the rest. The same goes for some of these tracks."

"I think a hard-eyed look is absolutely essential," he concludes.

The most common evidence allegedly left by these animals are the footprints: big prints in remote locations, some deeply pressed in sand or gravel firm enough for a grown man to pass without leaving a trace. Some footprints, like those Ray Wallace's family claim he left near Bluff Creek, Calif., in the late 1950s, are hoaxed. Many more are too vague to be conclusive. But a few are so detailed and anatomically accurate that they baffle the experts.

"Either the forgers are spending an awful lot of time on this, or there is reason to give this evidence another look," said primate researcher Esteban Sarmiento of the American Museum of Natural History. "I think a serious scientific inquiry is definitely warranted."

Skeptics argue that large mammals, particularly great apes, simply aren't discovered anymore. Not true, says Russell Mittermeier, vice president of Conservation International, who has co-authored scientific papers describing five new primates.

Since the 1990s there have been several spectacular finds, he said, including the antelope-like spindlehorn from Vietnam and a South American peccary thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago.

"I'm not one to pooh-pooh the potential that these large apes may exist," Mittermeier said. "I guess you could say I'm mildly skeptical but guardedly optimistic. Whoever does find it will have the discovery of the century."

Words of encouragement like these are music to Bigfoot researchers' ears.

"My whole motivation has not been to convince anybody of the existence of the animal, but to convince them that there's a body of evidence begging for further consideration," said Idaho State University professor Jeff Meldrum, whose expertise in primate locomotion led him to become one of the few academics openly researching Bigfoot tracks.

"This is immense," said author John Green, who has tracked Bigfoot reports for almost half a century from British Columbia and investigated some of the most famous sightings and track finds. "The possibility that there could be a real animal behind it just didn't occur to scientists 20 years ago."

The flap over recent claims of Bigfoot hoaxing has not deterred Swindler. But the lack of a body plus the acknowledgment of at least some hoaxing adds up to too many questions for Ciochon.

Like that of Swindler, Ciochon's work focuses on fossilized primate teeth, but of a very special species: Gigantopithecus blacki, the giant Asian ape of the Miocene epoch, which lasted from about 24 million to 5 million years ago.

Most Bigfoot supporters advance Gigantopithecus, or Giganto for short, as the likely ancestor of Bigfoot, if not the hairy beast itself. It's a tantalizing but entirely unproven link that drives Ciochon to distraction.

Ciochon thinks his study subject, which co-existed with the human ancestor Homo erectus for hundreds of thousands of years, may well be the archetypal inspiration for the "boogeyman" and other nocturnal monsters that populate the traditions of aboriginal cultures from Nepal to North America.

But he vigorously rejects any suggestion that Giganto, which he thinks was a specialized, bamboo-eating vegetarian, could persist today.

And he worries that the hotly contested grants that fund his work overseas may go elsewhere if the stigma of the shambling sasquatch of Native American lore attaches to his study subject.

"My biggest problem is there's no evidence, other than conjectural hair and these footprints, some of which we know are faked," Ciochon said.

"If someone finds a skeleton, I'll be there in a nanosecond," he said. "But that's what it's going to take to get me to change my mind."

"There are so many problems," agrees Swindler, who six years ago told a USA Today reporter to count him among the skeptics.

But as he examines the Skookum Cast on a rainy December afternoon in this Seattle suburb, Swindler points out landmarks in the lumpy landscape: a hairy forearm the size of a small ham, an enormous hairy thigh, an outsized buttock, and a striking impression he feels confident was made by the Achilles tendon and heel of a creature that is not supposed to exist.

"Whatever made this was very well adapted to walking on two feet," he said. "It's not conclusive, but it's consistent with what you'd expect to see if a giant biped sat down in the mud."

Swindler hopes that his assessment of the Skookum Cast, and a Discovery Channel documentary set to air Thursday, will generate support for further research.

The key, Schaller said, will be finding dedicated amateurs willing to spend months or years in the field with cameras. "So far, no one has done that," he said.

It was a group of dedicated amateurs that discovered the Skookum Cast. A team of volunteers from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization had spent two days in Washington state's Gifford Pinchot National Forest, putting out pheromone-basted plastic chips during the day and blasting sasquatch calls at night in an attempt to attract an animal.

On the second night, researchers heard a powerful reply to their broadcasts, said Richard Noll, an aerospace toolmaker who has spent 30 years researching the mystery. The next morning, Noll was stunned to realize that an unusual impression of a large animal on the edge of a mudhole near their camp could have been left by their elusive quarry.

"An elk will gather their feet under them when they get up," he said. "But there are no elk hoofprints in the center of the cast."

Meldrum and Swindler concur there are only two logical explanations for the cast: Bigfoot and elk. And they have also ruled out elk.

John Mionczynski, a wildlife researcher who has spent 30 summers studying bighorn herds in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, has his own reasons for believing in Bigfoot.

On a moonlit summer night in 1972, he backhanded an animal he thought was a bear as it sniffed at a bacon stain in his tent, then watched as the silhouette of a giant, shaggy arm with a broad hand at the end swept toward his tent, collapsing it on him.

"That hand was three times as wide as mine and had an opposed thumb that stuck out as plain as day," Mionczynski said.

He spent the rest of the night huddled by the fire with a revolver in his hand as the creature lobbed pine cones at him from the dark woods behind his tent.

"That pretty much eliminated bears," Mionczynski said.

Mionczynski is working on a contraption of tiny hooks and barbed wire that he intends to place near seasonal foods he thinks sasquatch depend on. He hopes the snare will let him get a DNA sample.

North of Seattle, Noll is collaborating with Owen Caddy, a former Ugandan park ranger who studied chimpanzees in the mid-1990s.

For the last 18 months, they've scoured certain sandbars on a north Cascades river, documenting more than 30 suspected sasquatch footprints they believe were made by a mother and two young. They hope to identify the animals' food sources and travel corridors, then set out a picket line of infrared camera traps.

"I feel the animal is out there, and I don't hedge on that," Caddy said. "I've found physical evidence myself, and I'm confident in my analysis of it.

"Something is making these tracks, and it's not people."




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliographical Information:
Front Page of the Sunday Edition of the Denver Post.
By Theo Stein, Denver Post Environment Writer

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
What bigfoot jawbones and teeth do you mean? Some have speculated that bigfoot is a living example of the Gigantopithecus, or at least a living relative. There's no conclusive evidence to support that speculation however.

RayG

I was referring to Gigantopithecus blacki fossils. It was a joke, son.

Krantz thought Giganto was bipedal due to the width of the jawbone. Napier thought A. robustus could have been the ancsestor. The size is a fit for Giganto and it was an Asian species, but there's nothing below the jaw to establish its mode of locomotion. If it was bipedal, it would certainly be a strong candidate for an ancestor, but many bipedal primate fossils have been discovered since Napier's time.

The ancestry is pretty much up for grabs until there are bones for comparison.

[Skeptical Greg]

I'm still reading your source on indian legends..

http://www.bigfootproject.org/articles/mayak_datat.html

They contradict any notion that Bigfoot is a gentle creature who prefers fruit.

I'ts a scary beast that eats animals and people..


It's hilarious how the source ignores this and comes to the conclusion..:


...Stories and paintings of how the creature looked and behaved are only present in these Native cultures because of direct observation of a flesh and blood creature.


Huh? Stories and paintings of creatures, are proof that they exist/ed ???


:dl:



This is so easy lu, bring us some more.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
I'm still reading your source on indian legends..

http://www.bigfootproject.org/articles/mayak_datat.html

They contradict any notion that Bigfoot is a gentle creature who prefers fruit.


Whoever said that? No one's even made a case for them being vegetarians. They don't seem to be aggressive though. There are very few reports of them actually attacking.


I'ts a scary beast that eats animals and people..


Nope. There was a fear among some they might eat people. They seem to eat everything, actually. There are contemporary accounts of them going for fish.

"This story clearly illustrates that Bigfoot was thought to be nocturnal and mainly stayed in Giant Sequoia groves or forests. His intent was not to come into contact with humans and would only go outside when they were asleep. Since Gayton (1976) already stated that Yokuts stories about animals involved real observed behaviors, and all the behaviors attributed to the other animals in this story are consistent with what we know about those animals, it is logical to assume that Yokuts directly observed Bigfoot behavior and incorporated that behavior into this story."

The stone-throwing is noted in contemporary reports, too.

Many Native people consider them a semi-spiritual being and a sighting is considered a good omen for the tribe.

"........it involved Hairy Man coming to a house, throwing off his hair, becoming a man, and offering a healing power to the Shaman. Hairy Man insisted that the power he gave the Shaman could only be used to cure and not to kill."

The article then goes on to the "evil" aspect and a story where children are warned to stay in at night.
A friend of mine was warned about that, too, in Washington State by a white man a few years ago, because the Sasquatches come out at night. She thought he was nuts, of course.


It's hilarious how the source ignores this and comes to the conclusion..:

Conclusion
To summarize, the following are important points presented in this article:

Hairy Man helped create man and has various other associated stories;
This belief is exemplified by the creation of a pictograph representing Hairy Man, which closely resembles descriptions of Bigfoot (8.5 feet tall; long shaggy hair; sagittal crest; walks on two feet; and large, powerful, human-like body type);
The Hairy Man pictograph was noted and called "Hairy Man" by non-Indians in 1889. It is well documented that the painting has been referred to as Hairy Man since 1889 and continuously to modern times;
Bigfoot behavior is represented in traditional Yokuts stories, including nocturnal hunting, association with Forest environments, wood knocking, whistling, and being an omnivore (animals and plants); and
Bigfoot is in both Yokuts culture and the Penutian language stock, suggesting a very old source story.
The presence of a Bigfoot pictograph and numerous stories in the Yokuts culture is not only unique, but also significant to North American Great Ape research. By analyzing traditional Native knowledge and stories of Bigfoot, it helps establish that this creature was not created by "white culture", but instead is a long-time occupant in these people's lives. Stories and paintings of how the creature looked and behaved are only present in these Native cultures because of direct observation of a flesh and blood creature."


Huh? Stories and paintings of creatures, are proof that they exist/ed ???

Read the last paragraph above.


This is so easy lu, bring us some more.

What's easy? You've already shown you have an ability to quote-mine and misconstrue. You don't really need to go on demonsrating it.

Have you considered a career with the ICR?

[bruto]

If pictographs and folklore constitute viable evidence of a creature's existence, I suggest that we abandon the search for Bigfoot, whose representations are so few and so poor, and fund more research into centaurs and crocodile-headed gods, because there are so many consistent accounts and pictures of them that they MUST be real.

So far what I've seen is an admission by some reputable sounding scientists that the possibility of a bigfoot is not outright preposterous, and deserves a serious look. This is a far cry from saying they think it exists, and it also presupposes that there has not yet been what they would consider a serious look. I still assert that this is means one or both of two things. Either there isn't really a bigfoot or the people doing the looking aren't doing a very good job of it.

[Skeptical Greg]

That story is so full of fallacious reasoning, I don't know where to start, but I'll add to what I've presented so far, later..


I'll start by repeating what I pointed out earlier.

In spite of what the rest of the ' conclusions ' paragraph says, the final sentence is clear..

" Stories and paintings of how the creature looked and behaved are only present in these Native cultures because of direct observation of a flesh and blood creature."

How could the author possibly know this about a 700 - 1200 year old pictograph.

It is an absurd statement, and typical of Bigfoot rationalization..

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

I didn't ask him about that. Does he have plans to publish on it, do you know?

No, I don't know. I regret I didn't save the email exchange between us. After I queried him about any close scientific examination of the cast being written up in scientific journals, he never replied.

I know you're unconvinced. What other explanation do you have to offer?

Yes I'm unconvinced. It will take more than speculation about squatch butts to convince me too. Squatch was never witnessed sitting in the mud, nor were any clear tracks found. No visualization took place, the fruit was never proven to have been chewed by bigfoot, and I've not heard of any definitive identification of sasquatch hairs found embedded in the cast.

Don't drag in Piltdown Man, please.

I never mentioned Piltdown Man. I was actually thinking of many other instances in which scientists have been proven wrong. Rene Blondlot for example, and the fiasco concerning N-Rays.

From: http://www.rexresearch.com/blondlot/nrays.htm
Some 120 scientists published almost 300 articles on the topic during the years 1903-1906, and the original discoverer himself published 26 articles and a book (Ref. 1) before halting, while one of his colleagues published no fewer than 38 reports in the same three-year period -- all on "rays" which have never since been observed.

If you only saw part of it, how do you know what the overall tone was?

The part I DID see did not paint Meldrum as gullible or a loon or anything. The show was presenting unexplained mysteries, and seemed to be doing so in a 'factual' manner.

Read the other thread, please. I even mentioned she hasn't done the research.

It's rather difficult to find an expert in "Bigfootology" when there's no such field. Primatology is close enough for me.

I mentioned Goodall among others and posted a link to her introduction to the Willow Creek Symposium. I've never presented her as an authority on Sasquatches, only as someone with standing who has looked into it to some extent for thirty years who believes they exist. Posters kind of latched on to her, presumably because they'd never heard of any of the others.

She may have an opinion on bigfoot, but I'm not aware of ANY research conducted by Goodall into the bigfoot phenomenon. If she has, I'm not aware of it and will gladly remove my foot from mouth to eat crow if proven wrong. Her opinion carries no more weight than the next person who has never investigated the evidence for or against bigfoot.

You've seen this?

"Sunday, January 05, 2003

Bigfoot Believers: Legitimate scientific study of legend gains backing of top primate experts

By Theo Stein
Denver Post

Yes, I have. I've been following the bigfoot mystery for over 20 years, and though I can't profess to be aware of ALL that's been written concerning bigfoot, I have read that particular article.

RayG

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

If I were trying to frighten a child, I'd add some menacing gesturing and a gruesome detail or two, such as child-eating.


You mean like the Windigo (Wendigo, Windego, Wetiko, Windago, Windikouk)? ;)

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
If pictographs and folklore constitute viable evidence of a creature's existence, I suggest that we abandon the search for Bigfoot, whose representations are so few and so poor, and fund more research into centaurs and crocodile-headed gods, because there are so many consistent accounts and pictures of them that they MUST be real.

So far what I've seen is an admission by some reputable sounding scientists that the possibility of a bigfoot is not outright preposterous, and deserves a serious look. This is a far cry from saying they think it exists, and it also presupposes that there has not yet been what they would consider a serious look. I still assert that this is means one or both of two things. Either there isn't really a bigfoot or the people doing the looking aren't doing a very good job of it.

Are you aware of how much physical evidence there is? No one's relying on pictographs as evidence, but since Sasquatches seem to be a wide-ranging species, it's quite possible that legends from the Native people may be based on a real animal just as stories of Raven and Coyote are. Note the descriptions of the behavior and compare with contempory accounts from B.C.

"The Sasquatch is part of the Coastal Salish people’s beliefs—the term is actually derived from the Salish “se’sxac,” which means “wild men.” This makes sense since the Salish would never have been exposed to a monkey or any other primate to better associate a humanoid animal with hands, human-like footprints, and the ability to walk on two feet. Otherwise, the closest primates are the small new world monkeys of Central America. To the coastal First Nations people, the Sasquatch was considered an animal—like a cougar, bear or wolverine."

http://www.martlet.ca/archives/040916/feature.html


There hasn't been a full-scale scientific investigation yet.

John Green has spent about 40 years trying to get scientists to take a serious look. Some have. Napier reached the conclusion they exist and so stated. Krantz was as certain as he was of sunrises and sunsets. Meldrum does field work and has examined tracks in situ five times. Swindler reversed thirty years of scepticism. Don't take the cautious language of science as uncertainty.

"“Because of the sort of taboo nature of this animal, most sightings do not become reports, and most people don’t know where to report them anyway,” he explained. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Bindernagle said that it won’t be long before indisputable evidence is found.

“What we’re going to need is a road kill or the actual carcass,” he said. “In the meantime, we have so much evidence—tracks and eyewitness accounts—the problem is to get other scientists to look at this evidence, but they won’t even address it.”

Most scientists, he said, refuse to engage the evidence found thus far, instead relying on mainstream media and tabloid reports that are done without scientific consultation.

“We have a real problem with a non-human primate existing anywhere in North America. It’s too bizarre for us; it’s too bizarre for scientists,” he said. “This is what keeps me going. [People who report sightings] are not idiots, but they’re being treated as idiots.”

http://www.martlet.ca/archives/040916/feature.html


There are really very few people actually out looking. Most encounters are quite accidental. Nevertheless, the BFRO receives several reports a day.

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
You mean like the Windigo (Wendigo, Windego, Wetiko, Windago, Windikouk)? ;)

RayG
They eat Indians. What the heck, Coyote ate the moon.

I'm not finding the rest of Walker's letter but I seem to remember it mentioned child-stealing. The mountain may have been St. Helens.

There was competition with them on the Coast over the clams, so perhaps the Coast tribes had more direct contact with them and more reason to fear them.

I remember being, um, startled, when Cannibal Woman burst into Don Smith's longhouse north of Portland and swiped his granddaughter. The kids were screaming. I always wondered why he didn't have a Kwakiutl name.

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
No, I don't know. I regret I didn't save the email exchange between us. After I queried him about any close scientific examination of the cast being written up in scientific journals, he never replied.



Yes I'm unconvinced. It will take more than speculation about squatch butts to convince me too. Squatch was never witnessed sitting in the mud, nor were any clear tracks found. No visualization took place, the fruit was never proven to have been chewed by bigfoot, and I've not heard of any definitive identification of sasquatch hairs found embedded in the cast.


Since there's no indisputable sample of hair known without a doubt to have come from a Sasquatch for comparison, the best that could be done was "unknown primate", and yes, that's how hairs found embedded were identified.

If MM and co. had watched it sit down, do you think they would have been believed?




I never mentioned Piltdown Man. I was actually thinking of many other instances in which scientists have been proven wrong. Rene Blondlot for example, and the fiasco concerning N-Rays.

From: http://www.rexresearch.com/blondlot/nrays.htm



I was on Creationism vs. Evolution boards too long, I guess. First it's "If man evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" then the Lady Hope Hoax, then Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man..............ARGHHHHHHHHGGGGGGRGH.




The part I DID see did not paint Meldrum as gullible or a loon or anything. The show was presenting unexplained mysteries, and seemed to be doing so in a 'factual' manner.



Good. I'd like to see it. Let me know if you remember more.



She may have an opinion on bigfoot, but I'm not aware of ANY research conducted by Goodall into the bigfoot phenomenon. If she has, I'm not aware of it and will gladly remove my foot from mouth to eat crow if proven wrong. Her opinion carries no more weight than the next person who has never investigated the evidence for or against bigfoot.




She's read every book she could find on it over thirty years and been photographed with Dr. Bindernagle at a conference. That puts her a conference up on me, anyway. ;)




Yes, I have. I've been following the bigfoot mystery for over 20 years, and though I can't profess to be aware of ALL that's been written concerning bigfoot, I have read that particular article.

RayG ;)

Green said AP wouldn't pick it up; it never got farther than Denver. A Waynesville preacher made national news for getting 9 members of East Baptist ousted for voting for Kerry. Go figure.

"BIP: How about hoaxers in general. Do they do any damage to the public's perception of bigfoot?

JG: Well, the media reaction certainly does. We've gone over the years through a phase where anything about this was news to where anyone who was doing something about it was news to where the only news nowadays is when people claim to have proven it's all a hoax.

BIP: Yes, I was going to ask you about that -


JG: Oh, I missed one phase. There was a phase there when any scientist who showed an interest was news. We've now reached the extreme where some of the world's very top people in the relevant fields are very interested and are saying publicly that there should be proper investigation and this is not news. The only thing that's news is that the whole thing has proved to be a fake. The demonstration of that is very clear when this absolute nonsense story about Ray Wallace faking all the foot prints went all around the world in exactly the same time period the Denver Post ran a major article and sidebars on these key scientists who were saying it should be investigated, the Associated Press wouldn't even carry the story. It never went anywhere beyond Denver. To me as a newspaper man, this is absolutely shocking. I tried to contact some of those at Columbia University's long-established graduate school of journalism who keep a tab on the press and the response was, "Nobody here is interested in taking this up." In other words, for 40 years we've been butting our heads against a barrier manned by the scientists saying there can't be any such thing. Now they're stepping away from the ramparts and the media is stepping up to take their place. Absolutely fascinating. The media is seeing to it that this heresy does not get to the public.

BIP: It seems to be the case when you can bet that someone who has bigfoot living up in that attic would get more press than something like the Skookum cast would.

JG: Well...

BIP: They seem to want to relegate this to the tabloids and that's where the story stays.

JG: For example, right now, we have the proof - absolute and indisputable - that the Patterson film is genuine. The newspapers refuse to carry anything of that. It can't be sold so therefore they're not going to be taken in therefore they're not going to run the story. As a result of this silly book where people are claiming that they were involved in making the film we've gone back to looking at the film and realize that, although you can't establish beyond dispute the size of anything, you can establish the relative size of things that are right there in the same film frame. This creature has an intermembral index - the comparison of the length of the arms to the length of the legs - that is totally outside the human range so it cannot be a human in a suit, but it is also totally outside the range of any other known primate of any size at all. Therefore, it has to be an unknown primate. This can only be ignored, it cannot be argued against. All you can do is say, "Well, you can't measure properly on the film." Well, you can't measure precisely, but the different is so slight that it doesn't matter. The human intermembral index is around 70, all of the great apes are over 100, this thing is in the high 80's. The question of the angle of this segment of the arm to the camera and so on, if you look at enough frames, you've got to be able to get to it. And on top of that, we have a forensic animator who worked on the "Legend Meets Science" DVD. He says that they established beyond any question the relative length of where the joints were as the thing was moving and the intermembral index was pretty close to 90. This is a man who says when he was hired to work on the film he took it for granted it was a man in a suit. "

http://www.bigfootproject.org/interviews/john_green.html

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
That story is so full of fallacious reasoning, I don't know where to start, but I'll add to what I've presented so far, later..


I'll start by repeating what I pointed out earlier.

In spite of what the rest of the ' conclusions ' paragraph says, the final sentence is clear..

" Stories and paintings of how the creature looked and behaved are only present in these Native cultures because of direct observation of a flesh and blood creature."

How could the author possibly know this about a 700 - 1200 year old pictograph.

It is an absurd statement, and typical of Bigfoot rationalization..

Explain how the descriptions could be so similar between B.C. and California. Why the match between ancient stories and contemporary accounts? How could a tribe possibly know about giant hairy hominids 700-1200 ago?

So, we have US Forest Service Archeologist saying, in effect, the creatures are real, and you think her reasoning is fallacious because she doesn't share your forgone conclusions.

Oh.

[bruto]

Well, all I can say is that the sasquatches seem to be smarter than the people out looking for them. No resources, no technology, but they just seem to slip away. If they ever do catch one I hope they hire it as a cryptozoologist, and maybe it can help us bag a lake monster or two. We're not having much luck on that front either.

So if they used to fight the indians over clams, what are they doing for clams these days. Maybe it's time to buy a decent camera and a sack of clams and hunker down.

You know, if you ever did get a really good picture of one, you'd be rich and famous. It's a great opportunity, and from the sound of it, all the woo-woos are asleep at the switch!

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
Well, all I can say is that the sasquatches seem to be smarter than the people out looking for them. No resources, no technology, but they just seem to slip away. If they ever do catch one I hope they hire it as a cryptozoologist, and maybe it can help us bag a lake monster or two. We're not having much luck on that front either.

So if they used to fight the indians over clams, what are they doing for clams these days. Maybe it's time to buy a decent camera and a sack of clams and hunker down.



No one said they fought the Indians over clams. There was an account of two villages moving because of them going after the clams.
A report from Canada had something lobbing rocks at people on a wild beach (bears don't do that). They may do what they've always done for clams........gone after them. NW cost beaches aren't like Florida. Been to the Olympic Peninsula? The cliffs drop straight to the sand and there's plenty of virgin forest for cover. An army of Sasquatches could go for the razorbacks at night and never be seen.


You know, if you ever did get a really good picture of one, you'd be rich and famous. It's a great opportunity, and from the sound of it, all the woo-woos are asleep at the switch!

Drop the derogatory term, please. You really have no right to categorize people whose efforts you know nothing about. For an idea of the perils, please read this thread:

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?act=ST&f=21&t=1913

Note what happened to the trees.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL
Explain how the descriptions could be so similar between B.C. and California. Why the match between ancient stories and contemporary accounts? How could a tribe possibly know about giant hairy hominids 700-1200 ago?

Explain how the description of dragons could be so similar between China and Great Britain. The pictures are certainly a lot better.. They must be real..


So, we have US Forest Service Archeologist saying, in effect, the creatures are real, and you think her reasoning is fallacious because she doesn't share your forgone conclusions.

Oh. With no tangable evidence, why is her reasoning any more valid than anyone else's. Her saying it's real, under the circumstances, is enough reason to dismiss her opinion entirely.. Just another UFO'er.. ( Unidentified Furry Object )

Those pictographs don't prove anything. In case you didn't notice, they are very vague..

They are only a Sasquatch in the eyes of someone who wants them to be.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
Explain how the description of dragons could be so similar between China and Great Britain. The pictures are certainly a lot better.. They must be real..


Dragons and other mythical beasts such as the Cyclops may have been inspired by fossils. China's a treasure trove of dinosaur fossils. I'd have to do some reseach on dragons to find out when they showed up in England and whether they were inspired by Chinese depictions. Or do you have this information?


With no tangable evidence, why is her reasoning any more valid than anyone else's. Her saying it's real, under the circumstances, is enough reason to dismiss her opinion entirely.. Just another UFO'er.. ( Unidentified Furry Object )

It's much easier to dismiss your opinion entirely, for the reasons you give.
All theories start with conjecture. It's an interesting article. Hopefully some unseen lurker will appreciate it more than you do.


Those pictographs don't prove anything. In case you didn't notice, they are very vague..

And very damaged. Pictographs are stylized. What other animal would they represent? How realistic are these?

http://www.petroglyphs.us/photographs_pictographs_petroglyphs_baja_norte_cal ifornia_BC.htm


They are only a Sasquatch in the eyes of someone who wants them to be.

They are of Hairy Man and his family.

[LTC8K6]

I have to ask why anyone would attach a camera to a tree that obviously fell a while ago, let alone why they would do it twice.

Why didn't anyone seriously question the story?

Those trees have been on the ground for a long time, imo. So, I will have to dismiss yet another case as an attempted hoax.

For those who did not follow the link posted by LAL referencing trees, a poster claimed that these trees had been pushed over because he had mounted cameras on them.

This is not true, imo. These trees fell many years before, imo.

One other possibility comes to mind. The trees have obviously been dead for a while. It's possible the cameraman himself pushed over the rotten trunks, but I am sticking with my original thoughts, that the trees fell a while ago.

Of course we'd also have to ask why any serious person would attach his cameras to two obviously dead & rotting tree trunks???

http://www.bigfootforums.com/uploads//post-2-1068358761.jpg

http://www.bigfootforums.com/uploads//post-2-1068358828.jpg

[LTC8K6]

damndirtyape Posted: Nov 9 2003, 10:08 AM


Resident Photography Guru


Group: Members
Posts: 1,899
Joined: 14-July 03
Location: Washington
BF Encounter: Not sure



The trees were about 10" in diameter and 50 to 80 feet tall Alders. They were broken from their base below ground about 12". No other trees fell.

When I first got to the site I thought "Oh, Great! Someone stole the cameras." I set them up so I could see the other one from each position, but they were both pointed into the woods along a game trail this time instead of out towards the sand bar. Looking around I discovered them under the two fallen trees. It looked like someone had stolen the whole tree at first until I found the trees and the hole in the ground.

At the site I just thought that the storm had did it but when I got home I started thinking. Why just those two trees that had cameras on them?

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
I have to ask why anyone would attach a camera to a tree that obviously fell a while ago, let alone why they would do it twice.

Why didn't anyone seriously question the story?

Those trees have been on the ground for a long time, imo. So, I will have to dismiss yet another case as an attempted hoax.

For those who did not follow the link posted by LAL referencing trees, a poster claimed that these trees had been pushed over because he had mounted cameras on them.

This is not true, imo. These trees fell many years before, imo.

One other possibility comes to mind. The trees have obviously been dead for a while. It's possible the cameraman himself pushed over the rotten trunks, but I am sticking with my original thoughts, that the trees fell a while ago.

Of course we'd also have to ask why any serious person would attach his cameras to two obviously dead & rotting tree trunks???

http://www.bigfootforums.com/uploads//post-2-1068358761.jpg

http://www.bigfootforums.com/uploads//post-2-1068358828.jpg

What makes you think they were on the ground for a long time? They're very long and heavy. It would it be difficult to get the cameras tied on. One of the posters on the thread mentioned the possibility of rot at the base as a cause of them going over. One has lost bark, but it doesn't look at all rotted in the bare patches. It looks like Red Alder, which gets to 85',with a high crown.

"Wood stain and decay proceed rapidly in cut trees, and logs should be processed soon after harvest unless they are stored in fresh water (43). During intermediate cuts, care must be taken to avoid injuring residual trees; once trees are injured, decay organisms can invade rapidly."


http://forestry.about.com/library/silvics/blsilalrub.htm

Those weren't down long. If they had been, they'd be covered in ground- growing club moss. See that in the pictures, and the leaves. Pretty hard to find tracks in stuff like that.
On my place in Washington I had dead trees standing for many years. There was a spar tree up the hill that had been standing dead at least since logging in the fifties. Saplings would go over part way and then hang caught in the branches of a nearby tree and stay there.

Do you know who set the cameras (that should be easy to figure out - no coaching from the audience)? Why would you leap to a conclusion of a hoax, especially from a false premise? He did not claim something pushed them over; he wondered if that was a possibility. They were broken off 12" below the ground.

He's not only a researcher, he's a very careful and wary one.

Aside from falling trees there's the possibility of someone stealing the cameras.

[LAL]

Okay, no mystery on dragons.

"Some Celtic / Gaelic / Scottish dragons are linked to the Chinese version by way of the first Byzantine Empire. It also shows Aegean influences."

http://www.theserenedragon.net/Tales/England.html

An elephant skull eroding from a cliff is thought to be the basis for the Cyclops. The huge nostril hole was taken for an eye socket, evidently.

[LAL]

Of course we'd also have to ask why any serious person would attach his cameras to two obviously dead & rotting tree trunks???


Because they're there. And they do not appear to be rotting. The diameter on alder is a good size and there are no branches in the way. Doug Firs getting enough sun are well-clothed all the way down. When mature they often have dead branches almost to the ground. Dead trees can be quite sturdy (only one looks dead to me) and I would suspect those just happened to be in a good position for getting shots across the sandbar.

Here's a researcher, who has already been in on a major event, continuing his investigations and attempting to get those clear shots you've all been clammering for, and you apply your usual "distain" and accuse him of pulling a hoax. On whom? People on a message board? Many of them are researchers too.
I'd like to see you join the board and tell that to his face....er, post.

Get real.

[bruto]

So maybe it's just bad luck again - those researchers seem to be plagued by the worst luck on earth - but it looks to me as if both trees are dead. Alders are trash trees and whether they were up or down, dead or alive, they fall down pretty easily. Anyway, from the little information in those photos it looks as if there weren't any other trees available right nearby. This explains the choice, but also suggests that whatever it was that knocked or blew them down was not selecting camera-bearing trees, but just blowing down whatever punky alders were there.

If it's true that sasquatches are smart and wily and observant enough to attack trees that hold cameras (all the while remaining unobserved by those cameras while they do the job), then they are pretty smart indeed, and require a less blundering strategy than has so far been applied. A sasquatch with this much vested interest in foiling investigators might be expected to repeat this behavior. If the researcher obtained three cameras, and left two of them strapped to obvious trees, and concealed the third within a well-designed blind or hole, aimed at the other two cameras, then next time the sasquatch came out on a camera-bashing foray, the hidden camera ought to catch him in the act. If a clear picture of this event were to be obtained, I am willing to bet that many skeptics would be better persuaded both of the existence of the sasquatch and of the competency of the researcher.

Pile up all the fuzzy pictures and near misses and botched opportunities you want, but I continue to maintain that if there's a sasquatch out there, part of the problem of credibility rests on the quality of investigation.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL



They are of Hairy Man and his family.

The dad..

http://www.bigfootproject.org/images/moskowitz%20/fig5.gif


O.K. We'll conclude the straignt lines indicate long hair.. Couldn't possibly be anything else.. Certainly not, if we are going reach the conclusion we have set out to reach..


The Mom..

http://www.bigfootproject.org/images/moskowitz%20/fig7.gif

Not being a trained Bigfootologist, I don't know how we know this is a female, but it looks like she is a rare hairless female Bigfoot, because we have proven that long shaggy hair is always depicted with several straight lines in the shoulder area.


The kid..


http://www.bigfootproject.org/images/moskowitz%20/fig9.gif


It looks like baby Bigfoots might be adopted badgers.. But we can never really know unless we find the diary of the artist..

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
So maybe it's just bad luck again - those researchers seem to be plagued by the worst luck on earth - but it looks to me as if both trees are dead. Alders are trash trees and whether they were up or down, dead or alive, they fall down pretty easily. Anyway, from the little information in those photos it looks as if there weren't any other trees available right nearby. This explains the choice, but also suggests that whatever it was that knocked or blew them down was not selecting camera-bearing trees, but just blowing down whatever punky alders were there.

If it's true that sasquatches are smart and wily and observant enough to attack trees that hold cameras (all the while remaining unobserved by those cameras while they do the job), then they are pretty smart indeed, and require a less blundering strategy than has so far been applied. A sasquatch with this much vested interest in foiling investigators might be expected to repeat this behavior. If the researcher obtained three cameras, and left two of them strapped to obvious trees, and concealed the third within a well-designed blind or hole, aimed at the other two cameras, then next time the sasquatch came out on a camera-bashing foray, the hidden camera ought to catch him in the act. If a clear picture of this event were to be obtained, I am willing to bet that many skeptics would be better persuaded both of the existence of the sasquatch and of the competency of the researcher.

Pile up all the fuzzy pictures and near misses and botched opportunities you want, but I continue to maintain that if there's a sasquatch out there, part of the problem of credibility rests on the quality of investigation.

No one's claiming a Sasquatch knocked the trees down. It seems odd the storm would only blow over the trees with the cameras.

Alders fix nitrogen in the soil and are extremely valuable in a well-managed forest. They're not "trash". They're fast-growing and short-lived, but I don't know how easy they are to blow down. I had a grove of alder that was sturdy as all get-out, but they were in a rather protected spot.

I don't know that anyone on this board is qualified to judge the quality of the investigation. I do know the level of cynicism is such that if an inverstigator makes a typo, it proves Sasquatches don't exist.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
The dad..

http://www.bigfootproject.org/images/moskowitz%20/fig5.gif


O.K. We'll conclude the straignt lines indicate long hair.. Couldn't possibly be anything else.. Certainly not, if we are going reach the conclusion we have set out to reach..


The Mom..

http://www.bigfootproject.org/images/moskowitz%20/fig7.gif

Not being a trained Bigfootologist, I don't know how we know this is a female, but it looks like she is a rare hairless female Bigfoot, because we have proven that long shaggy hair is always depicted with several straight lines in the shoulder area.


The kid..


http://www.bigfootproject.org/images/moskowitz%20/fig9.gif


It looks like baby Bigfoots might be adopted badgers.. But we can never really know unless we find the diary of the artist..

My point, in case you've forgotten, to another poster was that not all Native legends depict them as scary monsters, so the idea that they might just be tales to keep the kids around the campfire doesn't explain it all.

Native people I know accept them as real without question.

[bruto]

Originally posted by LAL
No one's claiming a Sasquatch knocked the trees down. It seems odd the storm would only blow over the trees with the cameras.

Alders fix nitrogen in the soil and are extremely valuable in a well-managed forest. They're not "trash". They're fast-growing and short-lived, but I don't know how easy they are to blow down. I had a grove of alder that was sturdy as all get-out, but they were in a rather protected spot.

I don't know that anyone on this board is qualified to judge the quality of the investigation. I do know the level of cynicism is such that if an inverstigator makes a typo, it proves Sasquatches don't exist.

So if a sasquatch didn't knock down the trees, either there is something really unlikely weird going on or the choice of trees was poor. Are you, after all your attempt to avoid the silliness of far-out explanations, appealing to the supernatural?

I wouldn't ever say alders are ecologically unimportant or worthy of extinction, but they are, as you say, fast growing and short lived, like aspens and box elders, and probably a poor bet for stability especially if they're already looking as punky as the ones in those pictures. Of course if they were the only trees available then the choice is obvious, but then if they were the only trees available, then what is selective about their falling? How much bad luck is it reasonable to expect before you begin to suspect bad technique?

If nobody on this board is qualified to judge the quality of the investigation, then you must count yourself among us. If you were to be consistent you'd withdraw from the thread, since it's obvious you're no more qualified to promote the evidence than I am to question it.

I really hope there is a sasquatch, and would very much like to see serious researchers do a good job of finding out, as I also hope (vainly, I suspect) that there really are lake monsters and that someday someone will get a clear shot at one. Believe me, next time I'm sailing up around Bulwagga Bay, I'm going to have a good fat telephoto lens at the ready! But I think that hope and expectation and denial have led many people to accept a quality of evidence for unknown phenomena that they would never accept in normal life. Seekers of the unexplained seem willing to accept excuses and overlook mistakes, blundering and even occasional frauds, to such an extent that it is hard to take even the more convincing evidence seriously. Could you get a conviction on the forensic quality of those footprints? Would you accept photographic evidence of that quality from a detective or a philandering spouse? Would you even accept some of those hard-luck stories from a student who forgot his homework? I suspect not.

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

Since there's no indisputable sample of hair known without a doubt to have come from a Sasquatch for comparison, the best that could be done was "unknown primate", and yes, that's how hairs found embedded were identified.

Which independent investigator came up with "unknown primate"? Fahrenbach maybe? What is his specific area of scientific expertise? Is he qualified to do hair analysis? Has he samples of ALL North American animals for comparison purposes? (wolverine, moose, etc. etc.) Is Henner considered a hair identification expert outside the field of bigfoot?

The conclusion here:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_6_27/ai_110575770
seems to cast some doubt on the 'unknown primate' conclusion.

Aside from the mud imprint, three samples were subjected to DNA analysis: unidentified hair, saliva from an apple core, and bits of scat. Expert Craig Newton gave the results: the scat turned up nothing usable; "we couldn't conclude anything" from the saliva sample; and the Bigfoot hair sequences were "so human-like as to most likely be contaminants."

There are some claims that microscopic hair analysis is nothing more than junk science. For example,

http://www.law-forensic.com/cfr_hair_10.htm
http://www.law-forensic.com/cfr_hair_15.htm

From http://www.truthinjustice.org/where-justice.htm
Junk science plays a large role in the conviction of innocents. Microscopic hair-comparison evidence has sent many an innocent person to jail. The weakness of hair analysis is well established. For example, it is a known fact that hairs from the same head often do not match. A test of 240 crime labs found error rates in hair analysis of 50 percent, 54 percent, 68 percent and 56 percent. Yet prosecutors desperate for convictions continue to use the junk science of hair comparison to send innocent people to prison.

If MM and co. had watched it sit down, do you think they would have been believed?

If they had dragged back a dead body they would certainly be believed. Supportive evidence, a sighting, tracks, etc. would certainly be better than nothing, which is ultimately what they obtained.

She's read every book she could find on it over thirty years and been photographed with Dr. Bindernagle at a conference. That puts her a conference up on me, anyway. ;)

I too have read just about anything I could find on the subject over the course of about 30+ years. John Bindernagel even sent me a copy of his book about 5 years ago. I admit I've never been to a conference, but I doubt attendance would make me more or less of an authority on bigfoot.

Green said AP wouldn't pick it up; it never got farther than Denver. A Waynesville preacher made national news for getting 9 members of East Baptist ousted for voting for Kerry. Go figure.

No mystery. Preachers and Kerry have actually been proven to exist. I'd be willing to bet the dead body of a bigfoot would make front page news on a national level.

JG: For example, right now, we have the proof - absolute and indisputable - that the Patterson film is genuine.

Absolute and indisputable proof from a subject that stood only 1.66mm tall inside an area measuring 10 mm wide by 7.5 mm tall?

RayG

[RayG]

With regards to rotting trees....

A few years ago, when we still lived in the city of Kingston, a single tree stood at the foot of our lawn. It was pretty thick, but it was obvious it was dead. Because of concern that it might fall over upon my neighbor's car during a bad windstorm, I went out to examine the tree closely. I had some of the kids watching me, my own and neigborhood kids as well. I'm a pretty husky guy, and had always told my own kids that I was the strongest man they would ever meet in their entire lives. So, I placed myself between the tree and my neighbor's driveway, and with a lot of showmanship, and a few moans and groans, proceeded to knock that tree clean over. The look on the kids faces was priceless, and I asked a couple neighborhood kids if THEIR dads could knock over a friggin tree!!

This tree

http://www.bigfootforums.com/uploads//post-2-1068358828.jpg

looks a lot more decayed than did the one I pushed over. Much thinner too.

RayG

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
They eat Indians. What the heck, Coyote ate the moon.


Yup, and coyote also created humans and the Milky Way, and a raven plucked the moon from the sky. That's exactly why I don't accept cave drawings, campfire stories, or totem poles as evidence.

RayG

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL
My point, in case you've forgotten, to another poster was that not all Native legends depict them as scary monsters, so the idea that they might just be tales to keep the kids around the campfire doesn't explain it all.

. And my point, that you ignored, was that the same source you used DID depict them as scary monsters, to make the kids come home early...


Finding the stuff that agrees with your foregone conclusion is called " data mining "..

I have shown that I can use that technigue also, and to use your sources to refute your claims.

That's why scientists use what we call the ' scientific method ' , to eliminate conflicting data..

I'ts a lot different than counting the hits and ignoring the misses.. Which is what some call ' woo ' behavior ..

Sorry if you feel that is a derogatory term, but if the shoe fits...

If I really cared what people who don't know me, think about me, I might be upset by being called a cynic or a sceptic..



Oh.. and as for :
Native people I know accept them as real without question. And the fact that you don't have a problem with that, tells us a lot about where you are coming from..:)

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
So if a sasquatch didn't knock down the trees, either there is something really unlikely weird going on or the choice of trees was poor. Are you, after all your attempt to avoid the silliness of far-out explanations, appealing to the supernatural?


I believe in absolutely nothing supernatural.

The area is being monitored because there are signs of Sasquatch activity, so it's not out of the question the trees were pushed over, but I'd want some kind of confirmation, such as footprints where one stood to push them.

It was odd the storm only knocked over the ones with cameras.



I wouldn't ever say alders are ecologically unimportant or worthy of extinction, but they are, as you say, fast growing and short lived, like aspens and box elders, and probably a poor bet for stability especially if they're already looking as punky as the ones in those pictures. Of course if they were the only trees available then the choice is obvious, but then if they were the only trees available, then what is selective about their falling? How much bad luck is it reasonable to expect before you begin to suspect bad technique?


They don't look punky. If they were rotted they'd be black. I can't see a crown, but the one doesn't look dead. I may bring this up on the thread when I have time.

I wouldn't suspect poor technique from one who has been investigating for thirty years and who helped devise a means to bring one into an area and get some of the best evidence yet. He is extremely intelligent and dedicated and evidently is doing this on his own time and his own dime.


If nobody on this board is qualified to judge the quality of the investigation, then you must count yourself among us. If you were to be consistent you'd withdraw from the thread, since it's obvious you're no more qualified to promote the evidence than I am to question it.


I do count myself among the people not qualified to judge it. Did you see "except me" anywhere? I'm not on the scene and don't know from first-hand examination the condition of those trees, e.g.. I do know western Washington well, though, and from reading, among other things, over 50 pages of the poster's posts and seeing him on film I have a good sense of what kind of person he is. He has my respect.

I'm certainly as qualified to present the evidence as anyone who's been interested in this for over thirty years and who has taken the time to read on it and talk with people who have had experiences. I won't comment on your qualifications.

I don't know how many people view this board, but I was surprised on looking for one of my posts on BFF that some had had a couple of thousand views (there were about 400 members at the time). It would seem there's a fair number of unseen lurkers.
If I can correct some of the misconceptions many people have and counter some of the tabloid view, I'll consider my time on this well spent.



I really hope there is a sasquatch, and would very much like to see serious researchers do a good job of finding out, as I also hope (vainly, I suspect) that there really are lake monsters and that someday someone will get a clear shot at one. Believe me, next time I'm sailing up around Bulwagga Bay, I'm going to have a good fat telephoto lens at the ready! But I think that hope and expectation and denial have led many people to accept a quality of evidence for unknown phenomena that they would never accept in normal life. Seekers of the unexplained seem willing to accept excuses and overlook mistakes, blundering and even occasional frauds, to such an extent that it is hard to take even the more convincing evidence seriously. Could you get a conviction on the forensic quality of those footprints? Would you accept photographic evidence of that quality from a detective or a philandering spouse? Would you even accept some of those hard-luck stories from a student who forgot his homework? I suspect not.

I would like to see funding made available for research and more cooperation from the scientific community.
Which footprints are you referring to? Meldrum has about 150 casts in his collection. I'd hate to see a conviction of hoaxing on the conjecture that evidence was faked with absolutely nothing to support it.

You seem to be generalizing about "seekers of the unexplained". Are you referring to Coleman? Green? Kratz? Ivan T. Sanderson?

As for excuses mistakes, blundering and even occasional frauds, what specifically are you referring to? Let's look at some examples.

To my mind, Ray Wallace's carved feet in no way affect this (and even though every hair can't be seen, is it really that fuzzy?):

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
And my point, that you ignored, was that the same source you used DID depict them as scary monsters, to make the kids come home early...


Finding the stuff that agrees with your foregone conclusion is called " data mining "..

I have shown that I can use that technigue also, and to use your sources to refute your claims.

That's why scientists use what we call the ' scientific method ' , to eliminate conflicting data..

I'ts a lot different than counting the hits and ignoring the misses.. Which is what some call ' woo ' behavior ..

Sorry if you feel that is a derogatory term, but if the shoe fits...


It might if I'd quoted only the part that favored my view and didn't give the link so people could read the whole article. The Hairy Man story is a cool story and I like sharing it. The important thing is that invention of a "boogey man" isn't sufficient to explain it, especially since not all First Nations saw them this way. And there's no evidence the tribes that did view them as scary made up these tales to scare kids. There may have been reasons to fear them if there was competition over a food source or there'd been some aggressive behavior on their part.

Myths don't leave footprints.


If I really cared what people who don't know me, think about me, I might be upset by being called a cynic or a sceptic....


I don't see any need to slap labels and derogatory terms on anyone.



Oh.. and as for :
And the fact that you don't have a problem with that, tells us a lot about where you are coming from..:)

Okay, you've lost me. Elaborate. And who's this "us' you speak for?

I was interested in their view and wanted to know how members of eastern tribes tend to view this. I had opportunity to bring it up at a campout soon after the Nelson Creek sighting and was interested in the opinions, especially since there were Ojibway from Canada there. One fellow went into some detail about his reasons and no one told me any legends or fanciful stories. I wanted to know the Cherokee name for them if any. I wasn't able to find that out. Of course, I haven't questioned all my Cherokee acquaintances about this. I was just at a powwow and the subject never came up.

So tell me, what assumptions have you made about where I'm coming from?

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
Yup, and coyote also created humans and the Milky Way, and a raven plucked the moon from the sky. That's exactly why I don't accept cave drawings, campfire stories, or totem poles as evidence.

RayG

Nor do I, but I find them interesting. We accept that ravens and coyotes are real animals, but if a tale seems to be about Sasquatch or some other large hairy hominid are we to dismiss it out of hand just because it's about a "wildman"?

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
With regards to rotting trees....

RayG

Great! I heard a similar story (involving a chainsaw) from a Cherokee storyteller. He obeyed his dad after that. I liked his retelling of questions he's been asked, such as, "How long have you been an Indian?"

I believe the diameter was given. It doesn't look decayed, it looks dried as though the tree had been standing dead for a long time. Surface rot would be dark brown or black. Dried wood can be quite hard. (Alder's a hardwood. ;) )One of the posters on the thread suggested rot below soilline; I don't know if this was checked out. Wood tends to rot at soilline because of contact with microrganisms in the soil, but these trees were broken off 12" below soilline and found a distance away. Is it possible they were lifted and then heaved?

I was more interested in the blobquatch and the footprint than the trees, actually. I used the the falling trees as an example of perils that can befall cameras, not as evidence of Sasquatch strength and dislike of cameras, but now I'm intrigued. I'll have to follow that thread.

[LAL]

There's a closeup of Red Alder Bark here ( I can't get it to upload). Compare to the downed tree that hasn't lost bark.

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/treebook/redalder.htm

[bruto]

"I wouldn't suspect poor technique from one who has been investigating for thirty years and who helped devise a means to bring one into an area and get some of the best evidence yet. He is extremely intelligent and dedicated and evidently is doing this on his own time and his own dime."

You see, that's just where we differ. Thirty years is a long time to be doing this research, and if he still hasn't come up with more than he apparently has, something is not going well for him. Several obvious choices suggest themselves: incompetence, fraud, the nonexistence of the quarry, or very very bad luck. There is also, of course, the possibility that the quarry is so clever and wary that it has evaded scientific detection for many years, but this would seem to be contradicted by the large quantity of casual and non-scientific sightings, if such sightings are real.

Of course I'm no more qualified to judge than anyone else, but this is an internet forum, not a scientific panel. We're each entitled to our opinion. Yours appears to be that long experience and a reputation for dedication excuse scanty results. Mine is that scanty results trump the reputation and experience.

We see what we want or expect, I guess. That photograph of the fallen tree looks to me, even in the poor compressed version we see here, to be so dead that the bark is falling off, and it is covered with a growth of moss that I would have been surprised to see on any standing tree. It is also pretty well sunk into the ground, more so than I would expect from a freshly fallen tree, especially from a tree that had any kind of top left on it. Judging by that picture alone, I would have said that tree was at least long dead, if not long fallen, and actually to suggest that the choice of that tree for a camera was merely bad judgment is cutting the guy some slack on the basis of his reputation as an honest researcher, because based on that photograph alone I'd have guessed fraud.

Of course you can say that picture is not enough to base a judgment on, which may well be true, but that would be because it's worthless as evidence of anything, pro or con.

I think you can't have it both ways. The longer a researcher goes at it without good results, the more we are reasonably entitled to question either his competence or the exixtence of what he is seeking; the more casual sightings of an unexplained phenomenon, the more damning the lack of hard evidence becomes.

Maybe you should try to convince people that sasquatch has feathers. It took less than a year after a single putative sighting of an ivory billed woodpecker before someone came up with a clear video of the critter.

[Correa Neto]

Bigfoot/sasquatch have the same problems that nessie has:

*A minimum number of specimens is needed to obtain a viable population;
*This would require that at least some pretty good evidence would already have been found (dead specimens - natural causes, hunters, roadkills; good quality pictures - many hunters use remote cams, pictures by pro and amateur nature photographers).

Note also that we are not talking about small-sized animals, like rodents or small deers, neither of uncatalogued species that are morphologically similar to known ones.

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
"I wouldn't suspect poor technique from one who has been investigating for thirty years and who helped devise a means to bring one into an area and get some of the best evidence yet. He is extremely intelligent and dedicated and evidently is doing this on his own time and his own dime."

You see, that's just where we differ. Thirty years is a long time to be doing this research, and if he still hasn't come up with more than he apparently has, something is not going well for him. Several obvious choices suggest themselves: incompetence, fraud, the nonexistence of the quarry, or very very bad luck. There is also, of course, the possibility that the quarry is so clever and wary that it has evaded scientific detection for many years, but this would seem to be contradicted by the large quantity of casual and non-scientific sightings, if such sightings are real.

Why don't you check him out before you go jumping to a lot of conclusions? He's not hard to Google.

It's been pretty easy for the quarry to evade scientific detection since not even the National Geographic has seen fit to send an expedition. Dr. Krantz went out with a graduate student and Meldrum may have too, but that's about the extent of the scientific inquiry.

Primatologists at Yerkes pronounced the Patterson Film authentic, but when the Smithsonian backed off, that was the end of that.


Of course I'm no more qualified to judge than anyone else, but this is an internet forum, not a scientific panel. We're each entitled to our opinion. Yours appears to be that long experience and a reputation for dedication excuse scanty results. Mine is that scanty results trump the reputation and experience.

I don't think the results are scanty. There's nothing to excuse.


We see what we want or expect, I guess. That photograph of the fallen tree looks to me, even in the poor compressed version we see here, to be so dead that the bark is falling off, and it is covered with a growth of moss that I would have been surprised to see on any standing tree. It is also pretty well sunk into the ground, more so than I would expect from a freshly fallen tree, especially from a tree that had any kind of top left on it. Judging by that picture alone, I would have said that tree was at least long dead, if not long fallen, and actually to suggest that the choice of that tree for a camera was merely bad judgment is cutting the guy some slack on the basis of his reputation as an honest researcher, because based on that photograph alone I'd have guessed fraud.


NW ground is spongy where it isn't rock. There'd be some detrius under the club moss and leaves. There are few trees in the western slope of the Cascades that do not have moss growing on them. Tree-climbing club moss grows on living trees, or didn't you know that? It appears to me the moss is pointing away from the camera (could be a trick of the pixels), meaning it was reaching up as it does when the tree was standing. If that's the case the tree was very recently down. Storms uproot living trees as well. Would you have said he used poor judgement in attaching a camera to a living tree and it had been a victim of blow-down? Both trees were living. See below.

Your guess of fraud would be absolutely incorrect.

Here's what happened to another camera:

"The camera used had a fixed focus, plastic lens. The resolution just isn't there. The scan was at 200 dpi. Blowing it up any further except by way of the negative would be very suspect. This camera has since been washed away in a winter storm on the river. Another $150 down the rapids."

Another poster examined the trees:

"I closely examined one of the red alders in question not too long after the photos were taken. There was the beginnings of some rot in the heartwood (as would be found in almost all red alder that age), but it wasn't extensive. About 80-90 % of the wood was solid. I also noticed that the tree had some insect damage just under the bark. Both trees were live and flourishing before their fall.

Looking around the base of the tree (before falling) there were no obvious deep depressions such as a person would have made while setting feet and pushing. Then again maybe I wasn't looking far enough from the base? The ground at the site was/ alternately hard and soft with lots of fern rhizomes and underlaying cobbles, sand, and roots covered by dead leaves. A nearby gametrail network is used by ungulates as well as soft-footed mammals.

I still am puzzled why the trees went down. Could have been the wind... could have be something else. An interesting point that is bothersome is that each tree went down in the direction the camera pointed - but they were different directions on each tree.

Not enough info either way to spend any more time thinking about it."

In fact, if you'd read the thread you'd have found this from the investigator:

"No tracks but there is definately a game trail where the trees fell. Maybe the bear did it to both the trees, smelling them from behind?

Big bear! This is one of my answer's to why I carry in the field, not that a 9mm would help too much here."

He's not only not trying to defraud, he's offering bear as an explanation. Do I hear any apologies?

Also from colobus:

I checked one of the trees carefully over for sign. The portions of the tree exposed were free from sign. Just to clarify... this tree was not rotten structurally. The bark damage extended only a ways below the bark (1/4" or so), and I tested the tree with my Ontario knife in many places. It was sound.



Of course you can say that picture is not enough to base a judgment on, which may well be true, but that would be because it's worthless as evidence of anything, pro or con.

Yep, and it wasn't offered as such either. It was an example of difficulties with camera traps.

Another poster offered this:

"We have found that our camtrakkers were ripped of the trees and scattered through out the forest.The straps and locks broken and torn like they were grabbed and torn off the tree's.The strap that we used are the type that you use on cargo to hold down cars .They were two inches wide and nylon.The straps were just torn and not cut with a knife.One piece of the strap was found down the trail and the other part was found on a branch that was about eight feet off the ground.Foot prints all over the trail and all the same size.Our foot prints look more like they had hair on the soles of the feet but no claws.Your foot prints look more human.Ours were wide with an arch and what look like they had alot of patting to them.No clear toe's but a some what clear print that resembled human except very wide and deep."


I think you can't have it both ways. The longer a researcher goes at it without good results, the more we are reasonably entitled to question either his competence or the exixtence of what he is seeking; the more casual sightings of an unexplained phenomenon, the more damning the lack of hard evidence becomes.

Did I say he's been doing field research for over thirty years? He has a full-time career and investigates in his free time. He's done interviews, some with other researchers, and collected articles for years. He was part of the team that brought in the Skookum Cast and had found tracks in the area some time earlier. He was one of three who identified the imprint. He's is an experienced tracker and photographer, and an expert in the use of various casting materials.

He presents what he has and allows others to draw their own conclusions. That's how it's done........or should be.


Maybe you should try to convince people that sasquatch has feathers. It took less than a year after a single putative sighting of an ivory billed woodpecker before someone came up with a clear video of the critter.

There had been reports for many years. Seven people, including an ornithologist, saw it and the video is three seconds long.

There were several witnesses on the Memorial Day incident and the footage is conderably longer.

There are stuffed specimens of Ivory Bills in museums, so no one questions their existance. That's the difference.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
Bigfoot/sasquatch have the same problems that nessie has:

*A minimum number of specimens is needed to obtain a viable population;
*This would require that at least some pretty good evidence would already have been found (dead specimens - natural causes, hunters, roadkills; good quality pictures - many hunters use remote cams, pictures by pro and amateur nature photographers).

Note also that we are not talking about small-sized animals, like rodents or small deers, neither of uncatalogued species that are morphologically similar to known ones.

Green has five reports of them being killed. Since they tend to inhabit remote areas with few roads and little traffic, roadkill isn't very likely. They tend to be nocturnal and hunters aren't. A poster on another board calculated about one dead one per 720 square miles, based on a population of 4000 in 10% of the U.S.

Based on reports there are 2-6000, more than enough for a viable breeding population.

Morphologically, they seem to be close to Australopithecines, or possibly Gigantopithecus blacki. And us.

[bruto]

Ok, I think this is going nowhere, so I think it's time to give it a rest. I hope you're right and I'm wrong. Let's hope there are a whole bunch of sasquatches out there, seemingly willing to reveal themselves to unequipped strangers but too wily to fall into the expertly set traps of experienced researchers. Well, they say a crow can see the glint of a gun barrel at a quarter mile too, so maybe...If there's a sasquatch at all, it must be a pretty clever beast to have held out this long.

One of these days the run of bad luck, bad press and bad trees will end, and one of those obstinate searchers will get the last laugh. I don't think it will be done with a fixed-focus plastic lens strapped to a dead tree, but what do I know? I applaud their tenacity anyway.

Good luck.

[Correa Neto]

Originally posted by LAL
Green has five reports of them being killed. Since they tend to inhabit remote areas with few roads and little traffic, roadkill isn't very likely. They tend to be nocturnal and hunters aren't.


If so, where are the bodies? Now, I´ve worked all my life in areas that are very isolated (Amazon forest is isolated enough?), and I can tell you that:

(a) Nocturnal animals are more prone to become a roadkill. The lights blinds them, they freeze, not able to judge the speed and bang!

(b) Roads in isolated areas, even with little traffic, have a lot of roadkills. More than in non-isolated areas, since there are more wildlife.

(c) Here in South America there are a lot of people who hunt at night, to catch nocturnal animals. I also happen to know three guys from North America who hunt, and they do hunt at night. It depends on the prey you want to catch. And nowdays, with IR visors...


Originally posted by LAL

A poster on another board calculated about one dead one per 720 square miles, based on a population of 4000 in 10% of the U.S.

Based on reports there are 2-6000, more than enough for a viable breeding population.

Morphologically, they seem to be close to Australopithecines, or possibly Gigantopithecus blacki. And us.

So, 6000 specimens. Note that they need to be relatively close to each other, even if they do not live in packs. Individuals should stay in contact with each other in order to breed. So, they can not be spread across 10% of USA and still be a viable population... The animals must live within a smaller, more densely populated area.

Note that even animals that have smaller populations are routinely filmed, tracked, their dead bodies found, etc. Some nice footage must hev been made by now, even if by people who were actually trying to film wolves.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
If so, where are the bodies? Now, I´ve worked all my life in areas that are very isolated (Amazon forest is isolated enough?), and I can tell you that:

(a) Nocturnal animals are more prone to become a roadkill. The lights blinds them, they freeze, not able to judge the speed and bang!


Well, except that their eyes can be 7' off the ground. Peter Bryne told me about a sighting by two women in a car near Estacada, Oregon, where the animal stopped and turned and seemed to be gesturing to others to stay back. This was backed up by the marks in the middle of the road. They may be aware of the danger, but there are many reports of them crossing roads. Drivers may be more inclined to slow down for an 8' hairy hominid than for a raccoon. I mean, what insurance company would believe it?

I read recently about an Amazon tribe that's been undetected for fifteen years coming into conflict with loggers.


(b) Roads in isolated areas, even with little traffic, have a lot of roadkills. More than in non-isolated areas, since there are more wildlife.

(c) Here in South America there are a lot of people who hunt at night, to catch nocturnal animals. I also happen to know three guys from North America who hunt, and they do hunt at night. It depends on the prey you want to catch. And nowdays, with IR visors...



In the area where I lived in Washington State, the only night hunting I know of was for racoon with dogs. Deer and elk hunters were out during the day and the local people were down at the sheriff's reporting them for trespassing. The kind we had wanted to be near the vehicle in case they actually shot something - they were usually from the city. Who wants to drag a deer twenty miles over rugged terrain where much of the ground cover is Poison Oak? Bear hunters were usually poaching and probably wouldn't have reported shooting a Sasquatch if they could. Skamania County would have happily fined the one I'm thinking of.

"Skamania County Ordinance

Tuesday, April 01, 1969

Ordinance No. 69-01


Be it hereby ordained by the Board of County Commissioners of Skamania County:

Whereas, there is evidence to indicate the possible existence in Skamania County of a nocturnal primate mammal variously described as an ape-like creature or a sub-species of Homo Sapiens; and

Whereas, both legend and purported recent sightings and spoor support this possibility, and

Whereas, this creature is generally and commonly known as a "Sasquatch", "Yeti", "Bigfoot", or "Giant Hairy ape", and has resulted in an influx of scientific investigators as well as casual hunters, many armed with lethal weapons, and

Whereas, the absence of specific laws covering the taking of specimens encourages laxity in the use of firearms and other deadly devices and poses a clear and present threat to the safety and well-being of persons living or traveling within the boundaries of Skamania County as well as to the creatures themselves,

Therefore be it resolved that any premeditated, willful and wanton slaying of such creature shall be deemed a felony punishable by a fine not to exceed Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000) and/or imprisonment in the county jail for a period not to exceed Five (5) years.

Be it further resolved that the situation existing constitutes an emergency and as such this ordinance is effective immediately.

Board of Commissioners of Skamania County"

http://www.inthegorge.com/bigfoot_ordinance.htm

About the only roads in the mountains were gravel or skid roads, and they were few and far between. It was impossible to get much speed on them. Hwy 14 is along the Columbia and there's a highway to Hemlock, and one to Cougar..............and that's about it.


So, 6000 specimens. Note that they need to be relatively close to each other, even if they do not live in packs. Individuals should stay in contact with each other in order to breed. So, they can not be spread across 10% of USA and still be a viable population... The animals must live within a smaller, more densely populated area.


Bindernagle thinks the sightings are just the tip of the iceberg. Krantz estimated 15,000. There may be a small eastern population (some think the occasional three-toed tracks are a sign of defects due to inbreeding), but in the Pacific Northwest, which extends into Canada, there's plenty of suitable habitat and no lack of sightings. There seems to be a colony on Mt. St. Helens.

They've been observed in small family groups, although they seem to range singly much of the time. The high pitched howls may be an adaptation for communication over long distances. Bryne thought they could cover 25 miles in a night. He said it's like looking for a moving needle in a haystack.



Note that even animals that have smaller populations are routinely filmed, tracked, their dead bodies found, etc. Some nice footage must hev been made by now, even if by people who were actually trying to film wolves.

There've been sightings all over the country, but the area I knew best (Skamania County) has dense forest, acid soils, caves, canyons, hollow logs, is extremely rugged and has a population of about 10,000, mostly along the river. It's 86% National Forest and contains Mt. St. Helens with ample room to spare. Dying animals tend to hole up. The scavenger system is extremely efficient and even bodies of common animals are seldom found.

There is some nice footage, by people who were trying to film one and at least one by people who weren't.

[bruto]

I forgot to mention above that if there are sasquatches, I suspect they possess one other quality which sets them apart from their pursuers: a sense of humor.

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
I forgot to mention above that if there are sasquatches, I suspect they possess one other quality which sets them apart from their pursuers: a sense of humor.

Chimpanzees seem to have a sense of humor. So does Rick Noll.
Maybe that's something we share in that 98% identical DNA. :D

[LTC8K6]

Lu, why would anyone need stilts to fake bigfoot tracks with a 10' stride?

[LTC8K6]

I would have taken pics of the base of those trees and the holes, and a lot more if I thought the trees had been deliberately downed......

I would be a lot happier if DDA had shown us photos of same. It is quite suspicious, imo. It is also unexplainable to me.

I wonder if bigfoot knows what kickback is.....? :D

Personally, I would never push over a sturdy 80' tall tree even if I had the strength and footing to do so. There is a good chance of being killed.

Of course, the idea that an 8' tall being could ever push over even a 30' tall healthy tree is entirely ludicrous for several reasons, imo. Even if we give him the strength of 10 men.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Lu, why would anyone need stilts to fake bigfoot tracks with a 10' stride?

Because the Masai you hired to wear the fake feet (with the articulating toes) had to go back to Africa before he could finish the last three miles of the trackway?

Didn't you mention stilts awhile ago?

[Correa Neto]

Originally posted by LAL

Well, except that their eyes can be 7' off the ground. Peter Bryne told me about a sighting by two women in a car near Estacada, Oregon, where the animal stopped and turned and seemed to be gesturing to others to stay back. This was backed up by the marks in the middle of the road. They may be aware of the danger, but there are many reports of them crossing roads. Drivers may be more inclined to slow down for an 8' hairy hominid than for a raccoon. I mean, what insurance company would believe it?[/B]

Cattle and horses have the same problem. Drivers quite often just don´t have time to avoid ramming animals in roads. And the bigger the animal, the less agile its is. Even humans are hit by cars at night in desert roads. Intelligence would not always avoid them becoming roadkills.

And regarding the insurance company, all one has to do is say "It was a deer, a moose, a cow, whatever". And if the animal is hit and killed, its instant fame.

Originally posted by LAL
I read recently about an Amazon tribe that's been undetected for fifteen years coming into conflict with loggers.[/B]

Even if the report of the tribe is accurate when it comes to the tribe not being detected, you can not compare the intelligence level of humans with large anthropoids. Usually, "unknown tribes" just don´t have "official contact" with our government agency, but they are known by other tribes as well as local population. And they leave plenty of evidence of their presence.

Originally posted by LAL
In the area where I lived in Washington State, the only night hunting I know of was for racoon with dogs. Deer and elk hunters were out during the day and the local people were down at the sheriff's reporting them for trespassing. The kind we had wanted to be near the vehicle in case they actually shot something - they were usually from the city. Who wants to drag a deer twenty miles over rugged terrain where much of the ground cover is Poison Oak? Bear hunters were usually poaching and probably wouldn't have reported shooting a Sasquatch if they could. Skamania County would have happily fined the one I'm thinking of.
...snip...

About the only roads in the mountains were gravel or skid roads, and they were few and far between. It was impossible to get much speed on them. Hwy 14 is along the Columbia and there's a highway to Hemlock, and one to Cougar..............and that's about it.[/B]

Even if going for racoons, there are people who hunt at night, see? And with dogs, what could make tracking and finding such a big ape easier.

one of the best ways for night hunting is essentially an ambush. You stay near a water hole, for example, and wait the prey arrive. Bigfoot arrives to drink water and bang. Instant fame and no more doubt about its existence.

Lets be frank. The law never really stopped poachers. And even if they are not poachers, all hunters use weapons that are legal? It does not matter the penalty. A bigfoot body would get more than enough money to ver it.


Originally posted by LAL
Bindernagle thinks the sightings are just the tip of the iceberg. Krantz estimated 15,000. There may be a small eastern population (some think the occasional three-toed tracks are a sign of defects due to inbreeding), but in the Pacific Northwest, which extends into Canada, there's plenty of suitable habitat and no lack of sightings. There seems to be a colony on Mt. St. Helens.

...snip...
There've been sightings all over the country, but the area I knew best (Skamania County) has dense forest, acid soils, caves, canyons, hollow logs, is extremely rugged and has a population of about 10,000, mostly along the river. It's 86% National Forest and contains Mt. St. Helens with ample room to spare. Dying animals tend to hole up. The scavenger system is extremely efficient and even bodies of common animals are seldom found.

There is some nice footage, by people who were trying to film one and at least one by people who weren't. [/B]

Well, with the larger population there are more chances are that bodies would be found. Same is valid for a small population confined in a small area. For a comparsion, gorilla population is not dense, and they are constantly tracked by scientists, poachers, tourists, etc.

I know a lot of dense forests, the tropical ones. There is much more scavenging actions, bodies decompose faster due to heat and humidity, and still, bodies are found.

Note that even national forests are constantly screened by tourists, naturalists, wildlife photographers, guards, etc. Why no solid evidence has been found?

And regarding the footage, all I saw so far are fuzzy things. far from being good.

[UrsulaV]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
Cattle and horses have the same problem. Drivers quite often just don´t have time to avoid ramming animals in roads. And the bigger the animal, the less agile its is. Even humans are hit by cars at night in desert roads. Intelligence would not always avoid them becoming roadkills.


While freely admitting my general ignorance of Bigfoot, I gotta say, the roadkill thing is the one I'm just not getting past. I mean, the population of Florida panthers is absolutely miniscule, barely enough to be genetically viable, and it's a reasonably intelligent apex predator...and they STILL lose two or three a year to cars.

And the Australian night parrot, long thought to be extinct, was rediscovered because somebody found one that had lost an encounter with a truck. And that was a terribly rare, not very large bird in the middle of the excruciatingly vast desert. People hadn't seen the thing in decades, but WHAM.

I don't know anything about dermal ridges, or how easy it is to fake a footprint, or anything else--and the waters have gotten so muddy that I'm not inclined to take anybody's word for it as an impartial authority. I have sufficient faith in human deviousness that I'd never believe anything to be unfakeable, but that doesn't neccessarily mean any given bit was faked. I've tripped over elk in the woods in the Pacific Northwest, and I know firsthand that a large animal can hide ten feet away and you'll never know until you nearly step on the thing (or if you're particularly observant, pause and say "Dude, do you hear something breathing?")

But I can't get past the lack of roadkill. I've yet to hear of any species, however rare or brainy, that didn't eventually wind up smeared across somebody's bumper. I just have a really hard time buying that a population large enough to breed, of a big mammal, no matter how smart, wouldn't eventually get hit.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
Cattle and horses have the same problem. Drivers quite often just don´t have time to avoid ramming animals in roads. And the bigger the animal, the less agile its is. Even humans are hit by cars at night in desert roads. Intelligence would not always avoid them becoming roadkills.

There's a report of a near collision in Don Hunter's book (with Dahinden). The animal calmly inspected the vehicle afterward. There's a similar report from Minnesota. There are probably many more. I was looking for something else when I found those.

And regarding the insurance company, all one has to do is say "It was a deer, a moose, a cow, whatever". And if the animal is hit and killed, its instant fame.

If one is lucky enough to hit it. The standard reaction seems to be panic and slamming on the brakes.


Even if the report of the tribe is accurate when it comes to the tribe not being detected, you can not compare the intelligence level of humans with large anthropoids. Usually, "unknown tribes" just don´t have "official contact" with our government agency, but they are known by other tribes as well as local population. And they leave plenty of evidence of their presence.

Ishi's people were undetected in California as well, also for fifteen years.

Of course, our government isn't looking for Sasquatches. They range singly and in small family groups. There was a kind of "feeding lot" found near Nelson Creek after the sighting April 16th. They do leave sign.



Even if going for racoons, there are people who hunt at night, see? And with dogs, what could make tracking and finding such a big ape easier.

Peter Bryne gave up on trying to track them for reasons I've already gone over on this board. Some dogs freeze, but some seem sensitive to the smell. They could be useful. They could also give advance warning.

There's been better success with luring:

http://www.bfro.net/NEWS/pnw_newsletter003/ThermalExpedMain.htm


one of the best ways for night hunting is essentially an ambush. You stay near a water hole, for example, and wait the prey arrive. Bigfoot arrives to drink water and bang. Instant fame and no more doubt about its existence.

See the notes. The Pacific Northwest has so much water it would be hard to know where to start. There are lakes, streams, rivers, no water holes that I remember. Mud wallow in Skookum Meadow, yes.


Lets be frank. The law never really stopped poachers. And even if they are not poachers, all hunters use weapons that are legal? It does not matter the penalty. A bigfoot body would get more than enough money to ver it.

Skamania County had the first ordinance ever in this country. It made us kind of famous for a while. Not many people know about it. There's one in B.C., as I recall.

You might want to ask Bob Gimlin about getting rich and famous. (He sold his rights to the film for $26.) Or Bobby Clarke. Seems no one but the Cree in Norway House is following up.


Well, with the larger population there are more chances are that bodies would be found.


There's a report of a decaying body being found by two little girls who decided they'd better not say anything. One reported it when she grew up.


Same is valid for a small population confined in a small area. For a comparsion, gorilla population is not dense, and they are constantly tracked by scientists, poachers, tourists, etc.

Gorillas were once thought to be a Native myth. There seems to be a new and very large Chimpanzee species in the Congo. Native tales of "Lioncrushers" were dismissed there, too.


I know a lot of dense forests, the tropical ones. There is much more scavenging actions, bodies decompose faster due to heat and humidity, and still, bodies are found.

I'm not saying no bodies of anything are ever found. It's possible Sasquatch bodies have been seen but mistaken for bear from a distance, which are seldom if ever found dead either, in the PNW, even by Rangers.


Note that even national forests are constantly screened by tourists, naturalists, wildlife photographers, guards, etc. Why no solid evidence has been found?

It has, by all of the above. Depends on what you regard as "solid", I guess.

I lived near a national forest. There was one patrol car to cover the north end of the county (Mt. St. Helens is in it). The Sheriff's department opposed the national monument because they didn't want to have to outfit another officer to keep track of tourists. Rangers stuck to their stations unless they were doing a timber cruise, tourists (there weren't many until the Scenic Act was passed over the citizens' screaming objections) stuck to campgrounds and trails. Berry pickers stuck to the Huckleberry fieds, and mushroom hunters looked for Chantrelles by day, not Sasquatches at night. Even so, Skamania County has the highest number of documented sightings in the "lower 48".

I liked the story of the ranger (in California, I think) who said if there was anything like that around, he'd have seen it, and then drove right by a trackway covered in plastic awaiting casting.

A mushroom hunter was separated from his friends and lost in the Gifford Pinchot on talus not long before I left the state. They knew where to look, approximately, but his remains weren't found until the following spring. A young hunter was lost in Oregon around the same time, also with companions, in comparatively open woodland. Despite extensive searching, even after the official search was called off, his body was discovered accidently the next year. These people wanted to be found. A couple of dozen aircraft have vanished in the PNW. Why aren't all these hikers and berry pickers and hunters bringing back pieces of planes?


And regarding the footage, all I saw so far are fuzzy things. far from being good.

They are at least good enough to indicate they're probably not of something else. The PGF remains the best and it's held up to scrutiny for close to forty years.

Here are some more questions to help you out ;):

http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_FAQ.asp?id=751

[UrsulaV]

Originally posted by LAL

A mushroom hunter was separated from his friends and lost in the Gifford Pinchot on talus not long before I left the state. They knew where to look, approximately, but his remains weren't found until the following spring. A young hunter was lost in Oregon around the same time, also with companions, in comparatively open woodland. Despite extensive searching, even after the official search was called off, his body was discovered accidently the next year. These people wanted to be found. A couple of dozen aircraft have vanished in the PNW. Why aren't all these hikers and berry pickers and hunters bringing back pieces of planes?[/url]

I suspect that if there had been a breeding population of lost mushroom hunters throughout the country, and remains of ANY of them would be sufficient, that somebody'd have found something. I mean, there's kind of a difference between finding one specific lost guy, and finding any member of a given species. Unless you're claiming that there's only one, immortal sasquatch, I don't think the comparison is really an accurate one.

My memories of rural Oregon, however, do provide me with an example that I'd think might be a little closer--there's a type of highly intelligent, quite large primate in the area that does its very best to hide evidence of itself from the eyes of the world. However, the DEA manages to find a few examples of people growing pot in the woods every year anyway. I'm dead sure they don't get even a hundredth of the people who do it, but nevertheless, they do track down enough to know the breed exists, and occasionally bust them. (I have no statistics on how often they end up roadkill, mind you.)

Possibly we need to convince the authorities that Bigfoot is growing weed, and then we'll get some answers.

[LAL]

Originally posted by UrsulaV
While freely admitting my general ignorance of Bigfoot, I gotta say, the roadkill thing is the one I'm just not getting past. I mean, the population of Florida panthers is absolutely miniscule, barely enough to be genetically viable, and it's a reasonably intelligent apex predator...and they STILL lose two or three a year to cars.

And the Australian night parrot, long thought to be extinct, was rediscovered because somebody found one that had lost an encounter with a truck. And that was a terribly rare, not very large bird in the middle of the excruciatingly vast desert. People hadn't seen the thing in decades, but WHAM.

I don't know anything about dermal ridges, or how easy it is to fake a footprint, or anything else--and the waters have gotten so muddy that I'm not inclined to take anybody's word for it as an impartial authority. I have sufficient faith in human deviousness that I'd never believe anything to be unfakeable, but that doesn't neccessarily mean any given bit was faked. I've tripped over elk in the woods in the Pacific Northwest, and I know firsthand that a large animal can hide ten feet away and you'll never know until you nearly step on the thing (or if you're particularly observant, pause and say "Dude, do you hear something breathing?")

But I can't get past the lack of roadkill. I've yet to hear of any species, however rare or brainy, that didn't eventually wind up smeared across somebody's bumper. I just have a really hard time buying that a population large enough to breed, of a big mammal, no matter how smart, wouldn't eventually get hit.

I hear ya. Wolverine were thought to be extinct in the Southern Cascades until one was hit near Hemlock. I'd found tracks on a new skid road on my property and was beginning to think I must be wrong until a friend told me he'd seen one near my place about ten years before.

I was checking reports from B.C. recently, and there are a couple there of them crossing roads. There are a few from Skamania County where they seem to be coming up from the river (14 is a two lane, treacherous road).

I think it's a combination of things. Most people don't speed at night on winding country roads. There aren't many roads. There aren't many cars on those roads. In remote areas there are virtually none. There aren't many Sasquatches in any given area.

Richard Noll estimates thirty in Washington State. Let's say all thirty are in Skamania County (they aren't). The area is 1,684 mi², mostly mountainous.

As I was leaving in 1997, Stevenson, the county seat, was considering putting in a traffic light. There are now two........in the whole county.

What kind of odds would there be for hitting one?

[LAL]

Originally posted by UrsulaV
I suspect that if there had been a breeding population of lost mushroom hunters throughout the country, and remains of ANY of them would be sufficient, that somebody'd have found something. I mean, there's kind of a difference between finding one specific lost guy, and finding any member of a given species. Unless you're claiming that there's only one, immortal sasquatch, I don't think the comparison is really an accurate one.


One big difference is that there were well-organized search parties looking. Sasquatch encounters tend to be accidental. I knew a deputy in on one investigation. They found evidence, but by the time the person called them, at the urging of a waitress, and they got someone out there, the animal was long gone. The Sherriff had a cast on his desk for years. He said, at one point, "I guess I'll have to stop laughing". My point was that it's difficult to even find lost humans with their full cooperation. How much more difficult is it to find what seems to be a wary nocturnal creature that doesn't much want to be bothered?


My memories of rural Oregon, however, do provide me with an example that I'd think might be a little closer--there's a type of highly intelligent, quite large primate in the area that does its very best to hide evidence of itself from the eyes of the world. However, the DEA manages to find a few examples of people growing pot in the woods every year anyway. I'm dead sure they don't get even a hundredth of the people who do it, but nevertheless, they do track down enough to know the breed exists, and occasionally bust them. (I have no statistics on how often they end up roadkill, mind you.)

Possibly we need to convince the authorities that Bigfoot is growing weed, and then we'll get some answers.

People still grow weed? I thought it was all meth labs now.

Heck, N.C. had Eric Rudolf and these woods are public parks compared to the Northwest.

I thought we should tell Homeland Security they're making WMD's and see if that would get any action.

[UrsulaV]

Originally posted by LAL


People still grow weed? I thought it was all meth labs now.
[/B]

Still Oregon's largest cash crop, as far as I know. Although meth labs certainly caught on like wildfire, alas.

Anyway, while one might indeed argue that it's unlikely to hit a sasquatch in any given part of rural Washington, if people are maintaining that there's a breeding population in other parts of the country, where there have been sightings...eh, I still think somebody'd hit one with a car. I mean, cougars are a shy, wary, nocturnal animal that wants to be left alone, and I've personally seen three, two of which were dead (one of which, a juvenile, had crawled into a barn and frozen to death, despite shyness etc.) I mean, there are so many large mammals in North America that we've found--jaguars slink in from Mexico, and WHAM! somebody's spotted 'em practically at the border.

Now, personal incredulity is not a good argument, I'll be the first to admit--I wouldn't take it from a creationist, and I won't take it from myself--so I can't possibly say that there are no sasquatch merely because I can't concieve of the existence of sasquatch. I make no absolutely statements about the existence or nonexistance of sasquatchery. But it still strikes me as pretty farfetched that we've gone this long and all the evidence is still so shoddy. My gut says that if anything were really out there, we'd not only know about it, there'd be signs all over Yosemite saying "Do not feed the Yeti."

And at this point, it'll take a lot more than plaster casts to convince me.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
I would have taken pics of the base of those trees and the holes, and a lot more if I thought the trees had been deliberately downed......

I would be a lot happier if DDA had shown us photos of same. It is quite suspicious, imo. It is also unexplainable to me.

I wonder if bigfoot knows what kickback is.....? :D

Personally, I would never push over a sturdy 80' tall tree even if I had the strength and footing to do so. There is a good chance of being killed.

Of course, the idea that an 8' tall being could ever push over even a 30' tall healthy tree is entirely ludicrous for several reasons, imo. Even if we give him the strength of 10 men.

Everything's suspicious to you. :p

There are, in fact, several reports of them pushing and shaking trees. I found one yesterday from Minnesota while looking for descriptions of facial hair from that area. There are a couple in Bindernagle's book referred to on the thread.

If they were broken off 12" below the soilline, it seems they might have been lifted and thrown. No kickback. Not sure how a bear could do that, or a storm either.

DDA may have taken pictures. He doesn't post everything.

You could join the board and ask.

[varwoche]

Originally posted by UrsulaV
Bigfoot is growing weed With apologies UrsalaV, I have no comment -- I just like how these words look stand-alone.

That said, I think that the odds that Bigfoot exists are only one order of magnitude less -- certainly not two -- than the odds that Bigfoot exists and is a grower.

[LAL]

Originally posted by UrsulaV
Still Oregon's largest cash crop, as far as I know. Although meth labs certainly caught on like wildfire, alas.

Anyway, while one might indeed argue that it's unlikely to hit a sasquatch in any given part of rural Washington, if people are maintaining that there's a breeding population in other parts of the country, where there have been sightings...eh, I still think somebody'd hit one with a car. I mean, cougars are a shy, wary, nocturnal animal that wants to be left alone, and I've personally seen three, two of which were dead (one of which, a juvenile, had crawled into a barn and frozen to death, despite shyness etc.) I mean, there are so many large mammals in North America that we've found--jaguars slink in from Mexico, and WHAM! somebody's spotted 'em practically at the border.

Pretty open there, isn't it? I wonder how the illegals manage to make it.

Now, personal incredulity is not a good argument, I'll be the first to admit--I wouldn't take it from a creationist, and I won't take it from myself--so I can't possibly say that there are no sasquatch merely because I can't concieve of the existence of sasquatch. I make no absolutely statements about the existence or nonexistance of sasquatchery. But it still strikes me as pretty farfetched that we've gone this long and all the evidence is still so shoddy. My gut says that if anything were really out there, we'd not only know about it, there'd be signs all over Yosemite saying "Do not feed the Yeti."

Redwoods, North Cascades and Olympic, maybe. There are only 2 reports from Mariposa County on the BFRO site.

There used to be a "Bigfoot Crossing" sign en route to Carson, Washington, but people kept stealing it. I doubt the government would want to spend money on such signs when they don't even want to part with money to fix the roads. ;)

I've seen an "evolutionist" be driven to Creationist tactics in a debate on this, and he teaches logic and critical thinking and has a Master's in Geology.

I got a kick out of this:

"Sure enough, one of his disciples, the strongly Protestant Swabian medical professor Johann Friedrich Gmelin (1748-1804) who supervised the 13th edition of Systema naturae in 1789, took it upon himself to correct Linnaeus' views concerning humans which he thought were blasphemous and against the teaching of the Church, by simply eliminating any reference to men other than Homo sapiens from the Systema. God, Gmelin argued, created Man in His own image and this man could only have been Homo sapiens as God could not possibly look like an apeman; makes sense, does it not? A truly paradoxical situation developed therefore whereby the name Orang outang which was coined to scientifically designate a human being other than Homo sapiens, but which has always been applied by Malay speakers to various perfectly sapiens forest dwellers such as the Siamang or the Sakai, has become in the West that of the red-haired ape which at home is called by names not including the "man" component, such as mawa, maia or mias.

The unfortunate result of this development was that in Western science the quest for Forest Man was abandoned as useless and whenever there were rumors about such beings in Southeast Asia it was automatically assumed that they must refer to the incorrectly named ape orang-utan!"

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/

And at this point, it'll take a lot more than plaster casts to convince me. [/B][/QUOTE]

How about hair?

What makes you think the evidence is "shoddy"?

[UrsulaV]

Originally posted by LAL

How about hair?

What makes you think the evidence is "shoddy"?

*grin* How 'bout it? If you can prove the hair came from a bigfoot, I'd be delighted to hear about it. But merely finding unidentified hair doesn't work for me--I'd want, y'know, "Hey, look, primate DNA! But not any primate we know at the moment!" and stuff. And I'd want it matched up from multiple samples, to rule out some joker with a baboon pelt roaming the woods.*

I know this was covered a few pages back, that they hadn't gotten any hair that had follicles that one could get good DNA from, and that's part of why I consider the evidence shoddy. If the hair doesn't have DNA, I just don't consider it compelling evidence--there's lots of hairy things in the world, many of which live in the woods, and unless we can pin down what species it DOES come from, I'm not buying anybody's claims it's a Bigfoot.

Really, at this point, neither plaster, nor unidentified hair, nor weird demarcations on the ground nor piles of ostenible Bigfoot poo would work for me. There's just too many enthusiasts and too many hoaxers and too many things that aren't hoaxes but maybe they were but hey, it can't be a hoax--and way too many Eric Beckjords and associate lunatic fringe!--anyway, the waters are irredeemably muddy to a casual observer like myself. I don't have the expertise to look at a cast as say "Oooh, convincing!" I wouldn't know a dermal ridge from a donut, and if you show me a Bigfoot buttprint, it just looks like dirt to me. There is no evidence available that I am able to evaluate as proof for myself, and the debate has gotten so weird and rancorous over the years that I can't really take anybody's word who's involved. Proof would have to be good enough and extraordinary enough that I wouldn't be relying on the word of people who are so emotionally invested in the existence of sasquatch.

Really, I'd need a corpse. Or at the very least, double and triple checked DNA from a very good lab from multiple hair samples that rule out anything BUT an unknown primate. I'd prefer a body. Dead or alive, I'm not picky. Until something that persuasive shows up, it's just not something I could be convinced of.


*At this point, I will now admit that I once roamed some woods in the Cascades carrying a walking stick with a carved head with baboon hair affixed to it, and it just now occurred to me while typing that some poor bastard could have found some stray hair and thought "Bigfoot." Err. Sorry, world. I was young and high and it was a very neat walking stick.

[LAL]

Originally posted by UrsulaV
*grin* How 'bout it? If you can prove the hair came from a bigfoot, I'd be delighted to hear about it. But merely finding unidentified hair doesn't work for me--I'd want, y'know, "Hey, look, primate DNA! But not any primate we know at the moment!" and stuff. And I'd want it matched up from multiple samples, to rule out some joker with a baboon pelt roaming the woods.*

<snip>

*At this point, I will now admit that I once roamed some woods in the Cascades carrying a walking stick with a carved head with baboon hair affixed to it, and it just now occurred to me while typing that some poor bastard could have found some stray hair and thought "Bigfoot." Err. Sorry, world. I was young and high and it was a very neat walking stick.

There have been a number of hairs found that match each other, but no known animal, and different labs have come to the conclusion they're "unknown primate". Presumably they've been compared to baboon. :p The Oregon Primate Research Center is in Beaverton.

"Hair length ranges from 3" to around 2’ (15" longest measured in hand, longer observed in the wild). There is no taper or color banding other than graying with age. Long hair covers the head and, almost invariably, the ears; very short hair on the face; occasional reports of heavy hairiness in male faces ("mustache" and "beard") vs. no facial hair in females; long hair across the top of the shoulders (once described as "bouncing like a cape" ); long hair on the forearms ("like a spaniel"); different orientations of hair on back; breasts in females hair covered (contrary to a mistaken claim in the literature); long hair on buttocks, sometimes overhanging them; groin with enough hair to obscure genitalia; and long hair on the calves (like "bellbottom pants" in a sasquatch observed standing in snow). The hair stood visibly on end in situations where the sasquatch appeared frightened.

Under the microscope (Fig. 2), the average diameter of hair is 65 µm (40-90 µm), these values derived from 15 separately collected samples in four States. The cortex has a uniform reddish tinge plus fine pigment granule distribution, whereas the medulla is absent. Intense efforts at DNA analysis of the hair have been uniformly negative, possibly a function of the lacking medulla. Most human hair (Fig. 3) has a medulla, if only fragmentary, but fine blond hair occasionally looks similar to sasquatch hair. Hence, there is no absolute distinction that can be made. Hair from other forest species, like rodents, carnivores, and ungulates can be differentiated without question."

http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_FAQ.asp?id=585

And it's not polyester.

On the calls, even African animals were ruled out on bioacoustic analysis at Texas A&M.

I'm sorry anyone thinks Erik Beckjord typifies anything but advanced schizophrenia. On BigfootForums, people who think there's something paranormal about this are politely directed to another board.

Meet Meldrum:

D. Jeffrey Meldrum
Associate Professor
Ph.D. , SUNY at Stony Brook, 1989
Anatomy, Evolutionary Morphology, Primatology, Paleontology

E-mail: meldd@isu.edu
Phone: 208-282-4379



Evolutionary Morphology: The relationship of form and function is not only a response to the mechanical demands of behavior, but is significantly influenced by the phylogenetic heritage of an organism, hence, the preferred expression, evolutionary morphology. My interests in evolutionary morphology encompass vertebrates broadly and primates in particular and include the diversification of positional adaptations, i.e., the morphology correlated with postural and locomotor behaviors, as well as dental morphology in the context of phylogeny reconstruction.

Hominoid Bipedalism: My investigations of primate positional behavior have included studies of terrestrial adaptations in the feet of cercopithecoids and hominoids and their implications for bipedal adaptations in early hominins. Contrasts were made between the mechanical demands of terrestrial quadrupedalism and those of bipedalism and a model was proposed for the emergence of bipedalism. Methodologies include kinematic analysis, dissection and description of bone-joint-muscle relationships, and multivariate morphometric analysis. More recently I have focused attention on the emergence of the unique traits associated with the modern human form of striding endurance walking and running.

Cryptozoology: My interests in bipedalism have directed attention to the possibility of a relic hominoid biped, the North American ape, commonly referred to as Sasquatch. The extensive footprint evidence for this legendary ape, suggests a flat flexible foot, retaining the hominoid pattern of the midtarsal break. Fieldwork is underway to obtain DNA evidence.

Platyrrhine Evolution: In addition to terrestrial adaptations, I am interested in the primate adaptive radiation and niche partitioning in the arboreal habitus. The colonization and radiation of the New World primates, or platyrrhines, on the island continent of South America provide an intriguing model for this evolutionary study. Studies have included adaptations for hindlimb suspension, the evolution of the prehensile tail, and the analysis of postcranial adaptations of fossil species. In order to better understand the historical pattern of primate diversification, I have participated in paleontological field projects to South America, collecting primate fossils from the Miocene of Colombia and Argentina. The analysis and description of new fossil specimens reveals the increase in taxonomic diversity and appearance of derived adaptations for feeding and positional behaviors.

Vertebrate Paleontology: As an Affiliate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology with the Idaho Museum of Natural History, I have broadened my interests in vertebrate paleontology. Fieldwork exploring the evolution of mid-Tertiary faunas of the intermountain basins of the northern Rockies is ongoing.

Representative Work:

2004 Meldrum, DJ. Midfoot flexibility, fossil footprints, and Sasquatch steps: New perspectives on the evolution of bipedalism. J. Scientific Exploration 18:67-79.

2004 Meldrum, DJ. Fossilized Hawaiian footprints compared to Laetoli hominid footprints. In DJ Meldrum and CE Hilton (eds.), From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. pp. 63-84, New York: Kluwer Academic and Plenum Publishing.

2004 Hilton, CE and Meldrum, DJ, Walkers, Runners, Transporters. In DJ Meldrum and CE Hilton (eds.), From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. pp. 1-8, New York: Kluwer Academic and Plenum Publishing.

2004 Meldrum, DJ and Hilton, CE (eds.), From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. New York: Kluwer Academic and Plenum Publishing.

2002 Hartwig, WC and Meldrum, DJ. Miocene platyrrhines of the northern Neotropics. In WC Hartwig (ed.) The Primate Fossil Record. pp. 175-188, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2002 Meldrum, DJ and Jenecke, S. An Eocene titanothere from the Pahsimeroi Valley, Idaho. In: Akersten, WA, Thompson, ME, Meldrum, DJ and Rapp, RA, and McDonald, HG (eds.). And Whereas-Papers on the Vertebrate Paleontology of Idaho Honoring John A. White, Volume 2. Idaho Museum of Natural History Occasional Papers 37, pp. 18-22.

2002 Akersten, WA, Thompson, ME, Meldrum, DJ and Rapp, RA, and McDonald, HG (eds.). And Whereas-Papers on the Vertebrate Paleontology of Idaho Honoring John A. White, Volume 2. Idaho Museum of Natural History Occasional Papers 37, 192 pp.

1998 Akersten, WA, McDonald, HG, Meldrum, DJ and Flint, MET (eds.) And Whereas-Papers on the Vertebrate Paleontology of Idaho, Volume 1. Idaho Museum of Natural History Occasional Paper 36, 216 pp.

1998 Kay, RF, Johnson, D and Meldrum, DJ. A new pitheciin primate from the middle Miocene of Argentina. Am. J. Primatol. 45:317-336.

http://www.isu.edu/bios/Professors_Staff/meldrum_d.htm

[LTC8K6]

Pretty open there, isn't it? I wonder how the illegals manage to make it.

Illegals are killed by cars fairly often while attempting to enter the US on foot.

I would laugh at anyone who wanted to use stilts to fake a long stride. I can't believe anyone would even consider using them.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Illegals are killed by cars fairly often while attempting to enter the US on foot.

I used to live in L.A. Grooms on the harness track (I owned horses) would be picked up by L'emigre on Saturday and be back in time for work on Monday. Not only were they not hit, they weren't spotted.

Desert isn't good Sasquatch habitat anyway. They're creatures of the deep forests.


I would laugh at anyone who wanted to use stilts to fake a long stride. I can't believe anyone would even consider using them.

Okay, I'll bite. How would you fake a 10' stride without leaving any traces of your activities?

I'll try to scan the Powder Mountain arial. I don't know how well it will show up, but it's enough to strain the imagination of anyone trying to figure out how they could have been faked. Lone tall logger eating Balsam berries doesn't do it for me.

[RayG]

Regarding hair analysis by Dr. Fahrenbach:

The following excerpts are taken from the webpage Status of the DNA Analysis of Hair Samples at Ohio State Univ. found at:

http://www.bfro.net/REF/THEORIES/WHF/dnatests.htm
...The hair was sent to Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach (Beaverton, Oregon), who determined microscopically that the hair appeared to have come from two individuals of the same species, that it differed in color, length and hair growth cycle between the two sets, had not been not cut, and was indistinguishable from human hair by any criterion....

DNA analysis suggested itself as the only methodology of promise...W.H.F. located an investigator (Dr. P. Fuerst) in the Department of Molecular Genetics of Ohio State University, who had a specific interest in DNA analysis of Wildman and sasquatch hair. The hair underwent lengthy and concerted analytical study by Dr. Fuerst and a graduate student, J. A. Poe, both with extensive experience in hair DNA analysis.

...ultimate results have not generated a diagnostic sequence of a mitochondrial gene, which might have yielded information on the relationship of the sasquatch to other primates, we nonetheless decided to publish the outcome rather than let the study fade away as most preceding such events have.

As of January 1998, the article is virtually finished except for some illustrative material and will be shortly submitted to the Journal of Cryptozoology...

Update, March 20, 1998: ...Our studies have not yielded a sequenced mitochondrial gene fragment to determine the phylogenetic affiliation of the creature. The ambiguous results at the present time can, on the one hand, generate misplaced enthusiasm and be quoted as "proof", or, on the other hand, can be used by the opposite camp to criticize and denigrate the results unfairly...

Update, November 3, 1999:... I am concentrating now on blood or tissue, as the hair holds no promise... --Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach

From:
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/nytimes.htm
Dr. Fahrenbach has tried to prove - by DNA analysis of hair samples - that Bigfoot is a species heretofore unknown to science. To date, he has come up empty, which he attributes to fragmented DNA.

From:
http://www.cryptozoology.com/forum/topic_view_thread.php?pid=248102&tid=2
We were able to accumulate a considerable amount of hair and scat as well as some footprint casts which have convinced us that, unless Dr. Fahrenbach's hair analysis (which is supported by several other scientists) is faulty, sasquatches do in fact seem to spend time at the farm. Further, DNA analysis of the hair and scat suggests that sasquatches have human DNA.

From:
http://www.geocities.com/saqatchr/page41.html
"All purported sasquatch hairs in my possession (11 regional samples) show a reddish tinge under the microscope, lack a medulla and are indistinguishable from human hair. Efforts at DNA analysis were unsuccessful." -- Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, Ph.D., Beaverton, Oregon - October 2, 1998

From:
http://www.royalforum.com/article.php?id=46
Dr. Fahrenbach has collected hair specimens from various states and told The Royal Forum, "Hair color ranges a full spectrum of human natural colors, other than perhaps light blonde. But about 60% is very dark brown to black, the rest red, brown, gray, and quite white on occasion. I have about two dozen hair samples from various states. All of them are congruent in internal microscopic structure, but differing in color and length. They generally are devoid of medulla, the cellular core of the hair, something that also is found in some human hairs and hence, does not allow for an absolute identification. DNA analysis has been attempted several times with negative results. In any case, the hair is not similar to orangutan, gorilla, or chimp hair."

Hair analysis seems to be going nowhere.

RayG

[UrsulaV]

*attempting to follow a great deal about hair*

Yeah....see, as long as there's no good DNA recovered from the hair, that's just not gonna work for me as evidence. I want stuff that can be sequenced in a lab, splayed across the wall, and overlapped with known primate genomes. Like I said in my post, I want unknown primate *DNA* (Even that would not neccessarily be proof positive, and I'd require a lot of independant confirmations, but it'd certainly make me take notice.)

After all, merely saying "It's not anything else I recognize, but it looks like primate" leaves the field much too open. I could claim it's hair from the previously unknown hairy banana slug. (And I might! At any moment! Why does the hairy banana slug have a pelt like a primate, you ask? It's very clever...) and nobody can prove me wrong, because we conveniently lack any definitive specimens to compare against. And in a world that contains a great many kinds of hair, I'm just not willing to say "oh, well, that's proof of Bigfoot, then!" without the DNA, when for all I know, it could be another young idiot with monkey hair on a stick.

[LTC8K6]

Gee, I guess I would fake a left footprint, walk about 10 feet, then fake a right footprint, and so on....

Or, I could fake a right footprint, walk about 10 feet, then fake a left footprint, and so on......

Oh no! I'd have left my own tracks then, wouldn't I?

Gosh, how will ever get around that????

Stay tuned for our next exciting chapter on hiding your own tracks!!!!! :D

Somewhere between 10 and 50 illegals are killed each year due to being hit by cars while crossing our southern border.

Most are in San Diego. The numbers have come down closer to ten recently due to more aggressive fencing along highways.

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20040912/capt.sge.iwp25.120904213604.photo00.default-380x251.jpg

[Psiload]

Originally posted by LAL
There have been a number of hairs found that match each other, but no known animal, and different labs have come to the conclusion they're "unknown primate". Presumably they've been compared to baboon. :p The Oregon Primate Research Center is in Beaverton.

"Hair length ranges from 3" to around 2’ (15" longest measured in hand, longer observed in the wild). There is no taper or color banding other than graying with age. Long hair covers the head and, almost invariably, the ears; very short hair on the face; occasional reports of heavy hairiness in male faces ("mustache" and "beard") vs. no facial hair in females; long hair across the top of the shoulders (once described as "bouncing like a cape" ); long hair on the forearms ("like a spaniel"); different orientations of hair on back; breasts in females hair covered (contrary to a mistaken claim in the literature); long hair on buttocks, sometimes overhanging them; groin with enough hair to obscure genitalia; and long hair on the calves (like "bellbottom pants" in a sasquatch observed standing in snow). The hair stood visibly on end in situations where the sasquatch appeared frightened.

Under the microscope (Fig. 2), the average diameter of hair is 65 µm (40-90 µm), these values derived from 15 separately collected samples in four States. The cortex has a uniform reddish tinge plus fine pigment granule distribution, whereas the medulla is absent. Intense efforts at DNA analysis of the hair have been uniformly negative, possibly a function of the lacking medulla. Most human hair (Fig. 3) has a medulla, if only fragmentary, but fine blond hair occasionally looks similar to sasquatch hair. Hence, there is no absolute distinction that can be made. Hair from other forest species, like rodents, carnivores, and ungulates can be differentiated without question."

http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_FAQ.asp?id=585

And it's not polyester.

On the calls, even African animals were ruled out on bioacoustic analysis at Texas A&M.

I'm sorry anyone thinks Erik Beckjord typifies anything but advanced schizophrenia. On BigfootForums, people who think there's something paranormal about this are politely directed to another board.

Meet Meldrum:

D. Jeffrey Meldrum
Associate Professor
Ph.D. , SUNY at Stony Brook, 1989
Anatomy, Evolutionary Morphology, Primatology, Paleontology

E-mail: meldd@isu.edu
Phone: 208-282-4379



Evolutionary Morphology: The relationship of form and function is not only a response to the mechanical demands of behavior, but is significantly influenced by the phylogenetic heritage of an organism, hence, the preferred expression, evolutionary morphology. My interests in evolutionary morphology encompass vertebrates broadly and primates in particular and include the diversification of positional adaptations, i.e., the morphology correlated with postural and locomotor behaviors, as well as dental morphology in the context of phylogeny reconstruction.

Hominoid Bipedalism: My investigations of primate positional behavior have included studies of terrestrial adaptations in the feet of cercopithecoids and hominoids and their implications for bipedal adaptations in early hominins. Contrasts were made between the mechanical demands of terrestrial quadrupedalism and those of bipedalism and a model was proposed for the emergence of bipedalism. Methodologies include kinematic analysis, dissection and description of bone-joint-muscle relationships, and multivariate morphometric analysis. More recently I have focused attention on the emergence of the unique traits associated with the modern human form of striding endurance walking and running.

Cryptozoology: My interests in bipedalism have directed attention to the possibility of a relic hominoid biped, the North American ape, commonly referred to as Sasquatch. The extensive footprint evidence for this legendary ape, suggests a flat flexible foot, retaining the hominoid pattern of the midtarsal break. Fieldwork is underway to obtain DNA evidence.

Platyrrhine Evolution: In addition to terrestrial adaptations, I am interested in the primate adaptive radiation and niche partitioning in the arboreal habitus. The colonization and radiation of the New World primates, or platyrrhines, on the island continent of South America provide an intriguing model for this evolutionary study. Studies have included adaptations for hindlimb suspension, the evolution of the prehensile tail, and the analysis of postcranial adaptations of fossil species. In order to better understand the historical pattern of primate diversification, I have participated in paleontological field projects to South America, collecting primate fossils from the Miocene of Colombia and Argentina. The analysis and description of new fossil specimens reveals the increase in taxonomic diversity and appearance of derived adaptations for feeding and positional behaviors.

Vertebrate Paleontology: As an Affiliate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology with the Idaho Museum of Natural History, I have broadened my interests in vertebrate paleontology. Fieldwork exploring the evolution of mid-Tertiary faunas of the intermountain basins of the northern Rockies is ongoing.

Representative Work:

2004 Meldrum, DJ. Midfoot flexibility, fossil footprints, and Sasquatch steps: New perspectives on the evolution of bipedalism. J. Scientific Exploration 18:67-79.

2004 Meldrum, DJ. Fossilized Hawaiian footprints compared to Laetoli hominid footprints. In DJ Meldrum and CE Hilton (eds.), From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. pp. 63-84, New York: Kluwer Academic and Plenum Publishing.

2004 Hilton, CE and Meldrum, DJ, Walkers, Runners, Transporters. In DJ Meldrum and CE Hilton (eds.), From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. pp. 1-8, New York: Kluwer Academic and Plenum Publishing.

2004 Meldrum, DJ and Hilton, CE (eds.), From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. New York: Kluwer Academic and Plenum Publishing.

2002 Hartwig, WC and Meldrum, DJ. Miocene platyrrhines of the northern Neotropics. In WC Hartwig (ed.) The Primate Fossil Record. pp. 175-188, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2002 Meldrum, DJ and Jenecke, S. An Eocene titanothere from the Pahsimeroi Valley, Idaho. In: Akersten, WA, Thompson, ME, Meldrum, DJ and Rapp, RA, and McDonald, HG (eds.). And Whereas-Papers on the Vertebrate Paleontology of Idaho Honoring John A. White, Volume 2. Idaho Museum of Natural History Occasional Papers 37, pp. 18-22.

2002 Akersten, WA, Thompson, ME, Meldrum, DJ and Rapp, RA, and McDonald, HG (eds.). And Whereas-Papers on the Vertebrate Paleontology of Idaho Honoring John A. White, Volume 2. Idaho Museum of Natural History Occasional Papers 37, 192 pp.

1998 Akersten, WA, McDonald, HG, Meldrum, DJ and Flint, MET (eds.) And Whereas-Papers on the Vertebrate Paleontology of Idaho, Volume 1. Idaho Museum of Natural History Occasional Paper 36, 216 pp.

1998 Kay, RF, Johnson, D and Meldrum, DJ. A new pitheciin primate from the middle Miocene of Argentina. Am. J. Primatol. 45:317-336.

http://www.isu.edu/bios/Professors_Staff/meldrum_d.htm Time for a little dinner theatre:

LAL arrives at BFRO headquarters one bright, sunny morning and notices that a co-worker's cubicle has been cleaned out.

LAL (to boss): Hey, what happened to Ralph?

Boss: He was terminated for drug use. The results of his urinalysis came back negative. The lab could not identify any known contraband substances in his system.

LAL (shaking head): Tsk tsk. He was obviously hopped up on some exotic new designer scag they couldn't identify.

Boss: Yeah, obviously. A real shame. You think you know a person.

[Bronze Dog]

Originally posted by Psiload
Time for a little dinner theatre:

LAL arrives at BFRO headquarters one bright, sunny morning and notices that a co-worker's cubicle has been cleaned out.

LAL (to boss): Hey, what happened to Ralph?

Boss: He was terminated for drug use. The results of his urinalysis came back negative. The lab could not identify any known contraband substances in his system.

LAL (shaking head): Tsk tsk. He was obviously hopped up on some exotic new designer scag they couldn't identify.

Boss: Yeah, obviously. A real shame. You think you know a person.
:roll:

[Correa Neto]

Originally posted by LAL
There's a report of a near collision in Don Hunter's book (with Dahinden). The animal calmly inspected the vehicle afterward. There's a similar report from Minnesota. There are probably many more. I was looking for something else when I found those.

Pumas, jaguars, wolves and deer are hit by cars. Unfortunately, even when their populations are small, as pointed by UrsulaV. I should also add the case of "nomadic" jaguars in Southeastern Brazil. These animals live close to large cites at Minas Gerais state. The area, that I´ve been working in since the early 90s, is composed by a mixture of grazing fields, tropical rainforests and three or two types of bush vegetation. There are intense mining activities, several small rural properties as well as several trekking, mountaineering, biking and caving sites in state parks and environmental reserves.The jaguars forage on armadillos, agouti and the occasional cow. To avoid being hunted (what is no longer allowed), the animals developed a nomadic lifestyle. Instead having a fixed territory, they are constantly moving, never staying for too long at a single place. They are a realtively frequent sight. I´ve lost count of the jaguar tracks I found. Some years ago a young couple entered a hotel room, on a very funny incident. Unfortunately, sometimes one becomes roadkills. Population estimates are between 30 to 100 individuals. This figure, as well as the description of their habits, were provided some years ago by a friend who works in a government environmental preservation organization. Now, compare this with the evidence left by bigfoot, specially when it comes to their inferred density population...

Originally posted by LAL
If one is lucky enough to hit it. The standard reaction seems to be panic and slamming on the brakes.

To panic and slam the brakes at a gravel road is not a good idea. Assuming you do not completely loose control of the car, it´s wheels will lock -unless its ABS- and the car will slide towards the animal, hitting it. Even if the car has ABS system, the smaller attriction coeficient from unpaved roads will increase the breaking distance. A roadkill bigfoot should have come out so far.

Originally posted by LAL
Ishi's people were undetected in California as well, also for fifteen years.

Of course, our government isn't looking for Sasquatches. They range singly and in small family groups. There was a kind of "feeding lot" found near Nelson Creek after the sighting April 16th. They do leave sign.

But there are plenty of people who work in the field -many hired by the government, other by private companies, even in remote areas. Wildlife photographers, biologists, botanics, zoologists, surveyors, geologists, etc. And plenty of people who go to remote areas to have fun: hunters, amateur photographers, mountaineers, climbers, etc. All these people carry equipment that could be used to obtain good records of their existence. Not just some blurry pictures of fuzzy things.

Originally posted by LAL
Peter Bryne gave up on trying to track them for reasons I've already gone over on this board. Some dogs freeze, but some seem sensitive to the smell. They could be useful. They could also give advance warning.

There's been better success with luring:

http://www.bfro.net/NEWS/pnw_newsle...alExpedMain.htm

People hunt jaguars with dogs. Acting as a group, the dogs surround the cat. Dogs can guide a herd of cattle and face bulls. Don´t you think its a bit weird to say they freeze when facing a big ape? Are you sure the reports of such diferent behavior are not due to incidents involving dogs of different races and/or creation? A pincher raised inside an apartment would be more likely to freeze when seeing a wild animal, even if its a deer... "My dog just froze" is nothing really extraordinary in this case.

So, why not just set baits with motion-activated remote cameras nearby? Some hunters set them to know what sort of game they can count on. Why none of them managed to catch a snapshot of bigfoot walking around? Note that some of these are IR cams. No flash needed. Do you really belive the bigfeet are so smart that they can evade or destroy them all? Humans, as far as I´m concerned, quite often are caught by these cameras...

Originally posted by LAL
See the notes. The Pacific Northwest has so much water it would be hard to know where to start. There are lakes, streams, rivers, no water holes that I remember. Mud wallow in Skookum Meadow, yes.

Find a place where animals gather to drink (tracks will tell you where they are). Animals -specially those who walk in packs- tend to drink water at selected spots, where the river banks make access to the water easier and/or allow the whole pack to drink at once for example. Predators quite often also go to these places, either to drink or to feed on those who are drinking. Find a well-used trail. Place remote cameras at these places or stay there awaiting. If nothing shows up, accept that there´s nothing there.

Originally posted by LAL
Skamania County had the first ordinance ever in this country. It made us kind of famous for a while. Not many people know about it. There's one in B.C., as I recall.

The mayor of a city here in Brazil once built a "saucerport" to receive our friendly alien neighbours back in the 80s. He got some publicity and turists, but no landings so far. Maybe because there are no aliens around.

Originally posted by LAL
You might want to ask Bob Gimlin about getting rich and famous. (He sold his rights to the film for $26.) Or Bobby Clarke. Seems no one but the Cree in Norway House is following up.

Maybe because there are no bigfeet around.

Originally posted by LAL
There's a report of a decaying body being found by two little girls who decided they'd better not say anything. One reported it when she grew up.

Wouldn´t they be relative to those girls who took pictures if faires? Memories change with time, so it´s not exactly a good piece of evidence. They could have seen the carcass of anything -if indeed they saw something.

Originally posted by LAL
Gorillas were once thought to be a Native myth. There seems to be a new and very large Chimpanzee species in the Congo. Native tales of "Lioncrushers" were dismissed there, too.

And gorillas were found and described. An expedition went to their habitat, hired some local guides and shoot a couple of gorillas. Now, compare the resources and the technology avaliable to those who found the gorillas to what´s at today´s biologists and hunters reach. Some equipments nowdays at use were not even dreamt a few decades ago. And still, no bigfoot was captured, alive or dead.

Regarding the new chimp species, the reports are not confirmed. But, even if a new species is found, it will actually do no good for the big foot cause. Why? Scientists can find a new large ape species in Congo - a logistical nightmare (name a problem: access, equipment maintenance, endemic diseases, politics, etc. and you´ll find it there). However, a species of 2+meter high apes manages to elude scientists, hunters, (both pro and amateur) wildlife photographers and trucks in USA... And something between 2000 to 14000 of them are supposed to exist.

Originally posted by LAL
I'm not saying no bodies of anything are ever found. It's possible Sasquatch bodies have been seen but mistaken for bear from a distance, which are seldom if ever found dead either, in the PNW, even by Rangers.

And no one ever comes close enough to notice the difference? Rangers surely might want to know why the bears died (disease, poacher activity, etc.).

Originally posted by LAL
It has, by all of the above. Depends on what you regard as "solid", I guess.

The definitive one: a body (or part of one); but good quality footage would be a start.

Originally posted by LAL
I lived near a national forest. There was one patrol car to cover the north end of the county (Mt. St. Helens is in it). The Sheriff's department opposed the national monument because they didn't want to have to outfit another officer to keep track of tourists. Rangers stuck to their stations unless they were doing a timber cruise, tourists (there weren't many until the Scenic Act was passed over the citizens' screaming objections) stuck to campgrounds and trails. Berry pickers stuck to the Huckleberry fieds, and mushroom hunters looked for Chantrelles by day, not Sasquatches at night. Even so, Skamania County has the highest number of documented sightings in the "lower 48".

I liked the story of the ranger (in California, I think) who said if there was anything like that around, he'd have seen it, and then drove right by a trackway covered in plastic awaiting casting.

But still, people see, take pictures, find tracks and bodies of bears, pumas, deer, wolves, etc. Why wildlife photographers have not yet produced nice images of these animals? These guys spend months in the field, tracking animals during the day and the night .

And ever considered the possibility that, assuming the ranger story is true, he drove over the track because he realised they were not out of the ordinary?

Originally posted by LAL
A mushroom hunter was separated from his friends and lost in the Gifford Pinchot on talus not long before I left the state. They knew where to look, approximately, but his remains weren't found until the following spring. A young hunter was lost in Oregon around the same time, also with companions, in comparatively open woodland. Despite extensive searching, even after the official search was called off, his body was discovered accidently the next year. These people wanted to be found. A couple of dozen aircraft have vanished in the PNW. Why aren't all these hikers and berry pickers and hunters bringing back pieces of planes?

Oh, but the bodies were found, weren´t they? Even if by accident, a long time ago. And note that you can´t say "they wanted to be found". Dead people don´t want anything. Not all lost people know how to act if they get lost, many manage to bring themselves in to greater problems. People are accidented in places that are very hard to spot, heavy rain and river currents may carry a body, snow may cover it. An important point is that the bodies were found a long time later, they were not found during the extensive organised search. What shows us scavenger activity was not enough to terminate the remains. And that bigfeet corpses should be found, even if their numbers are small, and found even by people who were not looking for them...

Originally posted by LAL
They are at least good enough to indicate they're probably not of something else. The PGF remains the best and it's held up to scrutiny for close to forty years.

Here are some more questions to help you out

Not really. There are plenty of much better amateur pictures and films from real animals. Specially nowdays, with the proliferation of digital cameras.

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
Regarding hair analysis by Dr. Fahrenbach:

Hair analysis seems to be going nowhere.

RayG


Yep. Tissue is needed.

How many humans do you know, blonde or otherwise, shed hair of the length described that has never been cut?

Fahrenbach has also said he has a dozen he's willing to identify as Sasquatch. At least they know what it isn't.

I would expect hair of a close relative to resemble human hair. It isn't fur. How many other primates are there in North America besides us?

"I have by now a dozen purported sasquatch hair samples, all morphologically congruent (which rules out hoaxing) and all effectively indistinguishable from a human hair of the particular structure (great variability is available among the latter). DNA extracted from both hair shaft or roots (hair demonstrably fresh) was too fragmented to permit gene sequencing. That characteristic is also sometimes found in human hair that lacks the medulla (as does sasquatch hair - at least what I am willing to identify as such)."

http://www.bfro.net/REF/THEORIES/WHF/dnatests.htm

[LAL]

Originally posted by Correa Neto


>snip<

This figure, as well as the description of their habits, were provided some years ago by a friend who works in a government environmental preservation organization. Now, compare this with the evidence left by bigfoot, specially when it comes to their inferred density population...


It would be great if any US government agency would fund someone like that.



To panic and slam the brakes at a gravel road is not a good idea. Assuming you do not completely loose control of the car, it´s wheels will lock -unless its ABS- and the car will slide towards the animal, hitting it. Even if the car has ABS system, the smaller attriction coeficient from unpaved roads will increase the breaking distance. A roadkill bigfoot should have come out so far.


Should? Read some of the reports. A sighting that got me interested in this was by a man named Cox who drove out of a fog bank on Hwy 14 (paved) east of Beacon Rock about 3:30 AM.
The creature stepped 8' up a bank, confirmed by the tracks. ( I knew one of the deputies involved and recently found the story in Sasquatch/Bigfoot; The Search For North America's Incredible Creature, by Don Hunter with René Dahinden.)

How long would it take one to get across a road with a stride like that?



But there are plenty of people who work in the field -many hired by the government, other by private companies, even in remote areas. Wildlife photographers, biologists, botanics, zoologists, surveyors, geologists, etc. And plenty of people who go to remote areas to have fun: hunters, amateur photographers, mountaineers, climbers, etc. All these people carry equipment that could be used to obtain good records of their existence. Not just some blurry pictures of fuzzy things.


The chances of a night sighting are 1500 times greater than for a daytime sighting. Let's hope all these folks have there wits about them and their flashes screwed in.



People hunt jaguars with dogs. Acting as a group, the dogs surround the cat. Dogs can guide a herd of cattle and face bulls. Don´t you think its a bit weird to say they freeze when facing a big ape? Are you sure the reports of such diferent behavior are not due to incidents involving dogs of different races and/or creation? A pincher raised inside an apartment would be more likely to freeze when seeing a wild animal, even if its a deer... "My dog just froze" is nothing really extraordinary in this case.


One first hand account of dog behavior soon after the Cox sighting concerned a part Mastiff who was afraid of nothing, until he froze and bristled and refused to go out. He lived in the woods. This is mentioned in the book as well, but I don't know if it was the same dog.



So, why not just set baits with motion-activated remote cameras nearby?


Been done. Read the field notes yet?


Some hunters set them to know what sort of game they can count on. Why none of them managed to catch a snapshot of bigfoot walking around? Note that some of these are IR cams. No flash needed. Do you really belive the bigfeet are so smart that they can evade or destroy them all? Humans, as far as I´m concerned, quite often are caught by these cameras....


Stay tuned..............




Find a place where animals gather to drink (tracks will tell you where they are). Animals -specially those who walk in packs- tend to drink water at selected spots, where the river banks make access to the water easier and/or allow the whole pack to drink at once for example. Predators quite often also go to these places, either to drink or to feed on those who are drinking. Find a well-used trail. Place remote cameras at these places or stay there awaiting. If nothing shows up, accept that there´s nothing there.


You've never been to the Pacific Northwest, have you? It doesn't work that way.

Read the field notes.

Wouldn´t they be relative to those girls who took pictures if faires? Memories change with time, so it´s not exactly a good piece of evidence. They could have seen the carcass of anything -if indeed they saw something. [/QUOTE]
[/B]

The girls you refer to made the fairies.
One as an adult remembered nails, not claws. The carcass was pretty decayed. Green suggested a search of the area to see if some bones might have survived, but I don't know if this was ever done.



And gorillas were found and described. An expedition went to their habitat, hired some local guides and shoot a couple of gorillas. Now, compare the resources and the technology avaliable to those who found the gorillas to what´s at today´s biologists and hunters reach. Some equipments nowdays at use were not even dreamt a few decades ago. And still, no bigfoot was captured, alive or dead.


No full-scale scientific expedition has been sent to date.



Regarding the new chimp species, the reports are not confirmed.


And Dr. Williams is in disgrace.

"Comments on the DNA Tests

Here are some comments received so far with the DNA results:
They are based on the hypervariable segment of the Mitochondrial Genome.
An alternative to sampling the same few animals over and over again is that we are dealing with a very inbred and marginal population in which even a large number of animals could share identical or or near identical haplotypes.
The chimpanzees we have so far sampled and sequenced from East of the Ubangui seem to consistently lack this large amount of genetic diversity characteristic for all other chimpanzee populations.
It means that the chimps of Central and Eastern Africa really do belong to a common cluster (subspecies). But within that cluster no clear partitioning of schweinfurthii versus troglodytes.
Several samples of the last batch group with no other sequences they come out of the root of the Ptt Pts cluster and form their own branch.

and from a morphologist:

There is a general misunderstanding about genetics including by those that are working with it. Genetic analysis is not presently a very accurate method for determining relationships of populations. Moreover it is long, labrious and costly and necessitates a large sample to make any sense of it."

http://www.karlammann.com/bondo.html



But, even if a new species is found, it will actually do no good for the big foot cause. Why? Scientists can find a new large ape species in Congo - a logistical nightmare (name a problem: access, equipment maintenance, endemic diseases, politics, etc. and you´ll find it there). However, a species of 2+meter high apes manages to elude scientists, hunters, (both pro and amateur) wildlife photographers and trucks in USA... And something between 2000 to 14000 of them are supposed to exist.


On the continent.
Science is waiting for someone to bring in a body. Once someone brings in a body, funding may be available to bring in a body. ;)



And no one ever comes close enough to notice the difference? Rangers surely might want to know why the bears died (disease, poacher activity, etc.).

I've mentioned bears aren't found either. How close would you want to come to some big rotting, maggotty hunk of something, especially if you were a hunter hot on the trail of a deer? Much of the land is privately owned. No rangers.

I lived in the forest. I seldom saw anyone unless I went to town.



And ever considered the possibility that, assuming the ranger story is true, he drove over the track because he realised they were not out of the ordinary?



He drove beside them, not over them, and didn't even notice the plastic. They were covered because they were huge, hominid tracks. That's out of the ordinary. He had just been talking to the investigators.



Oh, but the bodies were found, weren´t they? Even if by accident, a long time ago. And note that you can´t say "they wanted to be found". Dead people don´t want anything.



I obviously meant they wanted to be found when they were alive. It was known where they were last seen, but even professional rescue teams couldn't find them. The remains were discovered accidently much too late.



An important point is that the bodies were found a long time later, they were not found during the extensive organised search. What shows us scavenger activity was not enough to terminate the remains. And that bigfeet corpses should be found, even if their numbers are small, and found even by people who were not looking for them...



I found almost nothing of the corpse of a nearly 16 hand mare after a year and I knew exactly where to look.

I don't know what condition the human remains were in. Both had gone through the winter. One was found on talus, in the open, not deep forest, the other in relatively open woodland.

Peter Bryne said that trying to track a Sasquatch was like looking for a moving needle in a haystack. He also said the forests of the PNW are denser than any he'd ever hunted in, and that includes the jungles of Sumatra.



Not really. There are plenty of much better amateur pictures and films from real animals. Specially nowdays, with the proliferation of digital cameras.

Bobby Clarke had his on autofocus and it focused on tree branches instead of the figure. The branches are nice and clear.

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

Under the microscope (Fig. 2), the average diameter of hair is 65 µm (40-90 µm), these values derived from 15 separately collected samples in four States.

Is there some significance to the diameter of the hair? Doesn't human hair fall between 50-100 microns in diameter?

RayG

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

How many humans do you know, blonde or otherwise, shed hair of the length described that has never been cut?

You left out an important bit: "...and was indistinguishable from human hair by any criterion."

Fahrenbach has also said he has a dozen he's willing to identify as Sasquatch.

Speculation at best. This is what he has actually said:

"All purported sasquatch hairs in my possession (11 regional samples) show a reddish tinge under the microscope, lack a medulla and are indistinguishable from human hair. Efforts at DNA analysis were unsuccessful." -- Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, Ph.D., Beaverton, Oregon - October 2, 1998

and again,

"I have by now a dozen purported sasquatch hair samples, all morphologically congruent (which rules out hoaxing) and all effectively indistinguishable from a human hair of the particular structure (great variability is available among the latter)." -- Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, Ph.D., November 3, 1999

He may claim they're sasquatch hairs, but he can't prove it.

At least they know what it isn't.

I have my doubts. Can you answer these earlier questions about Fahrenbach?:
What is his specific area of scientific expertise?
Is he qualified to do hair analysis?
Has he samples of ALL North American animals for comparison purposes? (wolverine, moose, etc. etc.)
Is Henner considered a hair identification expert outside the field of bigfoot?

Did you check out those links I gave in an earlier post about microscopic hair analysis being nothing more than junk science?

If microscopic hair identification is so unreliable, why do you place so much importance on it?

It's interesting that according to the FBI's Handbook on Forensic Services:
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/handbook/intro8.htm#hairs
"Hair examinations can determine whether hairs are animal or human." Yet according to Fahrenbach, the hairs he thinks belong to sasquatch are "indistinguishable from human hair."

I would expect hair of a close relative to resemble human hair. It isn't fur. How many other primates are there in North America besides us?

This doesn't just resemble human hair, it is "indistinguishable from human hair."

"I have by now a dozen purported sasquatch hair samples, all morphologically congruent (which rules out hoaxing) and all effectively indistinguishable from a human hair of the particular structure (great variability is available among the latter). DNA extracted from both hair shaft or roots (hair demonstrably fresh) was too fragmented to permit gene sequencing. That characteristic is also sometimes found in human hair that lacks the medulla (as does sasquatch hair - at least what I am willing to identify as such)."

I've already used that quote myself. It's the November, 1999 update, and notice how he says "purported sasquatch hair", and that they were all "indistinguishable from a human hair". His very next sentence after the portion you quoted is this:

"I am concentrating now on blood or tissue, as the hair holds no promise."

I gather by that he means identification is not possible. Do we agree on that?

RayG

[LTC8K6]

I think I will compile anecdotes where people did not see signs of bigfoot in the woods, since Lu likes to present anecdotes where people claim to have seen such signs. I will start with a few of my own, and then ask some relatives for woodsy stories.

I invite others at this forum to share their woodsy stories as well. Bigfoot or non.

**********
I went out into the woods yesterday and I didn't see a bigfoot, or any big footprints.

I was driving along a wooded road a few days ago, stopped and got out to observe the scenery, and noticed a 6' high muddy bank had been disturbed. I saw no bigfoot sign at all.

About a month ago, I noticed a large pine tree had fallen in my neighbor's wooded back yard. I went over to see what happened. I saw no sign of bigfoot whatsoever. There were no footprints save my own.

I stayed in the woods several times for Uncle Sam, including a few memorable weeks in the deep, dark, Mark Twain National Forest. I never saw any bigfoot footprints, hairs, or butt prints. This included a lot of 0 dark thirty time.

Last Thursday, I was in the deep woods of Virginia for several hours. I saw no Sasquatch prints, or any other sign of large primates save my own species. This included driving down a couple of isolated trails.

**********

[LTC8K6]

If they were broken off 12" below the soilline, it seems they might have been lifted and thrown.

Good lord! You should be embarrassed.

Too bad the researcher just couldn't be bothered for a couple more pics, huh? I'd hate to see the effort of a researcher who wasn't quite as interested in bigfoot as DDA. They probably wouldn't get off the couch in their frenzy to find out about a possible new large primate living in NA.

Let's see:
I am smart enough to avoid humans most of the time, including avoiding leaving tracks when I choose, and thwarting attempts to photograph me, and avoiding bait.

I am however, too dumb to just remove the cameras I don't like, and throw them into the next county, which I can apparently easily do.

Instead, I knock down valuable wildlife habitat. I leave the cameras I hate alone to be posted again on a different tree. Not only that, I knock down the trees in such a way as to advertise my presence, while avoiding leaving tracks to hide my presence, rather than just pushing the trees over, which would look natural.

I am also apparently unable to break in a door, despite my Herculean tree removing abilities.

Do I have that about right?

Can the BFRO spot Dynel? :D

[LTC8K6]

Bobby Clarke had his on autofocus and it focused on tree branches instead of the figure. The branches are nice and clear.

That video is not helping your case at all, imo.

Here again we have the possible find of the century, and the finder knows jack about operating his camera.

A later sighting by a child in the area was accompanied by footprints. Unfortunately, the human footprints sank in much deeper and were much clearer than the supposedly super heavy bigfoot's track. I guess this one forgot to conceal his prints when he conveniently stepped in this spot clear of grass.

http://birdiefoster.lockergnome.net/footprint_4.gif

http://birdiefoster.lockergnome.net/footprint_5.gif

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
You left out an important bit: "...and was indistinguishable from human hair by any criterion."


Why repost what you already posted? I've posted that site at least half a dozen times on several boards. People tend to seize on that phrase and ignore the rest.




Speculation at best. This is what he has actually said:

"All purported sasquatch hairs in my possession (11 regional samples) show a reddish tinge under the microscope, lack a medulla and are indistinguishable from human hair. Efforts at DNA analysis were unsuccessful." -- Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, Ph.D., Beaverton, Oregon - October 2, 1998

and again,

"I have by now a dozen purported sasquatch hair samples, all morphologically congruent (which rules out hoaxing) and all effectively indistinguishable from a human hair of the particular structure (great variability is available among the latter)." -- Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, Ph.D., November 3, 1999

He may claim they're sasquatch hairs, but he can't prove it.



I have my doubts. Can you answer these earlier questions about Fahrenbach?:
What is his specific area of scientific expertise?
Is he qualified to do hair analysis?
Has he samples of ALL North American animals for comparison purposes? (wolverine, moose, etc. etc.)
Is Henner considered a hair identification expert outside the field of bigfoot?


He's an expert in microscopy and was a research scientist with the Oregon Regional Primate Center in Beaverton, Oregon. Evidently he became interested after hair was brought to him. Have you read some of his other stuff?

http://www.invertebrate.ws/seaspider/start.htm

The DNA testing on those was done at OSU. The Skookum Cast hair was tested at a lab in BC. There've been 25 hais found to be "unknown animal" or "unknown primate", according to Roger Knights. I don't know his sources yet.

I'll see what else I can dig up on him.


Did you check out those links I gave in an earlier post about microscopic hair analysis being nothing more than junk science? ]

I skimmed them. I'll read them more thoroughly when I have more time.


If microscopic hair identification is so unreliable, why do you place so much importance on it?



I don't. I was asking another poster. I could have said, "What about trees twisted off 8' above the ground?"
It's a part of the evidence, though not a very big part.

I'm trying to dispell the notion that there's nothing but anecdotal evidence.



It's interesting that according to the FBI's Handbook on Forensic Services:
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/handbook/intro8.htm#hairs
"Hair examinations can determine whether hairs are animal or human." Yet according to Fahrenbach, the hairs he thinks belong to sasquatch are "indistinguishable from human hair."


This doesn't just resemble human hair, it is "indistinguishable from human hair."


But he doesn't say it is human hair and there's quite a difference between hair and fur.



I've already used that quote myself. It's the November, 1999 update, and notice how he says "purported sasquatch hair", and that they were all "indistinguishable from a human hair". His very next sentence after the portion you quoted is this:



Then you should know his credentials.




I gather by that he means identification is not possible. Do we agree on that?]



Uh, no.

Funny, I thought reinforcements had arrived when you popped in from BFF. Instead I have another sceptic to deal with, it seems.
:D :p
What do you think the Skookum imprint is if not what it seems to be?

[Skeptical Greg]

I'm trying to dispell the notion that there's nothing but anecdotal evidence. Trying?

Think a minute.. How would one go about dispelling the notion that there is more than anecdotal evidence?

Hint: It is not by telling another anecdote.



This doesn't just resemble human hair, it is "indistinguishable from human hair."
--------------------------------------------------------------

LAL:

But he doesn't say it is human hair and there's quite a difference between hair and fur. What part of "indistinguishable from human hair ", Is confusing you ?

[FFed]

Sorry for such a late response. My time is limited and I don't get the chance to visit JREF much these days. :(


Originally posted by LAL
Sure, except that they're seldom portrayed as dangerous, Cannibal Woman notwithstanding.



Neverthethess, they do portray some as dangerous, such as Ogopogo.

I'm not saying no bodies of anything are ever found. It's possible Sasquatch bodies have been seen but mistaken for bear from a distance, which are seldom if ever found dead either, in the PNW, even by Rangers

Until recently, I was a BC Park Ranger. I have found several dead black bears on my patrols among other numerous dead critters. The myth of black bear bodies not being, or rarely, found is simply not true.
It was actually my job as a Ranger which taught me never to rely on what an eye witness has seen. Part of my job involved dealing with bear complaints from hikers and monitoring bear activity. Many times I have had a group of hikers argue over the size of the bear they saw an hour earlier. Some say it was huge, others say it was small. Some groups couldn't even agree on how many bears they saw, what kind of bear, or even if it was a bear at all. I can't tell you how many times I have checked out bear complaints to learn it was just a friggin dog.

One quick story. One morning I encountered two teen age girls hiding in a pit toilet. They told me a bear was chasing them the previous night and they had to hide in the pit toilet and they spent the night there because they were scared to come out. They were really freaked out and very scared. So after investigating it further, checking on tracks etc, the story didn't add up. So I questioned them further and after awhile the real story came out. The bear was down the beach, probably never even saw them, yet they freaked out and ran to the pit toilets to safety.

[Correa Neto]

Originally posted by LAL
It would be great if any US government agency would fund someone like that.

Surely the US government has people hired in conservation agencies or organization of some sort. A state park, for example, must have people who study wildlife for various purposes. These professionals study the number of specimens, their territories, migration patterns, check for diseases, introduced foreign species, etc. This is needed, for example for management during hunting seasons, stabilishing the conservation areas´ protection zones, planning of touristic trails, campsites etc. And not only animals are studyed, but also plants. That´s just one more reason why a population of large unknown mammals in USA is highly unlikely to exist. There are plenty of qualified people working out there.

Originally posted by LAL
Should? Read some of the reports. A sighting that got me interested in this was by a man named Cox who drove out of a fog bank on Hwy 14 (paved) east of Beacon Rock about 3:30 AM.
The creature stepped 8' up a bank, confirmed by the tracks. ( I knew one of the deputies involved and recently found the story in Sasquatch/Bigfoot; The Search For North America's Incredible Creature, by Don Hunter with René Dahinden.)

How long would it take one to get across a road with a stride like that?

So, horses, deer and great felines should never become roadkills, since they can move very fast an jum great distances. However, they do get killed by trucks.

Oh, someone has ever mentioned that fog can cause weird illusions?

Originally posted by LAL
The chances of a night sighting are 1500 times greater than for a daytime sighting. Let's hope all these folks have there wits about them and their flashes screwed in.

Wildlife photographers working at night without the proper equipment?

How were the chances calculated? And please note that at night, common things may look quite different. Can´t some bias have been introduced? What sor of filter is used regarding these anedoctal informations? All sighting reports are accepted?

Originally posted by LAL
One first hand account of dog behavior soon after the Cox sighting concerned a part Mastiff who was afraid of nothing, until he froze and bristled and refused to go out. He lived in the woods. This is mentioned in the book as well, but I don't know if it was the same dog.

See? Sketchy reports, doubts, uncertain information...

Originally posted by LAL
Been done. Read the field notes yet?
Stay tuned..............


Best wishes. But I will not hold my breath.

Originally posted by LAL
You've never been to the Pacific Northwest, have you? It doesn't work that way.

Read the field notes.

No, I have not been to Pacific Northwest, but I happen to know people who worked there - in the field, for a long time, and others who live there. And regarding the field notes, don´t you think its a bit weird that hunting tactics that work everywhere else would do not work there?

Originally posted by LAL
[B]The girls you refer to made the fairies.
One as an adult remembered nails, not claws. The carcass was pretty decayed. Green suggested a search of the area to see if some bones might have survived, but I don't know if this was ever done.

Memories change with time. Missing parts are quite often "filled in". And if the carcass was pretty decayed, don´t you think the girls could not -assuming they really saw something- misidentified it? Once again, uncertain and unreliable information.

Originally posted by LAL
No full-scale scientific expedition has been sent to date.

But there´s no need for that! There are already lots of people working there! Why a biologist working say with, bear population
has not yet by chance found evidence of bigfoot?

Originally posted by LAL
On the continent.
Science is waiting for someone to bring in a body. Once someone brings in a body, funding may be available to bring in a body. ;)

But my point (as well as other posters) is - a body should have been found already!

Originally posted by LAL
I've mentioned bears aren't found either. How close would you want to come to some big rotting, maggotty hunk of something, especially if you were a hunter hot on the trail of a deer? Much of the land is privately owned. No rangers.

I lived in the forest. I seldom saw anyone unless I went to town.

All people who walk in the are hunters? And no hunter is curious? And why did the girls that supposedly saw a bigfoot corpse would have came close to a "big rotting, maggotty hunk of something"?

And as far as I know, the claim that bear carcasses are not found is not very solid. Animal carcasses are found in the wild, even in areas plenty of scavengers.

I worked in tropical rainforests, among other types of areas. I worked in conservation areas, in private-owned areas, far or close to cities. I have found corpses of animals on several ocasions, big and small, not to mention roadkills. Humans have the habit of wandering around. Note that many - if not most- bifoot sightings are in camp areas and roads. And these are not exactly desert places.

Originally posted by LAL
He drove beside them, not over them, and didn't even notice the plastic. They were covered because they were huge, hominid tracks. That's out of the ordinary. He had just been talking to the investigators.

Alleged hominid tracks.

Originally posted by LAL
I obviously meant they wanted to be found when they were alive. It was known where they were last seen, but even professional rescue teams couldn't find them. The remains were discovered accidently much too late.

I found almost nothing of the corpse of a nearly 16 hand mare after a year and I knew exactly where to look.

I don't know what condition the human remains were in. Both had gone through the winter. One was found on talus, in the open, not deep forest, the other in relatively open woodland.

But they were found!!! Why no bigfoot remain so far?

Originally posted by LAL
Peter Bryne said that trying to track a Sasquatch was like looking for a moving needle in a haystack. He also said the forests of the PNW are denser than any he'd ever hunted in, and that includes the jungles of Sumatra.

Now, if the forest is so dense at ground level, then the existence of large animals are not favored. Dense vegetation at the ground level renders the movment of large animals quite difficult. This is one of the main reasons why there are few large mammals in South America Tropical Rainforests. Tapirs, that may be above 250kg, are semi-aquatic.

There are indeed elephants, gorillas and rhinos living in tropical rainforests such as those from Africa and Sumatra. However, these animals create trails for their movments (not to mention that elephants and rhinos that live inside these forests are smaller than those living at opne fields). And a detail that is forgotten by many people: The tropical rainforests inhabited by these animals are relatively open at ground level.

Sumatra is a special case. It is inhabited by lizzards and other animals that can glide from a tree to another. These adaptations werer developed because the spacing between the trees is larger than in other tropical rainforests. What makes easier for elephants and rhinos to move among them - but still across preterminated paths.

Now, all of this adds another element of implausibility for the existence of a population of unknown large mammals in North America.

And if the forest bigfeet are supposed to live are not that dense... Then someone used a poor excuse.

People can track felines (big and small), deer, gorillas, racoons, wolverines, bear, wolves, moose, etc. But they can´t track a 2+ meter-high ape? Don´t you think its a bit weird and implausible?

Originally posted by LAL
Bobby Clarke had his on autofocus and it focused on tree branches instead of the figure. The branches are nice and clear.

He could not use manual focus?

[UrsulaV]

Originally posted by LAL

Peter Bryne said that trying to track a Sasquatch was like looking for a moving needle in a haystack. He also said the forests of the PNW are denser than any he'd ever hunted in, and that includes the jungles of Sumatra.

I'm no tracker, and my opinion can easily be dismissed as a non-expert, but that strikes me as a load. I've lived in the Pacific Northwest, in the Cascades and in other places, and it was an infinitely easier forest to move in than anything I encountered in the Midwest or down here in North Carolina. I used to wander around all the time, and while there were plenty of spots to conceal a large mammal--I had a few thrilling encounters with elk that way--it wasn't particularly dense, and visibility went surprisingly far. You could hunt with a bow and arrow, and some of my relatives did. The old clearcuts were much worse, because there weren't any tall trees to choke out the undergrowth, so you were smashing your way through shoulder high brush without trails. There were the usual thick patches in the woods, of course, but for the most part, not so bad, presumably because tall pines kept the sunlight down to the point where the undergrowth was low. It wasn't until you got into stuff that had been heavily logged years before, that didn't have the light competition to keep things in check, that it got bad.

Whereas a lot of other wooded areas I've encountered in other parts of the country were like walking into a solid wall. You'd need a machete to get five feet. There's a BIG difference, and the Oregon woods were like gauze by comparison.

My point here is that the Pacific Northwest is obviously not uniform in density--logging and development wreaked an enormous toll. Undoubtedly there are areas that are denser than any jungle and hard to press through. I wouldn't question that, although I'd like to know which specific tract he was talking about. However, saying that the forests of the whole Pacific Northwest are denser than Sumatran jungle is just patently untrue--some of 'em might be, but a lot of 'em aren't even close. What CHUNK of the Pacific Northwest is denser than Sumatra?

If you wish to qualify that Bigfoot only lives in the really dense woods, I'm fine with that, mind you, but I had to point out that this bit does not at all square with my own firsthand experience.

[bruto]

"Bobby Clarke had his on autofocus and it focused on tree branches instead of the figure. The branches are nice and clear."

But perish the thought that this might imply a lack of skill or competence. Just rotten luck as usual.

[Skeptical Greg]

And as others have pointed out ( and I wish to focus on ), if this forest is too dense for trackers to easily move in, why are we supposed to believe an 8 foot, 800 + lb. biped ( and it's family ) is moving quickly and stealthfully through the same environment ?

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

Why repost what you already posted? I've posted that site at least half a dozen times on several boards. People tend to seize on that phrase and ignore the rest.

Maybe because it's a very significant phrase.

He's an expert in microscopy and was a research scientist with the Oregon Regional Primate Center in Beaverton, Oregon. Evidently he became interested after hair was brought to him. Have you read some of his other stuff?

http://www.invertebrate.ws/seaspider/start.htm

As Shania Twain sang, "That don't impress me much." He seems to have many interests, but it's important to ask -- Is Henner considered a hair identification expert outside the field of bigfoot?

The DNA testing on those was done at OSU. The Skookum Cast hair was tested at a lab in BC.

Gene sequencing wasn't possible in the OSU testing, and the hair sequences from the Skookum cast were "so human-like as to most likely be contaminants."

There've been 25 hairs found to be "unknown animal" or "unknown primate", according to Roger Knights. I don't know his sources yet.

But none of those 25 hairs have been proven to come from a sasquatch.

I don't. I was asking another poster. I could have said, "What about trees twisted off 8' above the ground?"
It's a part of the evidence, though not a very big part.

I'm not aware of a single report of sasquatch being observed twisting a tree.

I'm trying to dispell the notion that there's nothing but anecdotal evidence.

Twisted trees, unidentified hairs/poop, and unwitnessed vocalizations isn't going to dispell that notion.

But he doesn't say it is human hair and there's quite a difference between hair and fur.

There doesn't seem to be anything that distinguishes it from human hair. If there was such a marked difference, wouldn't he be able to positively identify the hair as non-human?

Then you should know his credentials.

Afraid not. Being a 'research scientist' isn't much in the way of credentials. I have never found a definitive answer to my question -- Is Henner considered a hair identification expert outside the field of bigfoot?

Uh, no.

So, even though Dr. Fahrenbach himself has stated:

"All purported sasquatch hairs in my possession (11 regional samples) show a reddish tinge under the microscope, lack a medulla and are indistinguishable from human hair. Efforts at DNA analysis were unsuccessful." -- Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, Ph.D., Beaverton, Oregon - October 2, 1998

and,

"I have by now a dozen purported sasquatch hair samples, all morphologically congruent (which rules out hoaxing) and all effectively indistinguishable from a human hair of the particular structure (great variability is available among the latter)." -- Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, Ph.D., November 3, 1999

you believe those hairs to be sasquatch hairs?

Funny, I thought reinforcements had arrived when you popped in from BFF. Instead I have another sceptic to deal with, it seems.

It's no secret that I'm very skeptical of a great many claims, whether it's here or at the BFF. If you've noticed, I have NEVER claimed sasquatch is impossible, or CANNOT exist. I have asked that claims be supported by evidence. In the case of hair analysis, you seem to be seeing evidence where none exists.

What do you think the Skookum imprint is if not what it seems to be?

An artifact. If a group of scientists had witnessed a squatch plunking its butt in the mud, I'd be more willing to suspend my disbelief.

RayG

[LTC8K6]

I have copious photographic evidence of alien spacecraft flying in Earth's skies.

Photographic analysts were unable to identify these craft, but they reported that they were indistinguishable from late model Boeing 747-400 series aircraft.

Since they are not B744's, but alien spacecraft, the mystery deepens. :D

[LAL]

Last Thursday, I was in the deep woods of Virginia for several hours. I saw no Sasquatch prints, or any other sign of large primates save my own species. This included driving down a couple of isolated trails.

**********

Do you have any idea what a PNW forest looks like? Have you ever been west of the Mississippi?

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
That video is not helping your case at all, imo.


Nothing helps my case at all, in your opinion.



Here again we have the possible find of the century, and the finder knows jack about operating his camera.


Right. He just got it for Christmas. He's a ferry boat operator.




A later sighting by a child in the area was accompanied by footprints. Unfortunately, the human footprints sank in much deeper and were much clearer than the supposedly super heavy bigfoot's track.


Weren't you tjhe one who was arguing The prints should be shallower because of the distribution of weight?



I guess this one forgot to conceal his prints when he conveniently stepped in this spot clear of grass.


Some have conjectured they may try to conceal tracks at times, but if that were the case Dr. Meldrum would have 0 track casts in his collection rather than 150 (available for inspection). I don't think there's much to support that.

There were a number of tracks found. Some were excavated whole instead of cast.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
I think I will compile anecdotes where people did not see signs of bigfoot in the woods, since Lu likes to present anecdotes where people claim to have seen such signs. I will start with a few of my own, and then ask some relatives for woodsy stories.

I invite others at this forum to share their woodsy stories as well. Bigfoot or non.

**********

What is intriguing about this, is that a calculated search for bigfoot yields nothing, while the actual sightings seem to occur by accident and with no planning.

Based on this, we should have thousands more sightings than are actually reported.

I can't begin to calculate how many times I haven't seen one, and now that I am on the lookout, it's doubtfull that I ever will..:(

[LAL]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
Surely the US government has people hired in conservation agencies or organization of some sort. A state park, for example, must have people who study wildlife for various purposes. These professionals study the number of specimens, their territories, migration patterns, check for diseases, introduced foreign species, etc. This is needed, for example for management during hunting seasons, stabilishing the conservation areas´ protection zones, planning of touristic trails, campsites etc. And not only animals are studyed, but also plants. That´s just one more reason why a population of large unknown mammals in USA is highly unlikely to exist. There are plenty of qualified people working out there.



Yep. And some have had sightings. Again, there has never been a proper scientific investigation, because mainstream science doesn't take it seriously.




So, horses, deer and great felines should never become roadkills, since they can move very fast an jum great distances. However, they do get killed by trucks.


There are a lot more of them. I've never seen a truck on some of those Washington backroads.


Oh, someone has ever mentioned that fog can cause weird illusions?



And tracks? This sighting was thoroughly investigated. It convinced the sherriff. I heard the waitress' story from her and knew the people who followed the double trackway for seven miles. They were quite sane.



Wildlife photographers working at night without the proper equipment?

???????????


How were the chances calculated?



"Nocturnality

The nocturnality of the sasquatch has been questioned on occasion. This trait can be considered from a statistical standpoint. Take a hypothetical area randomly seeded with sasquatches, evenly distributed during day and night. Their apparent temporal distribution will depend on them being seen by human observers. Assume a very conservative ratio of such alert observers during daylight as compared to the hours of total darkness in the mountains to be 20:1. A daylight observer will have a circular observational area with a radius of, say, 500’, over which recognition of the subject will be unambiguous, roughly 800,000 square feet. A nighttime observer has at best the expanding cone of headlights in one direction with recognition of a grey object at 300’ and an expanding width of illumination to 100’, a sector with an area of about 15,000 square feet. Factoring in the number of observers produces a ratio of 800,000 X 20 : 15,000 X 1, or better than 1,000 : 1. This 99.9% : 0.1% ratio describes how sightings should be distributed between day and night, a number that will get more extreme if flashlights or moonlight is the alternative illumination.

An actual ratio cited by Green consists of 735 daytime sightings (58%) and 540 during the night (42%), or a ratio of 1.38 to 1. If only sightings on roads are considered, the ratio shifts to 58% in favor of night sightings. This discrepancy can be interpreted as activity by the sasquatch that exposes it to being seen about 1,500 times more often at night than an even distribution would predict."



And please note that at night, common things may look quite different. Can´t some bias have been introduced? What sor of filter is used regarding these anedoctal informations? All sighting reports are accepted?

There is now at least one place to report sightings and many are followed up. Some turn out to be mistaken identity, but many check out. I've experienced "buck fever" myself, but I saw a doe, not a Sasquatch, an the illusion only lasted for an instant.

People are often reluctant to report what they've seen because of the scoffing and ridicule they receive. Read this board if you don't think that's true.



See? Sketchy reports, doubts, uncertain information...


What's sketchy about trackways that go for miles, multiple witness sightings backed up by film............


Best wishes. But I will not hold my breath.



"Nobody asked you sir, she said....."


No, I have not been to Pacific Northwest, but I happen to know people who worked there - in the field, for a long time, and others who live there. And regarding the field notes, don´t you think its a bit weird that hunting tactics that work everywhere else would do not work there?

No. And your idea of waiting at waterholes would probably work quite well in the Serengeti.


Memories change with time. Missing parts are quite often "filled in". And if the carcass was pretty decayed, don´t you think the girls could not -assuming they really saw something- misidentified it? Once again, uncertain and unreliable information.

It's unfortunate it wasn't reported at the time. But for those who think it's all illusion or paranormal nonsense or that no body has ever been seen, there's at least this one report. There's another of two burying a third, but since it was from students on a hike, who would believe them?


But there´s no need for that! There are already lots of people working there! Why a biologist working say with, bear population
has not yet by chance found evidence of bigfoot?


Tell me what biologist is working with bear in, say, Washington State?

I've already posted a link to an article by a USFS wildlife biologist who bothered to investigate.



But my point (as well as other posters) is - a body should have been found already!



Should have? Is there a timetable on this? If a team went looking for a body in a 750 sq. mi. area, rugged, riddled with lava tubes, full of rotten snags and hollow logs, an no clue about where one would be except there's a statistical possibility one is there, where would be a good place to start?



All people who walk in the are hunters? And no hunter is curious? And why did the girls that supposedly saw a bigfoot corpse would have came close to a "big rotting, maggotty hunk of something"?


As I recall, it was on a trail.

The mistaken identity is only a possibility as is the speculation there may be bones, misidentified, in a collection somewhere.

Why would a hunter (or anyone else) want to approach a stinking corpse that he'd be sure is a bear if he's one who believes Sasquatches are a myth? AS I've mentioned, bodies of anything are extremely rare in the PNW.


And as far as I know, the claim that bear carcasses are not found is not very solid. Animal carcasses are found in the wild, even in areas plenty of scavengers.

They're seldom found, not not found. Piles of elk bones are found in eastern Washington, but not in western Washington.


I worked in tropical rainforests, among other types of areas. I worked in conservation areas, in private-owned areas, far or close to cities. I have found corpses of animals on several ocasions, big and small, not to mention roadkills. Humans have the habit of wandering around. Note that many - if not most- bifoot sightings are in camp areas and roads.


Because that's where the people are.


And these are not exactly desert places.


I was referring to the border.



Alleged hominid tracks.
[QUOTE]
[B]
The language of science is cautious.
[QUOTE]
[B]
But they were found!!! Why no bigfoot remain so far?


Because they haven't been found yet? (Just a guess........)


Now, if the forest is so dense at ground level, then the existence of large animals are not favored. Dense vegetation at the ground level renders the movment of large animals quite difficult. This is one of the main reasons why there are few large mammals in South America Tropical Rainforests. Tapirs, that may be above 250kg, are semi-aquatic.

Skamania County had bear, cougar, Roosevelt elk.........Dense vegetation at ground level is Salal, Oregon grape, Devil's Club, then Vine Maple and more Vine Maple. It's quite springy and easy to get through, actually, even by bipedal hominids such as us. It's almost impossible to see through, though.



There are indeed elephants, gorillas and rhinos living in tropical rainforests such as those from Africa and Sumatra. However, these animals create trails for their movments (not to mention that elephants and rhinos that live inside these forests are smaller than those living at opne fields). And a detail that is forgotten by many people: The tropical rainforests inhabited by these animals are relatively open at ground level.


Interesting, but what does this have to do with temperate rainforests? Other than an old skid road that was being used as a game trail by a small herd of deer, I can't say I ever saw a game trail where I lived.


Sumatra is a special case. It is inhabited by lizzards and other animals that can glide from a tree to another. These adaptations werer developed because the spacing between the trees is larger than in other tropical rainforests. What makes easier for elephants and rhinos to move among them - but still across preterminated paths.


That works for them. Sasquatches don't roam in herds.


Now, all of this adds another element of implausibility for the existence of a population of unknown large mammals in North America.


Mn, no, it's apples and oranges. Good attempt at trying to prove a negative, though. I commend you.


And if the forest bigfeet are supposed to live are not that dense... Then someone used a poor excuse.


They're extremely dense where the loggers haven't got 'em. Google up some pictures.


People can track felines (big and small), deer, gorillas, racoons, wolverines, bear, wolves, moose, etc. But they can´t track a 2+ meter-high ape? Don´t you think its a bit weird and implausible?


No, because I talked to one who had spent years trying to track them. He and his team were feeding all data into computers trying to determine some kind of pattern. There was none that they could find.


He could not use manual focus?

Evidently he was a bit rattled. He apparently dropped the camera when the figure turned toward him.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Psiload
Time for a little dinner theatre:

LAL arrives at BFRO headquarters one bright, sunny morning and notices that a co-worker's cubicle has been cleaned out.

LAL (to boss): Hey, what happened to Ralph?

Boss: He was terminated for drug use. The results of his urinalysis came back negative. The lab could not identify any known contraband substances in his system.

LAL (shaking head): Tsk tsk. He was obviously hopped up on some exotic new designer scag they couldn't identify.

Boss: Yeah, obviously. A real shame. You think you know a person.

Y'know, that wouldn't even make a good skit, let alone a documentary. As for dinner, I'll cancel my order.

For starters, I have no idea where "BFRO headquarters" is. For seconders, I resent the implication that people who are willing to investigate are into drugs.

So what does any of this have to do with Dr. Meldrum?

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
Trying?

Think a minute.. How would one go about dispelling the notion that there is more than anecdotal evidence?

Hint: It is not by telling another anecdote.

It's by pointing out there is physical evidence.

What part of "indistinguishable from human hair ", Is confusing you ?

Read the whole paragraph, will you, or even the whole sentence?

And this:

"After lengthy deliberation, we (W. H. Fahrenbach, J. A. Poe, and P. Fuerst), co-authors of the intended article on the Eastern Washington hair found in August, 1995, have decided to withhold submission of the manuscript of the analysis until more DNA from tissue, preferably with attached hair, is obtained. Our studies have not yielded a sequenced mitochondrial gene fragment to determine the phylogenetic affiliation of the creature. The ambiguous results at the present time can, on the one hand, generate misplaced enthusiasm and be quoted as "proof", or, on the other hand, can be used by the opposite camp to criticize and denigrate the results unfairly."

[Blackwell]

Originally posted by LAL
There are a lot more of them [horses and deer]. I've never seen a truck on some of those Washington backroads.
It's estimated that there are only around 20 mountain lions in the region between LA and San Diego; they still manage to go and get themselves hit by cars every now and then. It's hard to believe that a Bigfoot has yet to lose a game of chicken with a vehicle.

This sighting was thoroughly investigated. It convinced the sherriff. I heard the waitress' story from her and knew the people who followed the double trackway for seven miles. They were quite sane.

I convinced the sheriff,
but I did not convince no deputy,
Oh, no, oh

(Sorry, couldn't help myself. My apologies to Bob Marley.) They may have been "quite sane," but could still have been delusional/mistaken/etc. Going back to So Cal mountain lions; rangers in the local parks are required to post mtn. lion siting warnings whenever they are reported; however, in talking with the rangers privately, they frequently comment that the "siter" had most likely mistaken a bobcat, coyote, or golden retriever for a lion. There have actually been very few confirmed sitings of the big cats. I know, it's a bigger stretch to go from "I saw a Bigfoot" to "it was actually a chipmunk," but the mind can play tricks on you. I SWEAR that on a recent mountain biking trip I saw a gigantic tarantula; I'm talking about 12 inches across with a leg the size of a baby's arm. Scared the crap out of me, and I still can't be sure of what it was (although it was most likely two squirrels humping.)

edited for stuff.

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
Read the whole paragraph, will you, or even the whole sentence?

And this:

"After lengthy deliberation, we (W. H. Fahrenbach, J. A. Poe, and P. Fuerst), co-authors of the intended article on the Eastern Washington hair found in August, 1995, have decided to withhold submission of the manuscript of the analysis until more DNA from tissue, preferably with attached hair, is obtained. Our studies have not yielded a sequenced mitochondrial gene fragment to determine the phylogenetic affiliation of the creature. The ambiguous results at the present time can, on the one hand, generate misplaced enthusiasm and be quoted as "proof", or, on the other hand, can be used by the opposite camp to criticize and denigrate the results unfairly."

That quote is an 'update', published March 20, 1998 at
http://www.bfro.net/REF/THEORIES/WHF/dnatests.htm

If you read the whole page, you'll see a further 'update', published November 3, 1999, more than a year and a half AFTER the update you've quoted, where Dr. Fahrenbach states:

I have by now a dozen purported sasquatch hair samples, all morphologically congruent (which rules out hoaxing) and all effectively indistinguishable from a human hair of the particular structure (great variability is available among the latter). DNA extracted from both hair shaft or roots (hair demonstrably fresh) was too fragmented to permit gene sequencing. That characteristic is also sometimes found in human hair that lacks the medulla (as does sasquatch hair - at least what I am willing to identify as such).

I am concentrating now on blood or tissue, as the hair holds no promise. Feces do so even less, since the DNA collecting has to be done while they are practically steaming fresh, and it is improbable in the extreme that anybody with fecal DNA expertize would stumble onto fresh sasquatch droppings.

Contrary to popular belief, I have not encountered any deliberate effort to produce a hoax with hair samples, even in the much decried case of the fiber sample gathered by Paul Freeman. The same man-made fibers have been found elsewhere in the mountains by others and may be an environmental contaminant. People like Paul Freeman submit these samples for analysis precisely because they are not sure what they are at the time of collection.

In short, Dr. Fahrenbach is saying he can't positively identify the hair samples, cannot even distinguish them from human hair, and that following the hair trail will not lead to positive results. You seem to be reading someting else into his statements, that he has positively identified sasquatch hair, for example. At least that's how it appears from my point of view.

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by Blackwell
It's estimated that there are only around 20 mountain lions in the region between LA and San Diego; they still manage to go and get themselves hit by cars every now and then. It's hard to believe that a Bigfoot has yet to lose a game of chicken with a vehicle.


There's considerably more traffic between LA and San Diego than there is between Vancouver, Washington, and White Salmon, e.g.


I convinced the sheriff,
but I did not convince no deputy,
Oh, no, oh


Cute, but the deputies were convinced as well.


They may have been "quite sane," but could still have been delusional/mistaken/etc.


Sheriff Closner kept a cast on his desk for years. Columbian film crews filmed the trackway. Was the camera delusional?



Going back to So Cal mountain lions; rangers in the local parks are required to post mtn. lion siting warnings whenever they are reported; however, in talking with the rangers privately, they frequently comment that the "siter" had most likely mistaken a bobcat, coyote, or golden retriever for a lion. There have actually been very few confirmed sitings of the big cats. I know, it's a bigger stretch to go from "I saw a Bigfoot" to "it was actually a chipmunk," but the mind can play tricks on you. I SWEAR that on a recent mountain biking trip I saw a gigantic tarantula; I'm talking about 12 inches across with a leg the size of a baby's arm. Scared the crap out of me, and I still can't be sure of what it was (although it was most likely two squirrels humping.)


There have been cases of mistaken identity and some height estimates seem to be exaggerated, but there are, according to Green, over 8000 reports in the BFRO's database. It's not hard to find photos of tracks on the Internet.

People who've lived with bears all their lives are not likely to confuse a bear with an apelike creature walking bipedally.

[Psiload]

Originally posted by LAL
Y'know, that wouldn't even make a good skit, let alone a documentary. As for dinner, I'll cancel my order.

For starters, I have no idea where "BFRO headquarters" is. For seconders, I resent the implication that people who are willing to investigate are into drugs.

So what does any of this have to do with Dr. Meldrum? Wooooosh!

Right over your head.

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG

In short, Dr. Fahrenbach is saying he can't positively identify the hair samples, cannot even distinguish them from human hair, and that following the hair trail will not lead to positive results. You seem to be reading someting else into his statements, that he has positively identified sasquatch hair, for example. At least that's how it appears from my point of view.

RayG

I've read the whole thing several times and have been looking for other reports. He even tells the proper way to collect it. He says he has a dozen samples he's willing to identify as Sasquatch hair, but without a sample of known Sasquatch hair, of course, it's inconclusive.

"Bigfoot hair has been subjected to intense attempts at DNA analysis. All the extracted DNA, though ample, was too fragmented to permit mitochondrial DNA gene sequencing. Since the same problem exists for a significant percentage of human hairs, we attribute this problem to the absence of a medulla (always in sasquatch hair, often in human hair). We no longer consider hair a promising subject for further attempts at DNA sequencing, but must wait for
tissue or blood samples.

There is no absolutely identified sasquatch hair. I have 12 samples from 4 states, all collected under suggestive or excellent circumstances. They measure from 3 to 15 inches in length, are all under 90 microns in diameter, all have a reddish tinge under the microscope, and all are lacking a medulla. You can find human hair like that, but a dozen samples like that, collected
independently, are not suggestive of hoaxing."

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/biology/hair.htm

There are close to twenty extinct "human" species. Might they not all have had hair indestinguishable from human hair by any criteria?
Chimpanzee DNA and human DNA differ by a per cent or two.

I recently read a report of one seen doing some tree-twisting. I'll try to remember where.
Bindernagle discusses this in his book.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Psiload
Wooooosh!

Right over your head.

Not really. I used to be in Harness Racing and was well aware the tests weren't adequate to detect everything a trainer could slide under the Lasix.

I'm just not into attempted ridicule as a proper form of debate.

[UrsulaV]

Originally posted by Blackwell
rangers in the local parks are required to post mtn. lion siting warnings whenever they are reported; however, in talking with the rangers privately, they frequently comment that the "siter" had most likely mistaken a bobcat, coyote, or golden retriever for a lion.

Semi-related, my parents once saw a mountain lion out in the woods--again in Oregon--and thought it was a dog. It wasn't until they'd watched it for a minute that it occurred to them that dogs just don't move like that and that tail wasn't right at all. Because they didn't expect to see mountain lions, knowing that, well, you hardly EVER see mountain lions, it took awhile to realize just what it was, and if they hadn't had a few minutes to observe it, would probably have gone away thinking at most that it was a coyote.

The funny thing about the sizes is that, while cougars of course seem huge when they're alive, the dead ones are often not very large at all--they're all leg and feet and there's next to no meat on their bones, and they don't seem any bigger than a dog. Likewise, the elk in the area reportedly weighed between six and eight hundred pounds--maybe a thousand for the biggest bulls. I would swear up, down, and sideways that one I practically stepped on was a monster the size of a moose, a megaceros, a bull elephant, possibly a land whale. It was gigantic. It blotted out the sun. I'm sure when the elk tells the story, it says I was nine feet tall, weighed half a ton, and breathed fire.

All that being said, if our enormous hypothetical Bigfoot exists after all, when they locate it, it'll probably turn out to be four feet tall and weigh sixty pounds.

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
I've read the whole thing several times and have been looking for other reports. He even tells the proper way to collect it. He says he has a dozen samples he's willing to identify as Sasquatch hair, but without a sample of known Sasquatch hair, of course, it's inconclusive.

Exactly.

"Bigfoot hair has been subjected to intense attempts at DNA analysis. All the extracted DNA, though ample, was too fragmented to permit mitochondrial DNA gene sequencing. Since the same problem exists for a significant percentage of human hairs, we attribute this problem to the absence of a medulla (always in sasquatch hair, often in human hair). We no longer consider hair a promising subject for further attempts at DNA sequencing, but must wait for tissue or blood samples.

Can't disput that.

There is no absolutely identified sasquatch hair. I have 12 samples from 4 states, all collected under suggestive or excellent circumstances. They measure from 3 to 15 inches in length, are all under 90 microns in diameter, all have a reddish tinge under the microscope, and all are lacking a medulla. You can find human hair like that, but a dozen samples like that, collected
independently, are not suggestive of hoaxing."

Can't argue with that either.

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/biology/hair.htm

That quote/page is from an article written by Dr. Fahrenbach in 1997. His more recent statements (1998 and 1999) were just as inconclusive. Pointing out even older information does little to support your case.

There are close to twenty extinct "human" species. Might they not all have had hair indestinguishable from human hair by any criteria?

Not sure what you're trying to argue here. Are you suggesting that sasquatch is a formerly extinct 'human' species that now wanders the woods of the world?

What I'm suggesting is that, if the sasquatch hair can't be clearly identified as non-human, maybe it IS human hair and not from a sasquatch at all.

Chimpanzee DNA and human DNA differ by a per cent or two.

Irrelevant. Approximately 150,000,000 gene sequences DON'T match. That's a significant difference. Besides, the FBI claims it can differentiate between human and animal hair, Dr. Fahrenbach apparently cannot.

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
Exactly.

That quote/page is from an article written by Dr. Fahrenbach in1997. His more recent statements (1998 and 1999) were just as inconclusive. Pointing out even older information does little to support your case.

It explains the problem with the medulla or lack thereof, which is why I posted it. What does the date matter? There's still no tissue is there? The B.C. lab essentially said the same thing in 2003.

The most recent hair I know of is from 2005, but I can't find a report on the Net.

It's all "inconclusive" until a body's brought in.



Not sure what you're trying to argue here. Are you suggesting that sasquatch is a formerly extinct 'human' species that now wanders the woods of the world?


No, just a close relative of Homo. Tattersal and Schwartz include Australopiths with "extinct humans".


What I'm suggesting is that, if the sasquatch hair can't be clearly identified as non-human, maybe it IS human hair and not from a sasquatch at all.

I know that's what you're suggesting, but it has characteristitics that make it unlikely to be human. I kind of think someone with the smarts to earn a PhD might have considered that possibility before he became willing to identify them as Sasquatch and risk being laughed out of the research center.


Irrelevant. Approximately 150,000,000 gene sequences DON'T match. That's a significant difference.


Why is it irrelevant? There are far more similarities than differences.
Here's what's in the 1%:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/04/2.12.04/human_chimp_DNA.html

Wouldn't a closer relative have even more similarities, such as in the mode of locomotion and the hair?


Besides, the FBI claims it can differentiate between human and animal hair, Dr. Fahrenbach apparently cannot.


We're animals. :p
Does the FBI have unidentified hominid hair for comparison? It isn't fur, it's hair, and others have identified it as "unknown primate".

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
It's all "inconclusive" until a body's brought in.


I thought that's what I had been saying. ;)

RayG

[LTC8K6]

Weren't you tjhe one who was arguing The prints should be shallower because of the distribution of weight?

I believe my point was that they should not be any deeper. A much bigger "human" with a much bigger foot should come out about even, I thought.

Of course, if he was carrying a recently twisted off redwood tree.....

[LTC8K6]

others have identified it as "unknown primate".

So they know for sure it's hair from an unknown primate?

Have they published this extraordinary finding in any peer reviewed journals?

I had no idea that the existence of an unknown primate in the area had been proven.

You apparently have all you need then to interest mainstream science in this primate.

[LTC8K6]

BFRO headquarters from WHOIS:

MONEYMAKER,MATT
31536 Windsong Drive
San Juan Capistrano, California 92675
United States
(949) 278-6403 Fax -- (949) 248-8699

[LTC8K6]

http://www.texasbigfoot.com/016_905.html

Operaton Primate Web 2 is reported on here.

If you scroll down to Sunday, 9 January 2005, you'll see that once again the BFRO appears to be very hot on the trail of bigfoot.

Two team members appear to have actually seen bigfoot early that morning, and evidence in the area of the sighting supports them.

The search is abandoned the same day.....

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
I thought that's what I had been saying. ;)

That's what everybody says, even the the scientists who are convinced. "Inconclusive" doesn't mean "pure bunk", however. ;)

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
http://www.texasbigfoot.com/016_905.html

Operaton Primate Web 2 is reported on here.

If you scroll down to Sunday, 9 January 2005, you'll see that once again the BFRO appears to be very hot on the trail of bigfoot.

Two team members appear to have actually seen bigfoot early that morning, and evidence in the area of the sighting supports them.

The search is abandoned the same day.....

Neither Hall nor Parker were members of the BFRO. The frustration was noted at having to call it off because many had a long drive home. It was a combined effort of the TBRO and the BFRO.

Evidently there haven't been enough T-shirts sold to fund a couple of full-time researchers.

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by LAL
What makes you think they were on the ground for a long time? They're very long and heavy. It would it be difficult to get the cameras tied on. One of the posters on the thread mentioned the possibility of rot at the base as a cause of them going over. One has lost bark, but it doesn't look at all rotted in the bare patches. It looks like Red Alder, which gets to 85',with a high crown.

"Wood stain and decay proceed rapidly in cut trees, and logs should be processed soon after harvest unless they are stored in fresh water (43). During intermediate cuts, care must be taken to avoid injuring residual trees; once trees are injured, decay organisms can invade rapidly."


http://forestry.about.com/library/silvics/blsilalrub.htm

Those weren't down long. If they had been, they'd be covered in ground- growing club moss. See that in the pictures, and the leaves. Pretty hard to find tracks in stuff like that.
On my place in Washington I had dead trees standing for many years. There was a spar tree up the hill that had been standing dead at least since logging in the fifties. Saplings would go over part way and then hang caught in the branches of a nearby tree and stay there.

Do you know who set the cameras (that should be easy to figure out - no coaching from the audience)? Why would you leap to a conclusion of a hoax, especially from a false premise? He did not claim something pushed them over; he wondered if that was a possibility. They were broken off 12" below the ground.

He's not only a researcher, he's a very careful and wary one.

Aside from falling trees there's the possibility of someone stealing the cameras.




After seeing the pictures of the trees, it seems quite simple to conclude that they had been felled or had fallen quite recently.
The certainly showsigns of not having been on the ground very long, though it looks as if they were dead, standing wood, prior to falling over or being pushed down.

As a sidenote I would lke to point out that in1978 , the Univ. of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology held a seminar entitled Proceedings of the conference of "Sasquatch and other Phenomenon", which was later published as a book called 'Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Sasquatch and Modern Evidence"[ edited by Marjorie Halpin and Michael M. Ames] Vancouver: Univ. Of British Columbia Press, 1980
Grover Krantz, a professor of anthropology at Washington State Univ., has personally analyzed many purported tracks and has declared that some are genuine.
One last word of advice from noted ecologist , Robert Michael Pyle, as related to Bigfoot: " To dismiss the unknown out of hand is more foolish than accepting it unquestioned..."

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by LAL

That's what everybody says, even the the scientists who are convinced. "Inconclusive" doesn't mean "pure bunk", however. ;) [/B]

Helo Lu. I've come across info which declares that it was Grover Krantz, { possibly among others}the Columbia University anthropolgist who has hypothesiszed that Biigfoot represents a living population of Gigantopithecus[from "Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide" , by Robert Michael Pyle- a Yale PHD of ecology.]

[LAL]

Originally posted by Gorillagator
Helo Lu. I've come across info which declares that it was Grover Krantz, { possibly among others}the Columbia University anthropolgist who has hypothesiszed that Biigfoot represents a living population of Gigantopithecus[from "Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide" , by Robert Michael Pyle- a Yale PHD of ecology.]

Yep. The size is a match and the mode of locomotion is unknown.
Small correction: Krantz was at Washington State. He's written a book and numerous papers. He led the fight to obtain Kennewick Man for study.

[LTC8K6]

Neither Hall nor Parker were members of the BFRO. The frustration was noted at having to call it off because many had a long drive home. It was a combined effort of the TBRO and the BFRO.

That is already noted in the link provided.

It's no wonder they will never find bigfoot. Every time they get within hours or even minutes of a live one, they quit the game. :D

It's too bad there is nothing to connect Bigfoot to GB, and it's also too bad that GB most likely was not bipedal.

It's a shame that Krantz was allowed to pull this out of thin air without much criticism.

[LTC8K6]

Why isn't there a large population of bigfoot?

It has virtually no competition at all. It is under no hunting pressure from humans or other animals. It has a huge range available and an ample food supply available. It has ample area for shelter.

It is at the top of the food chain. Possibly a large grizzly could kill one, but I doubt that.

It is supposedly intelligent. Intelligent enough to almost totally avoid conflict with the only other animal that could possibly harm it. In any case, it is physically superior in every way to that species even if it were regularly coming into conflict with it.

It is not being killed off rapidly by disease or we'd find a body or three.

There is no control at all on the population of bigfoot that I can see. The population should be increasing at a decent rate.

It should really be exploding.

[Psiload]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
That is already noted in the link provided.

It's no wonder they will never find bigfoot. Every time they get within hours or even minutes of a live one, they quit the game. :D

It's too bad there is nothing to connect Bigfoot to GB, and it's also too bad that GB most likely was not bipedal.

It's a shame that Krantz was allowed to pull this out of thin air without much criticism.

Dinner theatre- Act 2

Operation Primate Web 2: Electric Bugaloo

Early evening, on the last day of the expedition. Daryl Coyler, Expedition Leader, calls the team together.

Daryl: "OK, gang... listen up! We've done some amazing work over these last few days. We've got recordings of Bigfoot howling, and we've actually spotted the beast! Bigfoot is in the area, we've got the whole team assembled, and we've got all the gear and gadgetry we need to make a positive identification. We're this close to the greatest zoological discovey of the century!"

Guy in the blaze orange vest: "Yeah... that's great and all, but it's really cold out here."

Camo guy: "My feet are sore, and this backpack is giving me a rash."

Unidentified voice in the crowd: "My plumbing supply shop isn't going to run itself."

Another chimes in: "It'll be dark soon."

Girl sitting on a cooler: "I've got a long drive and there'll probably be traffic."

Daryl: "Yeah, you're right. I gotta go to work tomorrow, and I'm useless if I don't get my eight hours. Let's pack it up!"

[LTC8K6]

http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_FAQ.asp?id=584

I had no idea they knew so much about bigfoot.

Links for anatomy, physiology, and behavior with very complete information.

All that from some footprints and some unknown primate hairs?

Amazing. Fahrenbach is incredible.

They knew all of this in 2002 as well.

And yet they still abandon searches within inches of the goal, even though they believe so strongly and proof would be one of the biggest events ever.

Anyone finding proof wouldn't need to go back to work, or worry about the long drive home, or worry about money for research or for themselves ever again.

Still they go home when they know their quarry was in their presence just minutes or hours ago.

[FFed]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_FAQ.asp?id=584

I had no idea they knew so much about bigfoot.

Links for anatomy, physiology, and behavior with very complete information.

All that from some footprints and some unknown primate hairs?

Amazing. Fahrenbach is incredible.

They knew all of this in 2002 as well.

And yet they still abandon searches within inches of the goal, even though they believe so strongly and proof would be one of the biggest events ever.

Anyone finding proof wouldn't need to go back to work, or worry about the long drive home, or worry about money for research or for themselves ever again.

Still they go home when they know their quarry was in their presence just minutes or hours ago.



Reminds me of the Mysterious Encounters TV show where they were sitting around at night when a "bigfoot" started banging on their parked truck.
Now they drive around the continent looking for bigfoot, so you would think this would make then happy. But instead of sticking around with the object of their search about 20 feet away, and using some of the fancy night vision equipment they are always bragging about, they get in their truck and drive away screaming.

[LAL]

All that being said, if our enormous hypothetical Bigfoot exists after all, when they locate it, it'll probably turn out to be four feet tall and weigh sixty pounds.

"Foot Length

Foot prints are the standard stock in trade of sasquatch research, and their sometimes inhuman length assures almost immediate measurement, even by first time witnesses. In all cases, the flat sasquatch foot print corresponds to a human foot outline rather than a human walking print, in which the arch may not touch a hard surface. Comparison of prints in a sasquatch trackway show a common tendency of the toes to be curled, thereby shortening the measured foot somewhat.

A collection of 706 footprints yielded an average length of 15.6" and a range of 4" to 27" (Fig. 1). The statistical treatment implies that more than 99% of the foot prints of this population are going to fall between 6" and 25". The graphic representation of the distribution is a bell-shaped curve, slightly more peaked than a normal distribution. This shape argues compellingly that the data originated from a single species rather than a multitude of overlapping species of different characteristics. It also means that they were not produced fictitiously over 40 years by hundreds of people independently of each other, a process that would have generated a distribution with many peaks.

The slightly peaked nature of the curve suggests that the difference between mature male and female does not exceed 2" in foot length, or about a foot in height, on the average. The largest prints are most probably from males, also supported by eyewitness reports of such animals being more facially hirsute and devoid of breasts. The slight asymmetry of the curve to the left might be attributable to the contribution of juveniles smaller than the population mean and their attrition before adulthood.

As a telling comparison, the published set of data by Napier has been compared to this set (prior to its inclusion). The average length of its 59 foot prints is 15.5" and, thus, deviates by merely 0.1" from the larger population average.

Many of the data points represent a single measurement out of a trackway that might have extended over many yards or in some cases over several miles, where the ground and expertise of the investigator allowed uninterrupted tracking.

Undoubtedly, only a small fraction of the population of any species is ever represented by recorded foot prints, especially in forested terrain. With a life expectancy of around 40 years (see below), this collection of 706 prints over 40 years speaks of a substantial population, probably in the "low thousands", as speculated by Krantz."

And:

"Chest Dimensions

There is, however, a scaling formula for primates that relates chest circumference to weight. This relationship, derived from data from marmosets to gorillas, can be applied to the sasquatch provided its chest circumference is known (Fig. 6). For the Patterson sasquatch, chest circumference can be extracted from enlarged prints of film images, which contain the 14.5" foot as a scale reference. From these, a chest width of 22" and a depth of 16" results, which corresponds to a weight of about 540 lbs. This weight is subject to considerable error, but clearly eliminates many of the high and low estimates from consideration.

Other Dimensions

For the sake of completeness, some other dimensions of the Patterson sasquatch that can be extracted from selected film frames, are cited here: Shoulder width: 33"; hip width: 24"; upper arm circumference: 22"; upper thigh circumference: 31"; knee circumference: 27"; [and from other sources] hand width at palm (with 16" footprint): 6"; wrist to base of fingers: 7"; wrist to end of middle finger: 11".

Weight Extrapolation

On the assumption that chest circumference scales linearly with height of the animal, I have scaled the Patterson values (slightly below the mean as a female) to the calculated mean heights and generated a foot print / height / weight table (rounded values). The mean is represented by the 15.6" foot print.

Foot Height Chest Weight (lbs)

12" 7’ 0" 58" 490
14" 7’ 6" 62" 580
15.6" 7’ 10" 65" 660
16" 7’ 11" 65" 670
18" 8’ 4" 69" 770
20" 8’ 8" 72" 850
22" 9’ 1" 75" 950
24" 9’ 5" 77" 1,040"

http://www.bfro.net/REF/THEORIES/WHF/sasq_traits.htm

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
That is already noted in the link provided.

It's no wonder they will never find bigfoot. Every time they get within hours or even minutes of a live one, they quit the game. :D

It's too bad there is nothing to connect Bigfoot to GB, and it's also too bad that GB most likely was not bipedal.

It's a shame that Krantz was allowed to pull this out of thin air without much criticism.

He based his conclusions on the width of the jaw; a wide jaw would allow passage of a verticle spinal column. Giganto is only known from a few jaws and a thousand teeth. No foramen magnum, no femur. No way to definitely establish the mode of locomotion at this time.

But, bipedalism came first, according to the consensus with knuckle-walking a later adaptation in the Great Apes (there's no fossil record for Gorillas or Chimpanzees, incidently). There are over a dozen species of bipedal primates in the fossil record not including Homo. Bipedalism was the "rule", not the exception.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Why isn't there a large population of bigfoot?

It has virtually no competition at all. It is under no hunting pressure from humans or other animals. It has a huge range available and an ample food supply available. It has ample area for shelter.

It is at the top of the food chain. Possibly a large grizzly could kill one, but I doubt that.

It is supposedly intelligent. Intelligent enough to almost totally avoid conflict with the only other animal that could possibly harm it. In any case, it is physically superior in every way to that species even if it were regularly coming into conflict with it.

It is not being killed off rapidly by disease or we'd find a body or three.

There is no control at all on the population of bigfoot that I can see. The population should be increasing at a decent rate.

It should really be exploding.

BIP: So it's just guesswork to say these creatures are on the verge extinction?

JG: Oh, that's ridiculous. They're not under any pressure at all. They obviously have never been numerous. It's certainly a possibility that the population was knocked down by the same diseases that wiped out so many of the Indians. They would presumably be susceptible to them just as the great apes are. But as to anything that's happening today causing them to become extinct, you can't make any case for that at all."

http://www.bigfootproject.org/interviews/john_green.html

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL


But, bipedalism came first, according to the consensus with knuckle-walking a later adaptation in the Great Apes (there's no fossil record for Gorillas or Chimpanzees, incidently). There are over a dozen species of bipedal primates in the fossil record not including Homo. Bipedalism was the "rule", not the exception. What consensus are you talking about? Sources ?

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
What consensus are you talking about? Sources ?

On bipedalsm.

Christopher Stringer.

Et al.

[LTC8K6]

The wide jaw was likely to support the big molars and powerful jaw necessary for GB to get enough to eat. It may not indicate a very large body at all.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
The wide jaw was likely to support the big molars and powerful jaw necessary for GB to get enough to eat. It may not indicate a very large body at all.

And it may not have been a specialized bamboo eater:

"Ciochon et al., (1990) then go on to compare this morphology with that of the giant panda, another bamboo eater, and infers a diet of bamboo for Gigantopithecus.

While bamboo is a grass, the phytolith analysis does not technically either confirm or deny this theory, since it is not capable of defining the type of grass the phytolith came from. What was surprising to Ciochon was the suggestion of fruit in the diet of Gigantopithecus. Ciochon et al (2) (1990) have identified the fruit as belonging to a species in the family Moraceae or a closely related family and state "Judging from the present frequency of dental phytoliths in Gigantopithecus, fruits may have constituted a significant portion of the diet," and go on to note that the high sugar content of this type of fruit may be responsible for the high incidence of cavities in Gigantopithecus teeth (11%).

The results of this study are reported in less complete and less technical terms in the book Other Origins (Ciochon et al, 1990), and in a review of that book Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1991) notes that a great deal is being drawn from the analysis of four teeth, upon only two of which were found phytoliths, with the greatest concentration on only one. Clearly a larger sample of teeth need to be similarly analyzed, but reading the report it is difficult not to share Ciochon's (et al. (2) 1990) excitement at the findings and for the employment of this technique in paleoanthropology in general."


And:


"Appearance

According to Ciochon et al. (1990), Gigantopithecus blacki was 10 feet tall and weighed 1,200 pounds. This is speculative, since it is with some uncertainty that one reconstructs such a massive creature from a few jaw bones and teeth, however many. The way they arrived at this picture was first to estimate the size of the head from the jaw, and then to use a head/body ratio of 1:6.5 in order to determine the body size. For comparison they cite a head/body ratio of 1:8 for the Australopithecus afarensis specimen known as 'Lucy'. The more conservative ratio for Gigantopithecus was arrived at out of consideration of the massive jaw as an adaptation to the mastication of fibrous plant matter (probably bamboo). Gigantopithecus was probably proportionally a markedly big jawed creature. For the head shape they based their assumptions on the orangutan, since evolutionarily they place Gigantopithecus on the same line as the orangutan, finding a common ancestor for them both in Sivapithecus. However, the orangutan could not serve as a model for the body, since it is unlikely that a 1,200 pound ape would be as arboreal. Therefore they chose the largest primates known, the gorilla and the extinct giant baboon Theropithecus oswaldi, as their models for the body. They gave Gigantopithecus an intermembral index 108 (gorilla at 120 + Theropithecus at 95 divide by 2 = 108 rounded up - very scientific!) (Ciochon et al., 1990)."

http://www.wynja.com/arch/gigantopithecus.html

Giganto seems a likely candidate due to location and size (even if reduced somewhat) if it was bipedal.

[LTC8K6]

Giganto seems a likely candidate due to location and size (even if reduced somewhat) if it was bipedal.

No it doesn't, it's just that little is known about it and this allows you to make it fit.

[LTC8K6]

It's certainly a possibility that the population was knocked down by the same diseases that wiped out so many of the Indians.

Is this really a possibility? I don't think so. I doubt that there were the same sort of contacts involved.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
No it doesn't, it's just that little is known about it and this allows you to make it fit.

I'm not solidily on the side of Gigantopithecus (haven't we been through this before?). Napier thought Sasquatches could be descended from A. robustus. At least there's more known about the Australopiths, and there's the matter of the midtarsal bend.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Is this really a possibility? I don't think so. I doubt that there were the same sort of contacts involved.

Whole villages that had never seen a white man died of the white man's diseases.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL
On bipedalsm.

Christopher Stringer.

Et al. A consensus of one ?

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
A consensus of one ?

According to Chris Stringer (you do know who he is, I hope), the consensus is that bipedalism was first. I didn't think it was necessary to spell that out.

Adv. 1. et al. - used as an abbreviation of `et alii' (masculine plural) or `et aliae' (feminine plural) or `et alia' (neutral plural) when referring to a number of people

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
According to Chris Stringer (you do know who he is, I hope), the consensus is that bipedalism was first.

Do you have some links to specific info on this? From what little I've read about his bipedalism approach, it appears to apply to wading, not knuckle-walking. I've not yet stumbled across any confirmation that bipedalism came first, though I might not be looking in the right place.

RayG

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL
According to Chris Stringer (you do know who he is, I hope),


How does knowing who he is, support your position? ( appeal to authority )


the consensus is that bipedalism was first. I didn't think it was necessary to spell that out.

Adv. 1. et al. - used as an abbreviation of `et alii' (masculine plural) or `et aliae' (feminine plural) or `et alia' (neutral plural) when referring to a number of people I find no such concensus.

Can you point to a paper that suggests bipedalism predated walking on all fours by any animal?

[LTC8K6]

Whole villages that had never seen a white man died of the white man's diseases.

Contact in reference to spreading disease does not equal "seen" or even touched.

Did those blankets, etc., indirectly reach bigfoot too?

Did whole villages of Bigfoot die out as well?

Dead bear:
http://seis.natsci.csulb.edu/bperry/Mass%20Wasting/CableCanyonDeadBearDec2003S.JPG

[LTC8K6]

Stringer believes gigantopithecus was more likely to have been a knuckle walker.

Personally, I think the bigfoot children are really escaped H. floresiensis. :D

[casebro]

While I'm not an expert on Big feet- mine are only size 13- I am a professional wood carver. Can anybody here point me to a photo of a BF footprint that shows the 'dermal ridges' ? I think lengthwise ridges may be an artifact of the carving process, and I may be able to identify the tool used....If I was carving a foot 16" long, I would use lengthwise strokes.

I also wonder about the depth of these'footprints'. Seems to me an elephant wouldn't sink in so far as Bigfoot did, but a man stomping on a molded rubber foot might.... and/or a deer running will place his hoofs in a tight cluster, rears into the same place the fronts had left just previously, making 'footprints in the snow' at lengths equal to BF's supposed stride. Most of the BF track photo's Ive pulled up have been in the snow, melted beyond any recognition. I'm sure someone here will educate me...

[Skeptical Greg]

I'm sure someone here will educate me... You can count on it..

Thanks for triggering another diatribe on the details of Bigfoot track experts and analysys..

You could have spared us by reading all of this thread and this one:


http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56554

Welcome to the discussion..
:D

[Correa Neto]

Originally posted by LAL
Yep. And some have had sightings. Again, there has never been a proper scientific investigation, because mainstream science doesn't take it seriously.

You should understand that attacks to "mainstream science" do not help. They will only level you down with woos.

Anyway, why the notion of large unknown primates living in North America is not taken seriously? Simple. Because its highly implausible. There´s very little support. Would I gather support if I claimed that there is a dinosaur living somewhere in Brazil?

Originally posted by LAL There are a lot more of them. I've never seen a truck on some of those Washington backroads.

Uh... Bigfeet population estimates according to the figures you provided a few posts ago are bigger than many endangered species - or populations - that quite often become roadkills. And are all bigfeet living in this area of Washington? According to your posts, and the data at the sites you linked, no. There are reported sightings in touristic areas in national parks as well as forests with logging activity, and there are plenty of trucks and roads in these areas. And note that even you wrote " I've never seen a truck on some of those Washington backroads". There are others, with trucks, I suppose.

Originally posted by LAL And tracks? This sighting was thoroughly investigated. It convinced the sherriff. I heard the waitress' story from her and knew the people who followed the double trackway for seven miles. They were quite sane.

Who said they were not sane? They could just have been mistaken.

Originally posted by LAL
There is now at least one place to report sightings and many are followed up. Some turn out to be mistaken identity, but many check out. I've experienced "buck fever" myself, but I saw a doe, not a Sasquatch, an the illusion only lasted for an instant.

What is considered a reliable report? A person claiming to have seen a big ape in the woods? What criteria are used to check out? What about the reports linking bigfeet to UFOs?

Why do you think your experience with an illusion is the rule?

Originally posted by LAL People are often reluctant to report what they've seen because of the scoffing and ridicule they receive. Read this board if you don't think that's true.

Who´s scoffing and ridiculing you here? You claimed that bigfoot is real. We are just questioning your claim because we don´t think the evidences backing the claim are enough. If I were writing at a bigfoot forum defending the point that bigfoot is a myth, what sort of reaction would I obtain?

And if any biologist working in the woods ever manages to see a bigfoot, I´m pretty sure he/she would not hesitate and would do his/her best to raise funds to find out more about it. Same is valid for a good quality footage obtained by any wildlife photographer. But bigfeet just do not appear to this sort of people... Could this be the skeptic influence reported by those who belive in the paranormal?

Originally posted by LAL
What's sketchy about trackways that go for miles, multiple witness sightings backed up by film.............

Wait a minute... Trackways that go for miles, eh? So they should not be so impossible to track as bigfoot researchers claim. Another weird problem noted.

The footage, please, are far from convincing. And the reports are anedoctal evidence, and many -if not most- are really sketchy. If these are sound evidence, UFOs, Nessie, Ogopogo and ghosts must also be true...

Originally posted by LAL No. And your idea of waiting at waterholes would probably work quite well in the Serengeti.

Ambushing a large mammal does not work at these forests where bigfeet live... So, hunters have no succes on tracking their prey? No hunter or wildlife photographer sets a shelter near a track, a tree ripe with fruits, a carcass, a drinking place and is successful? This is weird...

Originally posted by LAL It's unfortunate it wasn't reported at the time. But for those who think it's all illusion or paranormal nonsense or that no body has ever been seen, there's at least this one report. There's another of two burying a third, but since it was from students on a hike, who would believe them?

The problem is that these are just reports. But, OK, lets suppose the reports are credible and bigfeet do bury their dead. How deep are their graves? Deep enough to avoid scavengers such as wolves, coyotes and bears to dig them out? Oh, and if someone saw two burying their dead mate, please answer me why no bigfeet researcher has ever just went to the grave to recover the body? Why people have not followed the students to recover what could be a spetacular find?

Originally posted by LAL Tell me what biologist is working with bear in, say, Washington State?

Tell me, no biologists do field work in Washington? Not even undergratuate students? Weird...

Originally posted by LAL Should have? Is there a timetable on this? If a team went looking for a body in a 750 sq. mi. area, rugged, riddled with lava tubes, full of rotten snags and hollow logs, an no clue about where one would be except there's a statistical possibility one is there, where would be a good place to start?

The timetable started when the first naturalist arrived to North America. Since then, there were chances that a carcass of such an animal would have been found - or one would have been shot. As population increased and more roads were constructed, the chances also increased.

Originally posted by LAL As I recall, it was on a trail.
The mistaken identity is only a possibility as is the speculation there may be bones, misidentified, in a collection somewhere.

Why would a hunter (or anyone else) want to approach a stinking corpse that he'd be sure is a bear if he's one who believes Sasquatches are a myth? AS I've mentioned, bodies of anything are extremely rare in the PNW.

They're seldom found, not not found. Piles of elk bones are found in eastern Washington, but not in western Washington.

You truly think a naturalist or a biologist would not find the femur of a large ape very different from the usual findings from bear, deer, elk, etc.?

There´s a post by a ranger a few posts above. Perhaps you would like to know what he has to say about carcasses in the woods. Anyway, even if scavenging is exeptionally efficeint at PNW, why a corpse of a bigfoot has never been found somewhere else? They are not restricted to that area area they?

And in a national park, at a private reserve, or at any area where someanimal population study is going on, some people wold have to "approach a stinking corpse that he'd be sure is a bear". It would be his/hers work to know why it died and exactly what individual was that. Heck, my wive had to collect and study dung from monkeys when she was studying them (she´s a biologist). And she spent day after day observing them in the woods. A friend of ours did similar thing with wolves - and they were much harder to spot (the wolves, not the dung). Another one spent days watching birds and recording their sounds. Two or three others made surveys of animal population in conservation areas - months in the field, collecting and/or examining all sort of dung or rotten carcasses, setting traps, scanning the area with binoculars, etc. All this mean a lot of time in the wilderness, with attention completely turned to animals. Now, we are talking about Brazil, a third world country where money for research is scarce at best and there are relatively few people doing this sirt of work. Don´t you think its at least a bit improbable that these animals would have been identified by now in USA?

Originally posted by LAL Because that's where the people are.

Not just people, but also bigfeet, otherwise ther would be no reports of sighting... What raises the questions I and other posters have been asking.

Originally posted by LAL Because they haven't been found yet? (Just a guess........)

Or because they don´t exist?

Originally posted by LAL
Skamania County had bear, cougar, Roosevelt elk.........Dense vegetation at ground level is Salal, Oregon grape, Devil's Club, then Vine Maple and more Vine Maple. It's quite springy and easy to get through, actually, even by bipedal hominids such as us. It's almost impossible to see through, though.

But then, again, tracking bigfeet is not that impossible... Also, searching for their corpses, hiding places, etc.

Originally posted by LAL They're extremely dense where the loggers haven't got 'em. Google up some pictures.

Extremely dense? Then there should be no big ground animals, since walking across it would be very difficult. But there are bear, moose, deer, etc., as you stated. Thus they must not be so dense at ground level. And so, bigfeet could be tracked, their corpses become easier to find, wildlife photographers should have been able to take good shots of it, scientists and rangers should have been able to see and study them, etc.

If I what I have read is correct, temperate forests, the sort of habitat bigfeet are supposed to live, are truly dense at ground level only at its borders and where trees are young. The canopy of tall trees block sunlight, so the growth of smaller plants becomes difficult. When a tree falls, its like the start of a race - plants start using the opportunity to grow. And while the canopy is not yet well developed, smaller (as well as younger) plants can grow, creating entangled vegetation. As soon as the canopy block sunlight, the entangled vegetation dies. And depending on the type of temperate forest (some varieties of pinus, for example), periodic forest fires clear the low-level vegetation, but leaves the tall trees unharmed - they are adapted to this. These forests are composed by tall trees, but with enough open space at ground level to allow a moose to walk with ease. And many sighting reports come from such areas. And yet no solid evidence was found.

Originally posted by LAL
No, because I talked to one who had spent years trying to track them. He and his team were feeding all data into computers trying to determine some kind of pattern. There was none that they could find.

Perhaps because things that do not exist have no pattern.

Originally posted by LAL Evidently he was a bit rattled. He apparently dropped the camera when the figure turned toward him.

So, bigfeet appears just to people who will take fuzzy pictures?

A comparsion with gorilla population density helps to highlight some of the problems with the existence of a population of large primates in North America:

IUCN status and population figures for gorilla:
Mountain gorilla: Critically Endangered (650)
Cross River gorilla: Critically Endangered (200)

And yet, they are constantly tracked, filmed and unfortunately, hunted. See the numbers? Compare with those you provided for bigfoot population estimates. Why bigfeet can evade while gorillas can´t?

Gorilla population is being endangered by growing human population. Contacts became more frequent. And compare the distribution of human population in Africa with that from USA. Why this does not affects bigfeet?

Sources:
www.wwf.org.uk/researcher/ issues/rarespecies/0000000152.asp
http://www.berggorilla.de/english/gjournal/texte/18takam.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14586801&dopt=Abstract
Some more problems for bigfoot...
The fossil record does not provides any support for the existence of an unknown species of large apes both in South and North America. Specially if you consider bigfeet as some sort of hominid species.
Hominid fossils are restricted to Africa, Asia and Europe. The earliest known ones are from Africa and date from 22 to 18 My. Gigantopithecus, bigfoot´s most common identification, is from China´s Pleistocene (11Ky ago), and no fossils of it -or any similar species- have yet been found in any of the Americas. The largest fossil primates (also the largest known primates from the Americas) are Caipora bambuiorum and Protopithecus, both from South America. They are New World monkeys, what means they are quite different from hominids and Old World apes. And they weighted between 20 and 40kg.
Similar problems are faced by any ideas relating bigfoot to great apes such as chimpanzees and gorillas. No fossils of great apes heve ever been found in the Americas.
North America, despite though having quite old primate fossil remains, does not seem to be a pleasant habitats for apes. Actually, they seem to be restricted to tropical areas. Fossil ape populations have prosperated in tropical areas in Africa, Asia and Europe.
Some usefull links:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/93/13/6405
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/chb/lectures/anthl_09.html
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072485949/student_view0/chapter12/

So, do you really think that, taking in to account all the pro and cons, one can say its absolutely certain that there is a population of unknown large primates in North America?

Or it would not be better to say something like "It is possible that there is a population of unknown large primates in North America, but its highly improbable".

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
Do you have some links to specific info on this? From what little I've read about his bipedalism approach, it appears to apply to wading, not knuckle-walking. I've not yet stumbled across any confirmation that bipedalism came first, though I might not be looking in the right place.

RayG

I did. Give me a little time to wade through over 300 saved sites and articles on human evolution.

[bruto]

Originally posted by LAL
Whole villages that had never seen a white man died of the white man's diseases.

Whole villages indeed - those Indians had a pretty sophisticated social structure with villages, plantations, organized trading, alliances, etc., and this is one of the reasons such pandemics were possible. What evidence do we have that sasquatches are organized into such communities? Are we missing not only the squatches themselves, but their villages and their trade routes?

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
Originally posted by RayG

Do you have some links to specific info on this? From what little I've read about his bipedalism approach, it appears to apply to wading, not knuckle-walking. I've not yet stumbled across any confirmation that bipedalism came first, though I might not be looking in the right place.

I did. Give me a little time to wade through over 300 saved sites and articles on human evolution.

Nice pun. :D

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
You should understand that attacks to "mainstream science" do not help. They will only level you down with woos.


When did I attack mainstrean science? Efforts have been made over forty years to interest mainstream science.

I was labled a "woo" the minute I hit the board. What can I possibly do to make it worse?


Anyway, why the notion of large unknown primates living in North America is not taken seriously? Simple. Because its highly implausible. There´s very little support. Would I gather support if I claimed that there is a dinosaur living somewhere in Brazil?

It's implausible we may have living bipedal relatives on earth? Why is that so implausible?


Uh... Bigfeet population estimates according to the figures you provided a few posts ago are bigger than many endangered species - or populations - that quite often become roadkills. And are all bigfeet living in this area of Washington? According to your posts, and the data at the sites you linked, no. There are reported sightings in touristic areas in national parks as well as forests with logging activity, and there are plenty of trucks and roads in these areas. And note that even you wrote " I've never seen a truck on some of those Washington backroads". There are others, with trucks, I suppose.

There have been several encounters involving screeching brakes and terrified motorists. A friend's daughter and her friends saw one en route home from the Prom on Hwy 14. If you knew how deserted that highway was at night, you'd wonder how they happened to be lucky enough to even see it.



Who said they were not sane? They could just have been mistaken.


There was physical evidence.



What is considered a reliable report? A person claiming to have seen a big ape in the woods? What criteria are used to check out?


I suggest you read some reports and the comments by investigators.



What about the reports linking bigfeet to UFOs?

Who cares?


Why do you think your experience with an illusion is the rule?


Huh? Bipedalism was common in the ancient ape world. There was even a bipedal ape in Italy. The recently found "last common ancestor" seems to have been upright most of the time.


Who´s scoffing and ridiculing you here? You claimed that bigfoot is real. We are just questioning your claim because we don´t think the evidences backing the claim are enough. If I were writing at a bigfoot forum defending the point that bigfoot is a myth, what sort of reaction would I obtain?

You'd be scoffed at and ridiculed by a few, but seriously debated by most. Try it and see.


And if any biologist working in the woods ever manages to see a bigfoot, I´m pretty sure he/she would not hesitate and would do his/her best to raise funds to find out more about it. Same is valid for a good quality footage obtained by any wildlife photographer. But bigfeet just do not appear to this sort of people... Could this be the skeptic influence reported by those who belive in the paranormal?

Forget the paranormal, please.

Dr. John Bindernagle has written a book and papers for presentation and all he found was a trackway.


Wait a minute... Trackways that go for miles, eh? So they should not be so impossible to track as bigfoot researchers claim. Another weird problem noted.

The people I knew who followed the seven miles of double trackway lost it in forest. The tracks were in snow and several days old when they were found. The animals were long gone.


The footage, please, are far from convincing. And the reports are anedoctal evidence, and many -if not most- are really sketchy. If these are sound evidence, UFOs, Nessie, Ogopogo and ghosts must also be true...

Non sequitur.

Never mind that the Patterson film has been analysed to pieces over 38 years, and it still holds up. Try reading some of the analyses instead of dismissing it as "fuzzy". It's pretty clear, and there are some very good reasons it cannot be a man in a suit, despite the wishful thinking of sceptics.


Ambushing a large mammal does not work at these forests where bigfeet live... So, hunters have no succes on tracking their prey? No hunter or wildlife photographer sets a shelter near a track, a tree ripe with fruits, a carcass, a drinking place and is successful? This is weird.


It's just possible a homidid primate is more intelligent than the average bear.
Fruit bait was taken on the Skookum expedition. I'm impressed by what they did get, not tearing my hair out because they didn't come back with a body.


The problem is that these are just reports. But, OK, lets suppose the reports are credible and bigfeet do bury their dead. How deep are their graves? Deep enough to avoid scavengers such as wolves, coyotes and bears to dig them out? Oh, and if someone saw two burying their dead mate, please answer me [b]why no bigfeet researcher has ever just went to the grave to recover the body? Why people have not followed the students to recover what could be a spetacular find?

I don't know. Could be because the report was from years before and the students weren't sure of the spot. Many people do not report for fear of ridicule and it's only been in recent years that people could report to an organization rather than just to law enforcement.


Tell me, no biologists do field work in Washington? Not even undergratuate students? Weird...

On Sasquatches? Here's a graduate student:

http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/sbs/somer87.htm



The timetable started when the first naturalist arrived to North America. Since then, there were chances that a carcass of such an animal would have been found - or one would have been shot. As population increased and more roads were constructed, the chances also increased.

And still do.


You truly think a naturalist or a biologist would not find the femur of a large ape very different from the usual findings from bear, deer, elk, etc.?


Remember the famous case of the hominid clavical Dr. Tim White determined was a fossil dolphin bone?


There´s a post by a ranger a few posts above. Perhaps you would like to know what he has to say about carcasses in the woods. Anyway, even if scavenging is exeptionally efficeint at PNW, why a corpse of a bigfoot has never been found somewhere else? They are not restricted to that area area they?

I read it. I've also seen a statement from a ranger that he's never seen a bear carcass.
There are sightings and tracks from other areas, but most of the data seems to be from the Northwest.


And in a national park, at a private reserve, or at any area where someanimal population study is going on, some people wold have to "approach a stinking corpse that he'd be sure is a bear". It would be his/hers work to know why it died and exactly what individual was that. Heck, my wive had to collect and study dung from monkeys when she was studying them (she´s a biologist). And she spent day after day observing them in the woods. A friend of ours did similar thing with wolves - and they were much harder to spot (the wolves, not the dung). Another one spent days watching birds and recording their sounds. Two or three others made surveys of animal population in conservation areas - months in the field, collecting and/or examining all sort of dung or rotten carcasses, setting traps, scanning the area with binoculars, etc. All this mean a lot of time in the wilderness, with attention completely turned to animals. Now, we are talking about Brazil, a third world country where money for research is scarce at best and there are relatively few people doing this sirt of work. Don´t you think its at least a bit improbable that these animals would have been identified by now in USA?

Why, when so few mainstream scientists accept it? Where's the grant money? It's mostly been left to amateurs and they're scoffed at for being amateurs. Geez.


Not just people, but also bigfeet, otherwise ther would be no reports of sighting... What raises the questions I and other posters have been asking.

All of which are answerable, whether you accept the answers or not.


Or because they don´t exist?

If they don't exist, what's leaving all that "inconclusive" evidence?


But then, again, tracking bigfeet is not that impossible... Also, searching for their corpses, hiding places, etc.

A full-time team is needed.


Extremely dense? Then there should be no big ground animals, since walking across it would be very difficult. But there are bear, moose,

There are no Moose in the area I'm talking about.


deer, etc., as you stated. Thus they must not be so dense at ground level.

I lived in it. It's dense. The ground cover is one of the reasons it's difficult to track anything. There are a couple of layers of understory. These animals, deer included, are adapted to it.


And so, bigfeet could be tracked, their corpses become easier to find, wildlife photographers should have been able to take good shots of it, scientists and rangers should have been able to see and study them, etc.

Skeletons of Homo florensis should have been discovered much sooner than they were, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker should have been photographed much sooner than it was, Coelacanths should have been discovered much sooner than they were, Eric Rudolf should have been apprehended much sooner than he was, four new mammalian species in Viet Nam should have been discovered much sooner than they were............


If I what I have read is correct, temperate forests, the sort of habitat bigfeet are supposed to live, are truly dense at ground level only at its borders and where trees are young. The canopy of tall trees block sunlight, so the growth of smaller plants becomes difficult. When a tree falls, its like the start of a race - plants start using the opportunity to grow. And while the canopy is not yet well developed, smaller (as well as younger) plants can grow, creating entangled vegetation. As soon as the canopy block sunlight, the entangled vegetation dies. And depending on the type of temperate forest (some varieties of pinus, for example), periodic forest fires clear the low-level vegetation, but leaves the tall trees unharmed - they are adapted to this. These forests are composed by tall trees, but with enough open space at ground level to allow a moose to walk with ease. And many sighting reports come from such areas. And yet no solid evidence was found.


There are no Moose in Skamania County, Washington. No pine where I lived either. Too wet. I lived in mature second growth timber, mostly Douglas Fir. The canopy was open enough for plenty of sun to get to the Broadleaf Maple and Alder, Blackberries, Wild Raspberries.............Skamania County has the most reported sightings in the country.

No solid evidence was found by whom?


Perhaps because things that do not exist have no pattern.

Perhaps because they don't have migration routes and tend to roam randomly when feeding. The Powder Mountain tracks (in snow), went from Balsam stand to Balsam stand. The animal was apparently feeding on the Balsam berries. They were spotted and photographed from a helicopter. There is no sign of other activity in the snow.......it looks absolutely pristine.


So, bigfeet appears just to people who will take fuzzy pictures?

They mostly "appear" to people who don't happen to be carrying cameras at the time.


A comparsion with gorilla population density helps to highlight some of the problems with the existence of a population of large primates in North America:

IUCN status and population figures for gorilla:
Mountain gorilla: Critically Endangered (650)
Cross River gorilla: Critically Endangered (200)

And yet, they are constantly tracked, filmed and unfortunately, hunted. See the numbers? Compare with those you provided for bigfoot population estimates. Why bigfeet can evade while gorillas can´t?


Because they are not being monitored or hunted, except by a few "weekend warriors".

Gorillas travel in troops and leave considerable sign, including nest-making. Chimpanzees travel in troops as well.



Gorilla population is being endangered by growing human population. Contacts became more frequent. And compare the distribution of human population in Africa with that from USA. Why this does not affects bigfeet?



It does. The tracks near Bluff Creek were seen when new roads were going in. That's near a 17,500 sq.mi. area in Northern California that had only been mapped from the air.


Some more problems for bigfoot..

The fossil record does not provides any support for the existence of an unknown species of large apes both in South and North America. Specially if you consider bigfeet as some sort of hominid species.

There may be a living relative in Russia.


It was thought Homo couldn't get out of Africa until there was a sophisticated toolkit until Homo georgicus was discovered in Georgia in Russia a few years ago.
[QUOTE]
[B]
Hominid fossils are restricted to Africa, Asia and Europe. The earliest known ones are from Africa and date from 22 to 18 My......

The earliest known hominid fossil is "Toumai", Sahelanthropus tchadensis, circa 7-9 mya. The last common ancestor may be Pierolapithecus catalaunicus found near Barcelona, Spain. It's about 13 million years old.


Gigantopithecus, bigfoot´s most common identification, is from China´s Pleistocene (11Ky ago), and no fossils of it -or any similar species- have yet been found in any of the Americas.

Hardly any have been found in China.


The largest fossil primates (also the largest known primates from the Americas) are Caipora bambuiorum and Protopithecus, both from South America. They are New World monkeys, what means they are quite different from hominids and Old World apes. And they weighted between 20 and 40kg.


"Protopithecus brasiliensis Lund, 1838
Caipora bambuiorum Cartelle and Hartwig, 1996

'There is no smoke without fire' says the proverb. There really have been some larger primates in South America. The evidence consists of the fossil remains of two species of extinct giant primates in South America, which keeps paleo-primatologists and evolutionary primatologists extremely busy and excited today.

These fossil remains, however, other than the size of their bones indicating that they possibly belong to either a large howler (Alouatta), woolly (Brachyteles) or spider (Ateles) monkey (Hartwig and Cartelle, 1996; Cartelle and Hartwig, 1996) have nothing to do with the way these were discovered. In fact, they were found far from the region of Sierra de Perija, where Dr. de Loys originally encountered and then shot his spider monkey, more than 2800 miles southeast in the state of Bahia in Brazil.

A limestone cave system near the town of Lagoa Santa ('holy pond') about 20 miles north of Belo Horizonte ('beautiful horizon') (Simpson, 1984). This cave system has been a Mecca for anthropologists and paleontologists, where numerous mammal remains, such as ground-sloth, giant armadillo, bear, capybara and human remains have been found (Walter, 1948).

The Protopithecus brasiliensis remains (part of a femur and a humerus) were originally discovered by the Danish naturalist, Peter W. Lund in 1836 (Lund, 1836), but was largely misrepresented and ignored for more than 150 years (Hartwig, 1995). A complete skeleton of the same species has been found in another cave, Toca da Boa Vista near Campo Formosa in Bahia, Brazil in 1992. The remains indicate an animal of approximately 25 kg (about 50 pounds) mass of body size, which is twice the weight of the largest spider monkey live in South America today (Hartwig & Cartelle, 1996). The Caipora bambuiorum skeleton, which was also found in the same cave estimated to weight 20,5 kg (roughly 45 pounds) (Cartelle & Hartwig, 1996), but still considerably heavier than the biggest living spider monkey recorded so far (Peres, 1994).

These new findings indicate that these monkeys were substantially larger than their descendants today; certainly giants among the New World monkeys, but they fall far behind the mass weight of the chimpanzee, orangutan and gorilla, and they are not Apes."

Now one's claiming Sasquatches evolved in NA. They evidently came over the Bering Strait. Our species did too.

Similar problems are faced by any ideas relating bigfoot to great apes such as chimpanzees and gorillas. No fossils of great apes heve ever been found in the Americas.

No fossils of Chimpanzees and Gorillas have been found at all. There are around a thousand living species with no fossil record.
Fossilization is a rare event. Here's my favorite article on it:

http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/taphonomy.html

It's not likely they'd "devolve" from Great Apes. They may be another species of Great Ape. We're a medium-sized ape.


North America, despite though having quite old primate fossil remains, does not seem to be a pleasant habitats for apes. Actually, they seem to be restricted to tropical areas. Fossil ape populations have prosperated in tropical areas in Africa, Asia and Europe.


Elephants are tropical too, but they had relatives that lived in the tundra.
Hominid fossils have been found in Russia. They are practically Homo habilis
We're an ape and we live everywhere.

>snip<


So, do you really think that, taking in to account all the pro and cons, one can say its absolutely certain that there is a population of unknown large primates in North America?

Yes.


Or it would not be better to say something like "It is possible that there is a population of unknown large primates in North America, but its highly improbable".

No. I lived in Sasquatch country and practically everything I've read and seen on it since, except for UFO/paranormal silliness, has only strengthened my conviction.

Read Krantz.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
I find no such concensus.

Can you point to a paper that suggests bipedalism predated walking on all fours by any animal?

Oh, for Pete's sake.

I was referring to bipedalism coming before knuckle-walking in the hominid/ape line, and it's no appeal to authority to refer to Chris Stringer on the evolution of bipedalism.

I have no idea where he stands on the unknown hominid primate issue.


I haven't found the article I'm looking for yet, but here's this:

""Dating the beginnings of bipedalism is very important in the human story because, for many experts, it would mark a clear divergence from the ancestral/ape pattern and show that the human lineage had really begun," said Chris Stringer, director of the Human Origins Program at the Natural History Museum in London.

Although this finding puts the development of bipedalism back by another two million years, it is not necessarily a surprise. The chimpanzee-human divergence has been estimated to have occurred between five and seven million years ago, based on genetic data.

"Now, for the first time, we have solid evidence dated to six million years ago of an intermediate creature between humans and the apes that demonstrated upright posture and bipedalism," said Robert Eckhardt, a developmental-genetics and evolutionary-morphology researcher at Pennsylvania State University. "And the dating of this fossil is unusually secure." "

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0902_040902_upright_hominid.html

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LAL
Oh, for Pete's sake.

I was referring to bipedalism coming before knuckle-walking in the hominid/ape line, and it's no appeal to authority to refer to Chris Stringer on the evolution of bipedalism.




What was your point?

Your appeal to authority was that I should know who he was...

What does knuckle walking have to do with Sasquatch?

[RayG]

Originally posted by Diogenes

What does knuckle walking have to do with Sasquatch?

I'm still trying to see where bipedalism predated knuckle-walking. That's what I thought was being presented, anyway.

Originally posted by LAL
But, bipedalism came first, according to the consensus with knuckle-walking a later adaptation in the Great Apes....I was referring to bipedalism coming before knuckle-walking in the hominid/ape line...

I see where Christopher Stringer thinks that wading may have preceeded bipedalism, and, as a result, bipedalism may have evolved earier than thought, but I still don't see where bipedalism came prior to knuckle-walking.

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by Diogenes
What was your point?

I don't know; I forgot. I've been busy trying to straighten out the quotes in the long post above.


Your appeal to authority was that I should know who he was...

Your inference. I asked if you know who he is. Of course, if you've looked into human evolution much you might have run across his name................If you'd said you didn't know I'd have told you.

It seems you've taken a course in logic. Did you pass?


What does knuckle walking have to do with Sasquatch?

It has to do with ancestry. There's no lack of bipedal primates in the fossil record.

If Giganto was a knuckle-walker, then it's probably not an ancestor or even a very close relative. If it was bipedal, then it's very possibly an ancestor, or even the same species.

Have Gigantopithecus fangs been found?

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG

Nice pun. :D


Totally unintentional. I had no idea he had an opinion on wading, even though I found the remarkable RiverApes site a couple of years ago. I kind of skimmed it and then stuck it somewhere between Elaine Morgan and Rudyard Kipling's Just-So Stories.

Last I heard, the going hypothesis is that bipedalism was favored for food gathering while standing on branches in trees (Hunt, I think, and Tattersal, et al). Chimpanzees tend to do this at times.

I really liked the idea of gathering high protein foods and bringing them back to hidden mates and young, though........

Bipedalism had a lot of advantages, such as enabling early hominids to wave and throw and look threatening while short.

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
I'm still trying to see where bipedalism predated knuckle-walking. That's what I thought was being presented, anyway.



I see where Christopher Stringer thinks that wading may have preceeded bipedalism, and, as a result, bipedalism may have evolved earier than thought, but I still don't see where bipedalism came prior to knuckle-walking.

RayG

It would help if I could remember the name of the article. I've used it a few times in debates on Creationism vs. Evolution boards, and I'm not getting anything Googling the phrase except for RiverApes and Reasons to Believe.

Nuts. I'll work on it. With almost 2500 sites in My Favorites, I'm bound to forget a few. :(

[LAL]

This isn't what I was looking for, but try this:

"The newly-found Pierolapithecus catalaunicus has fingers like a chimp, a body like an ape and the upright posture of humans. According to Salvador Moya-Sola, one of the husband and wife team of paleontologists who discovered the fossils, the species did not use the knuckle-walking technique of gorillas and chimps or the branch-swinging technique of orangutans for locomotion. The body was designed for waking upright and would have made a good tree climber. The bipedal locomotion of the new discovery is intriguing because it was once thought that our upright posture evolved later and was a significant change that led to the development of both advanced brains and our skill with our hands. Early theories about human evolution thought upright walking was a late development but since then, many significant discoveries about human evolution pushed back its appearance."

http://www.thecurrentonline.com/media/paper304/news/2004/11/29/Opinions/Mankinds.Family.Tree.Has.Expanded-816957.shtml?page=2

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
Totally unintentional. I had no idea he had an opinion on wading...

I found it by typing 'Christopher Stringer bipedalism' into Google. The very first link contained his wading hypothesis.

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
I found it by typing 'Christopher Stringer bipedalism' into Google. The very first link contained his wading hypothesis.

RayG

This?

"Well known names who are open to the Wading Origins idea.
Chris Stringer (British Natural History Museum) is open to the idea of a Wading Origin for Bipedalism

Professor Chris Stringer is famous all over the world for his insightful work into the so called "Out of Africa II" theory - which argues that fully modern Homo sapiens emerged from Africa very recently (less than 200,000 years ago) and replaced all other hominines that already lived in Europe, Asia and Australasia as they did.

Less well known is Chris Stringer's tacit support of (or at least openness to) the wading origins theory of bipedalism. He co-authored a student text book on Human Origins. In which a sidebar about the aquatic ape hypothesis was written in an unusually open (as opposed to the more common dismissive) way.

Stringer, Christopher. B. (1976).
Before Adam; The First True Men; Man's Migrations. In F. Clapham (ed.) The Rise of Man. Sampson Low: London, pp. 52-79

In another publication ...

Stringer, Christopher. B. (1997).
Discussion. RSA Journal. November/December. p 115.

...he wrote “If our ancestors did go into the water, that would force them to walk upright.”

At Birkbeck College (London) at the end of 2000 I went to hear Chris speak about his Out of Africa Theory. At the end end of a very interesting talk, which considered the possibility of a coastal route for the exodus of modern Homo sapiens out of Africa around 150,000 years ago he stopped and responded to general questions from the audience.

I asked him "I have a question about your proposed coastal route out of Africa. Considering the fact that we swim so much better than chimpanzees, do you think that this swimming ability is derived and that if so do you think this ability evolved during this African exodus?"

Chris seem to twig straight away where I was coming from and delivered the expected cautious but unambiguous refutation of the AAH that anyone would do in his position today. Then, to my astonishment and elation he added words to the effect "... but if you are looking for something that might have resulted from an exposure to water how about the way we move around? How about wading?" "

http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/AATheories/Wading/HowAboutWading.htm

I doubt he's developed these comments to the point of hypothesis.

Here's the site:

http://www.riverapes.com/

Note the kid's stories. Weird, huh?

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
...the species did not use the knuckle-walking technique of gorillas and chimps or the branch-swinging technique of orangutans for locomotion.

From what I gather, that only shows that bipedalism developed earlier than thought, not that it predated knuckle-walking.

RayG

[LAL]

Note the figure in the Clarke film is wading.........in water that was measured at 3-4' deep.

(desperately tries to tie all this to the topic................)

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

I doubt he's developed these comments to the point of hypothesis.


Since the wading idea isn't yet widely accepted as a theory, and is only a tentative explanation presented by Stringer and others, that's why I referred to it as a hypothesis.

:D

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
From what I gather, that only shows that bipedalism developed earlier than thought, not that it predated knuckle-walking.

RayG

The article I'm looking for was published before this, and Stringer clearly stated that. It may have been archived and that's why I can't get it to come up on the exact phrase, "The consensus, according to Chris Stringer.........".

Note that the upright Pierolapithecus catalaunicus lived a few million years before there were any Great Apes.

"the species did not use the knuckle-walking technique of gorillas and chimps or the branch-swinging technique of orangutans for locomotion. The body was designed for waking upright and would have made a good tree climber. The bipedal locomotion of the new discovery is intriguing because it was once thought that our upright posture evolved later and was a significant change that led to the development of both advanced brains and our skill with our hands."

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
Since the wading idea isn't yet widely accepted as a theory, and is only a tentative explanation presented by Stringer and others, that's why I referred to it as a hypothesis.

:D

RayG

I'd refer to it as a "sidebar". Didn't "Toumai" kind of blow the "Aquatic Ape" stuff out of the water (so to speak)? It was found in Chad.

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
The bipedal locomotion of the new discovery is intriguing because it was once thought that our upright posture evolved later and was a significant change that led to the development of both advanced brains and our skill with our hands."

As I said,

Originally posted by RayG
...that only shows that bipedalism developed earlier than thought, not that it predated knuckle-walking.

Are you suggesting that they walked bipedally, then became knuckle-draggers, then walked bipedally again? I'm not sure I understand what you're attempting to say.

RayG

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
Didn't "Toumai" kind of blow the "Aquatic Ape" stuff out of the water (so to speak)?

No idea. I only looked up info on Stringer because you mentioned him.

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
As I said,



Are you suggesting that they walked bipedally, then became knuckle-draggers, then walked bipedally again? I'm not sure I understand what you're attempting to say.

RayG


Who did?

The line split several times, but the common ancestor seems to have been a biped. It's now thought knuckle-walking was a later adaptation in the Great Apes while the Ardepiths, Australopiths, Orrorin, Kenyanthropus, Homo (which developed a locking arch)and who knows what else retained the bipedalism.

IOW, there were more bipedal primates than there were knuckle-walkers.

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
It's now thought knuckle-walking was a later adaptation in the Great Apes...

In other words, they walked upright first and then became knucklers? Where are they saying that?


IOW, there were more bipedal primates than there were knuckle-walkers.

That's a whole different issue, and not what I was addressing.

RayG

[SmooveK]

Late in the game to comment, but evidence of the entire group being out of whack is in the site itself. Any organization that has been around longer than the existence of the internet could put forth the effort to make a clear and well designed site. This is necessary to be seen as a serious organization in today's world.

Also, selling a copy of the bigfoot tape for a MILLION DOLLARS? Would you be willing to be talked down to 900 grand?

EDIT: Assuming that the bigfoot is not immortal, how can you explain the lack of hundreds if not thousands of remains littering the archaeological record?

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
As I said,



Are you suggesting that they walked bipedally, then became knuckle-draggers, then walked bipedally again? I'm not sure I understand what you're attempting to say.

RayG

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Think "bush" instead of "line".

[LAL]

Originally posted by SmooveK
Late in the game to comment, but evidence of the entire group being out of whack is in the site itself. Any organization that has been around longer than the existence of the internet could put forth the effort to make a clear and well designed site. This is necessary to be seen as a serious organization in today's world.

Also, selling a copy of the bigfoot tape for a MILLION DOLLARS? Would you be willing to be talked down to 900 grand?

EDIT: Assuming that the bigfoot is not immortal, how can you explain the lack of hundreds if not thousands of remains littering the archaeological record?

What site are you referring to? Beckjord's? Beckjord is out of whack, not "the entire group".

There are very few ape fossils of any kind, due to the habitat they prefer. Fossilization is extremely rare in general and it's possible millions of species have come and gone leaving no trace.

Bones of any kind don't last long in the PNW (the region I'm most familiar with). The scavenger system makes short work of them.

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
In other words, they walked upright first and then became knucklers? Where are they saying that?

Knuckle-walking was a later adaptation in the Great Apes. The common ancestor wasn't a knuckle-walker as was previously thought.


That's a whole different issue, and not what I was addressing.

RayG

I don't see why. Why?

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
No idea. I only looked up info on Stringer because you mentioned him.

RayG
Elaine Morgan stated the Aquatic Ape stuff; she wrote a book on it. There's never been anything in the fossil record to support it.

Algis Kulikas seems to be the originator of this modification. It doesn't look like Stringer did anything other than say something to the effect of "Yeah, that's a possibility. Gotta go."

http://www.riverapes.com/Me/index.htm

[casebro]

This recent disdussion of bipedal vs knuckle-dragging seems to be stayed from Bigfoot. Except, if I was a Believer in BF, I'd say "Yup, he is a wading ape, thats why we find no skeletons- they usually die in the water." But then the Skeptic me would say "but don't we have fossils of otters?"


And on the "anthropometrics of hominoids" concept that seems to say that BF weighs 800 pounds: I know of a subspecies of nearly 8 feet tall hominids that only weigh 350 pounds. They seem to be proportioned about like the BFs in the films. including 16 inch feet. They are in the subspecies "Lakers/Celts"

[Correa Neto]

Originally posted by LAL When did I attack mainstrean science? Efforts have been made over forty years to interest mainstream science.
I was labled a "woo" the minute I hit the board. What can I possibly do to make it worse?
I have seen no evidence that you were labeled a woo by defending your claim that bigfoot is real. People are just challenging your claims. Some posts had a humorous tones, but I really see no problem with that. So far you presented no evidence that you are a woo like erickbjord, antigray et al. Keep up the good work. However, I still don´t think the presented evidence is solid. And you seem not to trust those you call "mainstream scientists". This position deserves a change.
Originally posted by LAL It's implausible we may have living bipedal relatives on earth? Why is that so implausible?
The implausibility lies on the lack of favorable evidence.

Originally posted by LAL There have been several encounters involving screeching brakes and terrified motorists. A friend's daughter and her friends saw one en route home from the Prom on Hwy 14. If you knew how deserted that highway was at night, you'd wonder how they happened to be lucky enough to even see it.
And why not s single roadkill? I´m used to desert roads, and animals get killed in them. Even the rare ones. Unfortunately, I admit.
Originally posted by LAL There was physical evidence.
That could have been misinterpretated.
Originally posted by LAL I suggest you read some reports and the comments by investigators.
I had. That´s why I am still questioning.
Originally posted by LAL Never mind that the Patterson film has been analysed to pieces over 38 years, and it still holds up. Try reading some of the analyses instead of dismissing it as "fuzzy". It's pretty clear, and there are some very good reasons it cannot be a man in a suit, despite the wishful thinking of sceptics.
Oh, but I have read them. As well as the critics, that seem quite plausible. Don´t get me wrong, but the expression "despite the wishful thinking of sceptics" was very badly used. I don´t think anyone here would not like to have a solid evidence for such a wonderfull thing as the existence of bigfeet. We have wishfull thinking that evidence better than fuzzy pictures, questionable tracks and questionable reports will surface. We just don´t think that the avaliable evidence supports the notion that exists a population of unknown large apes living in North America.
Originally posted by LAL It's just possible a homidid primate is more intelligent than the average bear.
Fruit bait was taken on the Skookum expedition. I'm impressed by what they did get, not tearing my hair out because they didn't come back with a body.
Even humans can be ambushed, tracked, etc... Still waiting for good pieces of evidence, good quality footage would be nice start.
Originally posted by LAL I don't know. Could be because the report was from years before and the students weren't sure of the spot. Many people do not report for fear of ridicule and it's only been in recent years that people could report to an organization rather than just to law enforcement.
But if they were walking across a trail and that´s not exactly the thing that you would forgot the location... There was no real reason for not getting the corpse. With the corpse, no one would fear ridicule. Or its just one of those reports that one does not know the exact origin and are repeated ad nauseaum in several books, sites etc, but was never really checked? People nowdays can find humans remains from the 60s and 50s in airplane crash sites, decades-old burial sites can be found by GPR, and so on. Even on acid soil, at least teeth would be preserved.
Sidenote- I remember reading not just about the reported sighting of bigfeet burying the bodies of their relatives but also as an hipothesis for the absence of bodies in cryptozoology texts back in the 70s. So, chances are its another report of unknown and unreliable source.
Originally posted by LAL On Sasquatches? Here's a graduate student:

http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/sbs/somer87.htm
Who said it has to be with bigfoot? It can be accidental! Someone is studying say, woodpecker population, hears a noise at the nearby bush, sees bigfoot lingering, grabs camera, click click, there you are!
Originally posted by LAL Remember the famous case of the hominid clavical Dr. Tim White determined was a fossil dolphin bone?
Right. An unfossilized dolphin bone in the midlle of North America would not raise any eyebrows...
Originally posted by LAL I read it. I've also seen a statement from a ranger that he's never seen a bear carcass.
There are sightings and tracks from other areas, but most of the data seems to be from the Northwest.
I know there are reported sightings from other areas. Why there are no corpses from these areas? Bones are also rare in Texas, Florida and Canada? No roadkills either... No one managed to shoot one. Weird, don´t you think?
IOriginally posted by LAL Why, when so few mainstream scientists accept it? Where's the grant money? It's mostly been left to amateurs and they're scoffed at for being amateurs. Geez.
Please note that what I am saying is that, with people making field research, even if focusing in other species, for so long and with all the attention that these works require, evidence would have been found. Its would be like seing jaguars when you are looking for tapirs, or a grizzly bear while studying moose. It happens all the time. That´s why "mainstream scientists" find hard to accept it. Not only "mainstream scientists" but also other people such as myself.
Originally posted by LAL All of which are answerable, whether you accept the answers or not.
The same is valid if the answers point to the non-existence of bigfoot.
Originally posted by LAL If they don't exist, what's leaving all that "inconclusive" evidence?
A number of things, such as common animals misidentified.
Originally posted by LAL A full-time team is needed.
No, it is not.
Originally posted by LAL There are no Moose in the area I'm talking about.
And what would be the maximum size of the animals that live there? About the same, smaller of larger than a bigfoot?
Originally posted by LAL I lived in it. It's dense. The ground cover is one of the reasons it's difficult to track anything. There are a couple of layers of understory. These animals, deer included, are adapted to it.
Dense enough to difficult the locomotion of a 2+m tall ape? It has enough food for it?
Originally posted by LAL Skeletons of Homo florensis should have been discovered much sooner than they were, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker should have been photographed much sooner than it was, Coelacanths should have been discovered much sooner than they were, Eric Rudolf should have been apprehended much sooner than he was, four new mammalian species in Viet Nam should have been discovered much sooner than they were............
Someone reaserched a cave and found H. florensis. Someone noticed a weird fish in a market and coelacanthus was found. The mamalian species in Vietnam are not exactly as large as bigfoot, neither so different from other common animals that live there, Vietnam´s logistics and political situation are, if I am not wrong, a bit worse than in USA. And still, not a single carcass of a bigfoot was found, neither it was captured in nice shap footage, pictures, etc.
Originally posted by LAL There are no Moose in Skamania County, Washington. No pine where I lived either. Too wet. I lived in mature second growth timber, mostly Douglas Fir. The canopy was open enough for plenty of sun to get to the Broadleaf Maple and Alder, Blackberries, Wild Raspberries.............Skamania County has the most reported sightings in the country.

No solid evidence was found by whom?
Mature second growth and open canopy are the key words.
No solid evidence was found by anyone.
Originally posted by LAL Perhaps because they don't have migration routes and tend to roam randomly when feeding. The Powder Mountain tracks (in snow), went from Balsam stand to Balsam stand. The animal was apparently feeding on the Balsam berries. They were spotted and photographed from a helicopter. There is no sign of other activity in the snow.......it looks absolutely pristine.
Remember the nomadic jaguars I mentioned some posts above? They can be tracked, are seen people take pictures, sometimes the become roadkills, sometimes they even get in to trouble entering in hotels...
Originally posted by LAL They mostly "appear" to people who don't happen to be carrying cameras at the time.
Choosy creatures...
Originally posted by LAL Because they are not being monitored or hunted, except by a few "weekend warriors".

Gorillas travel in troops and leave considerable sign, including nest-making. Chimpanzees travel in troops as well.
Not all gorillas are monitored. Still, locals know where and how to find them.
Gorillas and chimps are not always in groups. Animals that become isolated from the group by some reasons (fight, disease, predation, etc.) quite often wander close to human settlements. And are caught.
Originally posted by LAL It does. The tracks near Bluff Creek were seen when new roads were going in. That's near a 17,500 sq.mi. area in Northern California that had only been mapped from the air.
Only mapped by air by who? With what objectives? Topographic surveys? Or bigfoot search? No one works there? What´s it? Gwangi´s valley?

Originally posted by LAL There may be a living relative in Russia.
Ah, yeah. As well as the yeti, the wildment from Southern Asia, woodwoose from Britain, mapinguari here in Brazil...
Originally posted by LAL "Protopithecus brasiliensis Lund, 1838
Caipora bambuiorum Cartelle and Hartwig, 1996

'There is no smoke without fire' says the proverb. There really have been some larger primates in South America. The evidence consists of the fossil remains of two species of extinct giant primates in South America, which keeps paleo-primatologists and evolutionary primatologists extremely busy and excited today.
...snip...

Now one's claiming Sasquatches evolved in NA. They evidently came over the Bering Strait. Our species did too.
I happened to meet Cartelle some yeras ago. I also happen to know a lot of people who worked with him at Toca da Boa Vista (Caipora bambuiorum´s "birthplace"), helped him for years with its fossils, mapped the cave, as well as Lagoa Santa, among many others. Are you aware of it´s name origin? The caipora is a Native Brazilian myth, a small hairy person, with feet turned backward. Black fur, white at its belly, according to some versions. A protector of the animals that live in the woods, sometimes mounts a wild pig. There is an anedoctal story that Cartelle thinks there´s a slim chance that the myth could have started by memories retained by the natives from the megafauna animals. Why they would not remember saber-toothed cats, much more impressive beasts- is something I don´t know. Oh, then you would say, same can be valid for bigfoot!
And yes it could, but... There´s no fossil register in the Americas suggesting the existence of such a creature! Not to mention the exting South American apes were not that big. Roughly the size of a small child. And were tree-dwellers. And were not related to great apes neither to hominids...

Besides, there´s no fossil remains of anything similar to bigfoot along the proposed migration routes. Note also that big apes seem to be restricted to tropical to subtropical climates.

Originally posted by LAL No fossils of Chimpanzees and Gorillas have been found at all. There are around a thousand living species with no fossil record.
Fossilization is a rare event. Here's my favorite article on it:

http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/taphonomy.html

It's not likely they'd "devolve" from Great Apes. They may be another species of Great Ape. We're a medium-sized ape.
Elephants are tropical too, but they had relatives that lived in the tundra.
Hominid fossils have been found in Russia. They are practically Homo habilis
We're an ape and we live everywhere.

I really don´t want to brag about this, neither use argument from authority, so please don´t get me wrong. I am a geologist, I know a lot of paleontologists. There are also other geologists here in this board. If I miss the mark here, they will surelly twist my ears. What goes now, is a bit of personal experience. Sometimes people use the argument that fossil register is incomplete to defend a number of points, some valid, some not valid. The fact is that fossil register is not so incomplete as some people think or say. Take Brazillian big fossil apes as an example. They were tree-dwellers from tropical rainforests. The type of animal that you would never expect to find a fossil from. However, they were found...
So, you have Africa, Asia and North America as possible places where these animals inhabited. Note that when one says a species migrated from Asia to the Americas, it is implied that actually its habitat expanded from Asia to the Americas, its not just the passage of a pack. Sure, only a small portion of these continents have the correct continions for fossilization. Still, chances are that in some of these places, the remains of something like bigfoot would have been found. Specially when you take in to account the climate changes at the end of the Ice Ages. Sinkholes attracted all sort of animals due to the shortage of water, that´s why caves have such a great fossil register. But so far no large primate fossil was found in sinkholes in North America. Neither in lake beds, etc.
Note also that we are tool-making "naked apes", the species from the Homo genus were the ones who managed to spread across a variety of climates. Great apes are still restricted to warm climates. This is backed by the fossil register.
Regarding elephants... Actually there are different genus as well as species adpated to different climates and form different eras. With fossil register. Same thing when it comes to rhinos. But great apes and other animals are more demanding when it comes to environmental conditions.

Originally posted by LAL No. I lived in Sasquatch country and practically everything I've read and seen on it since, except for UFO/paranormal silliness, has only strengthened my conviction.

Read Krantz.
Pratically everything I read about bigfoot only strenghtened my position that its an implausible idea. I know people who lived and worked in areas where bigfoot is supposed to live and they think its nothing but a myth.
And why do you think I have not read Krantz? What would be your reaction if I say that still, I am not convinced? Don´t underestimate the people you´ll find here. Most of us, before declaring that are we not convinced of something, make our homework.

[LAL]

Originally posted by casebro
This recent disdussion of bipedal vs knuckle-dragging seems to be stayed from Bigfoot. Except, if I was a Believer in BF, I'd say "Yup, he is a wading ape, thats why we find no skeletons- they usually die in the water." But then the Skeptic me would say "but don't we have fossils of otters?"[QUOTE]
[B]
In fact, most fossilization does occur in water. I don't know how wading got into this, but it can get right out again.

It's not straying far. It came up in regard to whether Gigantopithecus was bipedal or not. There were over a dozen species of bipedal "apes" found so far, so there's no lack of possible ancestors. I would not expect a large bipedal hominid to have evolved from a large knuckle-walking ape, but there's just not enough of Giganto to know what the mode of locomotion was. There was a smaller subspecies in India. It is known they were wide ranging and survived for some 500,000 years, which is about 300,000 years longer than anatomically modern humans have been around. Arguments that there hasn't been time for Sasquatches to have evolved from them wouldn't seem to carry much weight, IMO. [QUOTE]
[B]
And on the "anthropometrics of hominoids" concept that seems to say that BF weighs 800 pounds: I know of a subspecies of nearly 8 feet tall hominids that only weigh 350 pounds. They seem to be proportioned about like the BFs in the films. including 16 inch feet. They are in the subspecies "Lakers/Celts"

There's a thread on Bigfoot Forums comparing photos of the Patterson creature with photos of NFL players.

You'll have to get bigger and bulkier than that.

Do Lakers/Celts have a midtarsal bend?

[casebro]

Originally posted by LAL


Do Lakers/Celts have a midtarsal bend?


Here's a link to "meldrums best pic of a midtarsel bend" (from a BF forum) http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/jpg/018.jpg

If that creature has a midtarsel bend, so do I. My tracks on the beach sure look like that, a pile of sand pushed up as my forefoot thrusts me forward. Whats that you say? Sand is piled in the wrong direction? Try wearing "big foot sandals" and walking backwards, that's why an inexperienced tracker will find "tracks that disappear" where the hoaxer started. If I were to put on some BF sandals backwards, and run down a hill, my footprints would be 8 feet apart, and appear to be going up hill, dug in deeper at the toes where I landed with each step,wouldn't they? But anybody who has ever ween a set od day old tracks in the melting snow knows that the ttracks get bigger as the snow melts. The warm air in the tracks melt the snow faster than the surround snow, and the compressed snow in the tracks lacks the insulatory effect of the air trapped in fluffy snow.

Speaking of tracks, how come none of the tracks in Texas or PNW have been examined by a US Border Patrol expert? They track more 'hominids' than anybody....hmmm... they ought to have found tracks near the border too, since BF knows no political boundaries......perhaps the illegals use 'big foot sandals' to evade the cops? Patrolman 1 to Patrolman 2 " Nope not a Guatamalan immigrant, just another Sasquatch heading for Dicken's apple orchard . Even Bigfoot wants to have a Dickins Cider. Forgetaboutit."

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL

Knuckle-walking was a later adaptation in the Great Apes. The common ancestor wasn't a knuckle-walker as was previously thought.


Where specifically are they saying that? You have yet to provide any links to support the statement you've made. You previously posted this:

Originally posted by LAL
But, bipedalism came first, according to the consensus with knuckle-walking a later adaptation in the Great Apes.

When pressed for sources, you threw out Christopher Stringer et al, but no specific link. You did add this:

According to Chris Stringer (you do know who he is, I hope), the consensus is that bipedalism was first.

Again, with no link or specific source to support your statement.

Diogenes then asked: "Can you point to a paper that suggests bipedalism predated walking on all fours by any animal?"

To which you submitted this:

"Dating the beginnings of bipedalism is very important in the human story because, for many experts, it would mark a clear divergence from the ancestral/ape pattern and show that the human lineage had really begun," said Chris Stringer, director of the Human Origins Program at the Natural History Museum in London.

Although this finding puts the development of bipedalism back by another two million years, it is not necessarily a surprise. The chimpanzee-human divergence has been estimated to have occurred between five and seven million years ago, based on genetic data.

"Now, for the first time, we have solid evidence dated to six million years ago of an intermediate creature between humans and the apes that demonstrated upright posture and bipedalism," said Robert Eckhardt, a developmental-genetics and evolutionary-morphology researcher at Pennsylvania State University. "And the dating of this fossil is unusually secure."

Which indicates bipedalism developed earlier in the time-line, not that bipedalism preceeded knuckle-walking.

If you are referring to this quote:

The bipedal locomotion of the new discovery is intriguing because it was once thought that our upright posture evolved later...

Again, it refers to the bipedalsim time-line, and I see nothing there about bipedalism preceeding knuckle-walking.

If knuckle-walking came later for a particular species, in your opinion, what mode of transportation preceeded knuckle-walking for that particular species?

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
Where specifically are they saying that? You have yet to provide any links to support the statement you've made. You previously posted this:

When pressed for sources, you threw out Christopher Stringer et al, but no specific link. You did add this:

Again, with no link or specific source to support your statement.


I'm still trying to find it. I do have a few other things to do besides sort through My Favorites and read every likely article looking for one sentence.

I thought this would have been common knowlege by now. It didn't occur to me I'd have to cite an article I read over a year ago, nor that I might be unable to easily find it again.


Diogenes then asked: "Can you point to a paper that suggests bipedalism predated walking on all fours by any animal?"

To which you submitted this:.


To keep you guys busy while I try to locate the article that phrase was in. No easy task when I can't remember the title, nor even the context. The other article came up while I was Googling the phrase.



Which indicates bipedalism developed earlier in the time-line, not that bipedalism preceeded knuckle-walking.


Uh, what's the difference?


If knuckle-walking came later for a particular species, in your opinion, what mode of transportation preceeded knuckle-walking for that particular species?

RayG

Brachiation, perhaps, since the Great Apes apparently split off from the Lesser Apes.

How did this get so convoluted? I haven't figured out which of over 300 articles that statement was in. I do know it was written prior to the scans on Orrorin. I'm still looking. I'm all the way up to articles on Ardipithecus kadabba (another early bipedal primate), so far.

"Finding the Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba specimens represented a tremendous challenge to the researchers.Lakes, forest areas, volcanic rocks and recent sediments cover about 87 percent of the present-day Middle Awash area. The remaining area contains patches of ancient sediments exposed by erosion, but less than 1 percent of the Middle Awash has windows of exposed ancient-sediment outcroppings that contain mammal fossils.

Discovering, correlating and searching these small windows to the past is a research challenge. The new Ardipithecus subspecies fossils were tiny nuggets in a huge landscape littered with pebbles and boulders. Finding the fossils truly was like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack."

http://www.eurekalert.org/features/doe/2001-08/danl-rfh060602.php

If the last common ancestor was a biped and knuckle-walking Great Apes didn't evolve from this ancestor for another four million years, isn't it obvious bipedalism came first? Why does it have to be spelled out? The old "up from the apes" scenario was wrong, apparently.

Bipedalism is not even an exclusive trait of hominids. Meet Oreopithecus:

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/10_18_97/fob1.htm

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=17596

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Contact in reference to spreading disease does not equal "seen" or even touched.

Did those blankets, etc., indirectly reach bigfoot too?

The blanket thing came up on a message board recently. Seems there was only one case of contaminated blankets being distributed, and that didn't seem to be confirmed.

Ever think of contaminated water supplies? That's how Cholera spreads.

Did whole villages of Bigfoot die out as well?

They don't live in villages.

The photo looks like the Toutle River after St. Helens erupted.

In fact, a good place to look for Sasquatch remains might be under a couple of hundred feet of Mt. St. Helens ash. A Forest Service worker found a track in ash after the eruption.

Where are the rest of the animals that must have died in the flood?

[LAL]

Originally posted by casebro
Here's a link to "meldrums best pic of a midtarsel bend" (from a BF forum) http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/jpg/018.jpg


And here's Meldrum on it:

http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/fxnlmorph.html

He's an expert on primate locomotion, BTW.
Does your foot push off in the middle?

[LAL]

Found one of the "et als", anyway (from John Waters clear back in 1996):

"However, all available evidence
shows that hominids never used knuckle walking. Their fossils
never show the strengthened digits which are typical of knuckle
walkers.


This raises the question of how they moved on the ground. If
they did not knuckle walk, what did they do? Did they turn
somersaults? Do backflips? Cartwheels?


If the Gibbon analogy has any value, then it is most probable
that they were bipedal on the ground. Not good bipedalists
perhaps, but bipedalists nevertheless.


According to all the evidence, the Gorilla/Bonobo/Chimpanzee and
their ancestors only evolved knuckle walking after their
collective split from the hominids. This raises the question of
why did they evolve knuckle walking. Why did they not become
bipedal?"

http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/anthropology/sci.anthropology.paleo/archive/september-1996/0363.html

[LAL]

Originally posted by bruto
Whole villages indeed - those Indians had a pretty sophisticated social structure with villages, plantations, organized trading, alliances, etc., and this is one of the reasons such pandemics were possible. What evidence do we have that sasquatches are organized into such communities? Are we missing not only the squatches themselves, but their villages and their trade routes?

Oh, c'mon. Green speculates, and it's only speculation, they may have become infected with new diseases for which they had no immunity as the Natives did. Many tribes were nomadic, and I believe the villages referred to were in the West.

This was a real concern of Fossey's. She did not want tourists bringing diseases to "her" Gorillas. They are susceptible and they don't live in villages.

[LAL]

Originally posted by casebro
While I'm not an expert on Big feet- mine are only size 13- I am a professional wood carver. Can anybody here point me to a photo of a BF footprint that shows the 'dermal ridges' ? I think lengthwise ridges may be an artifact of the carving process, and I may be able to identify the tool used....If I was carving a foot 16" long, I would use lengthwise strokes.

I also wonder about the depth of these'footprints'. Seems to me an elephant wouldn't sink in so far as Bigfoot did, but a man stomping on a molded rubber foot might.... and/or a deer running will place his hoofs in a tight cluster, rears into the same place the fronts had left just previously, making 'footprints in the snow' at lengths equal to BF's supposed stride. Most of the BF track photo's Ive pulled up have been in the snow, melted beyond any recognition. I'm sure someone here will educate me...

Here's one:

http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/sbs/elkins.html

Note Chilcutt is a forensic fingerprint expert. Wood grain does not have the whorls and sweat pores that have been observed, nor do carved feet have articulating toes. There was a lengthy didcussion on this on the thread "Bigfoot Follies" on this board.

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL


I'm still trying to find it. I do have a few other things to do besides sort through My Favorites and read every likely article looking for one sentence.

Shouldn't be that hard if it's the common consensus. :D

I thought this would have been common knowlege by now. It didn't occur to me I'd have to cite an article I read over a year ago, nor that I might be unable to easily find it again.

Nope, it's news to me. I've not yet found an article where scientists speculate that a species walked upright and then became a knuckle-walker.

No easy task when I can't remember the title, nor even the context.

Maybe it's not such common knowledge after all.

Originally posted by LAL

Originally posted by RayG
Which indicates bipedalism developed earlier in the time-line, not that bipedalism preceeded knuckle-walking.

Uh, what's the difference?

Big difference. You're putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. For example, at six months age all of my children were able to crawl, but one of them started walking bipedally at the age of 9 months. It took most of the rest of them around 12 months to learn to walk upright. Just because we know the one child walked at 9 months (earlier time-line), it doesn't mean he was able to walk prior to learning to crawl.

How did this get so convoluted?

You tossed out the statement that bipedalism preceeded knuckle-walking. ;)

RayG

[casebro]

Originally posted by LAL
Here's one:

http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/sbs/elkins.html

Note Chilcutt is a forensic fingerprint expert. Wood grain does not have the whorls and sweat pores that have been observed, nor do carved feet have articulating toes. There was a lengthy didcussion on this on the thread "Bigfoot Follies" on this board.

Don't most scientific photos have captions about the scale? From these, we don't have a clue about how the sizes proprtion. But they do not look like carving artifacts. They look more like molding artifacts- he even says the ridges in area D were probably caused accidentally by whoever poured the casts. I'd guess sorta like pulling 'peaks' in chocolate frosting, pulling a cast from the mold, or a foot from mud, can make lines like those. Or the wrinkles in a thick coating, like paint or resin, that shrinks as it dries.

Oh well, nobodies going to convince anybody else here, it is just an interchange of ideas...called a forum, no?

[aggle-rithm]

Originally posted by LAL


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Did whole villages of Bigfoot die out as well?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


They don't live in villages.



Here, I agree with you 100%.

There are no Bigfoot villages.

Of course, I would be interested to know how you came to this conclusion.

[LAL]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
I have seen no evidence that you were labeled a woo by defending your claim that bigfoot is real. People are just challenging your claims. Some posts had a humorous tones, but I really see no problem with that. So far you presented no evidence that you are a woo like erickbjord, antigray et al. Keep up the good work. However, I still don´t think the presented evidence is solid. And you seem not to trust those you call "mainstream scientists". This position deserves a change.
Check "Bigfoot Follies". That's where I first hit the board. Beckjord started calling me Lu Woo Woo here, but the posts were removed when he got suspended for the second time.

My brother's a "mainstream scientist". I'm certainly pro-mainstream science, but I think, after Yerkes primatologists pronounced the PGF authentic, "mainstream science" could have done better than just backing off because someone at the Smithsonian thought there was "something wrong" with it (didn't say what), e.g..

A few "mainstream scientists" have looked into all this and have come away convinced there's something worth investigating here.

The implausibility lies on the lack of favorable evidence.

And why not s single roadkill? I´m used to desert roads, and animals get killed in them. Even the rare ones. Unfortunately, I admit..

No Sasquatches in the deserts.

It's hard to get much speed on a winding mountain road. And they tend to inhabitat roadless areas. They're not stupid.

That could have been misinterpretated...

There were photos, a cast....... René Dahinden followed up on the Cox sighting (I didn't know that at the time; I wish I could have met him). He was so alert to fakery and misinterpretation he even dismissed some valid evidence in another case. ;). How do you misinterpret seven miles of tracks?


I had. That´s why I am still questioning.

Oh, but I have read them. As well as the critics, that seem quite plausible.


You're not including Greg Long with "plausible", I hope.


Don´t get me wrong, but the expression "despite the wishful thinking of sceptics" was very badly used.

I borrowed it from a sceptic who said I only have "wishful thinking". I thought it was badly used too.


I don´t think anyone here would not like to have a solid evidence for such a wonderfull thing as the existence of bigfeet. We have wishfull thinking that evidence better than fuzzy pictures, questionable tracks and questionable reports will surface. We just don´t think that the avaliable evidence supports the notion that exists a population of unknown large apes living in North America.

What some find compelling, others find questionable. Kind of depends on your POV, doesn't it?


Even humans can be ambushed, tracked, etc... Still waiting for good pieces of evidence, good quality footage would be nice start.


Stay tuned........

But if they were walking across a trail and that´s not exactly the thing that you would forgot the location... There was no real reason for not getting the corpse. With the corpse, no one would fear ridicule. Or its just one of those reports that one does not know the exact origin and are repeated ad nauseaum in several books, sites etc, but was never really checked? [/QUOTE]
[/B]
It may have been in John Green's The Apes Among Us........I reread that a few months ago. Many of his reports were years or even decades old when he received them. I don't know the exact circumstances. Since there's apparently only one such report, it's not evidence burying the dead is normal Sasquatch behavior, assuming it happened at all. There's no lack of hiding places in the PNW for a sick, wounded or dying animal.


People nowdays can find humans remains from the 60s and 50s in airplane crash sites, decades-old burial sites can be found by GPR, and so on. Even on acid soil, at least teeth would be preserved.

Who's looking? How would you spot them after they've been buried in detrius and covered in club moss? Where would you start?


Sidenote- I remember reading not just about the reported sighting of bigfeet burying the bodies of their relatives but also as an hipothesis for the absence of bodies in cryptozoology texts back in the 70s. So, chances are its another report of unknown and unreliable source.

The fact that it was students doesn't help. Do you mean Cryptozoology Magazine? According to Alton Higgins, it had a peer review process. Or perhaps it was a reprint from Green.

Elephants conceal their dead, don't they? Concealing corpses is an intriguing possibilty, but it's not necessary to explain why no bodies have been found yet.


Who said it has to be with bigfoot? It can be accidental! Someone is studying say, woodpecker population, hears a noise at the nearby bush, sees bigfoot lingering, grabs camera, click click, there you are!

Click, click. Inconclusive. Could have been faked.


Right. An unfossilized dolphin bone in the midlle of North America would not raise any eyebrows.....

Hiker: "Man, that's a mighty big bone."
Camper: "Yeah. Big bear."
Hiker: "Oh."

I know there are reported sightings from other areas. Why there are no corpses from these areas? Bones are also rare in Texas, Florida and Canada? No roadkills either... No one managed to shoot one. Weird, don´t you think?

No. Florida's a little iffy with some known shenanigans there. Canada's sparsely populated compared to the US, but like here, the people tend to be near cities. Canada has had quite a few sightings. There are sightings in Ohio, too. There are some wild spots left even in the overpopulated eastern US.

I don't recall seeing roadkills of much of anything other than cats dogs and 'possums in the area I lived in. Most of the county was roadless, but even the few highways were pretty clean. Deer were hit sometimes, but I never heard of a Cougar being killed.

I
Please note that what I am saying is that, with people making field research, even if focusing in other species, for so long and with all the attention that these works require, evidence would have been found. Its would be like seing jaguars when you are looking for tapirs, or a grizzly bear while studying moose. It happens all the time. That´s why "mainstream scientists" find hard to accept it. Not only "mainstream scientists" but also other people such as myself.

And the top primate anatomist in the country found the Skookum Cast to be the imprint of an unknown hominid primate. Swindler's pretty mainstream. You'd think Meldrum could have got the modest research grant ($11,500) he requested for study after that wouldn't you?

The same is valid if the answers point to the non-existence of bigfoot.
Either way, an investigation is called for.

A number of things, such as common animals misidentified.

That's one of the things that's looked at first.

No, it is not.
What's not? My comments aren't copying and I don't want to have to look up the post and possibly have my reply vanish again.

And what would be the maximum size of the animals that live there? About the same, smaller of larger than a bigfoot?

Black Bear are the largest, I believe in the PNW, and occupy the same habitat.

Dense enough to difficult the locomotion of a 2+m tall ape?
Even in Virgin forest the trees have quite a bit of space between them. In fact, one of the hypotheses on the origins of bipedalism has it that it offered an advantage in slipping between trees on the ground.

It has enough food for it?

Ample. It supports a healthy population of Black Bear, which seem to eat about the same things.
One primatologist tried to discredit the Toba Inlet incident on grounds there wouldn't be enough food, but he based his assumption on what Orangutans eat!
I had friends who went "siwash" on cross country skiing trips. They didn't come back malnourished.

Someone reaserched a cave and found H. florensis. Someone noticed a weird fish in a market and coelacanthus was found. The mamalian species in Vietnam are not exactly as large as bigfoot, neither so different from other common animals that live there, Vietnam´s logistics and political situation are, if I am not wrong, a bit worse than in USA. And still, not a single carcass of a bigfoot was found, neither it was captured in nice shap footage, pictures, etc.

The first Gigantopithecus tooth was found in a Chinese apothecary shop.

Viet Nam has a "wildman", too.

Mature second growth and open canopy are the key words.
No solid evidence was found by anyone.

If you mean a body, no, but plenty of tracks, scat, hair, multiple witness sightings, some films...........

Remember the nomadic jaguars I mentioned some posts above? They can be tracked, are seen people take pictures, sometimes the become roadkills, sometimes they even get in to trouble entering in hotels...

One paid regular visits to a trailer park in The Dalles, Oregon. When "Bigfoot hunters" showed up with dogs and campfires, it was never seen again.


Choosy creatures...

Yep.


Not all gorillas are monitored. Still, locals know where and how to find them.
Gorillas and chimps are not always in groups. Animals that become isolated from the group by some reasons (fight, disease, predation, etc.) quite often wander close to human settlements. And are caught.




Only mapped by air by who? With what objectives? Topographic surveys? Or bigfoot search? No one works there? What´s it? Gwangi´s valley?

1967. I don't know who did the aerials (government survey, I suppose), but it was a roadless area in Northern California. There are still many wilderness areas and areas where the only roads are logging roads.


Ah, yeah. As well as the yeti, the wildment from Southern Asia, woodwoose from Britain, mapinguari here in Brazil...

I happened to meet Cartelle some yeras ago. I also happen to know a lot of people who worked with him at Toca da Boa Vista (Caipora bambuiorum´s "birthplace"), helped him for years with its fossils, mapped the cave, as well as Lagoa Santa, among many others. Are you aware of it´s name origin? The caipora is a Native Brazilian myth, a small hairy person, with feet turned backward. Black fur, white at its belly, according to some versions. A protector of the animals that live in the woods, sometimes mounts a wild pig. There is an anedoctal story that Cartelle thinks there´s a slim chance that the myth could have started by memories retained by the natives from the megafauna animals. Why they would not remember saber-toothed cats, much more impressive beasts- is something I don´t know. Oh, then you would say, same can be valid for bigfoot!
And yes it could, but... There´s no fossil register in the Americas suggesting the existence of such a creature! Not to mention the exting South American apes were not that big. Roughly the size of a small child. And were tree-dwellers. And were not related to great apes neither to hominids...

Other than John Day, which is far from Sasquatch habitat, what fossil beds are there in the PNW. I keep asking this, but I never get an answer.


Besides, there´s no fossil remains of anything similar to bigfoot along the proposed migration routes.


Well, most of it's underwater now...........


Note also that big apes seem to be restricted to tropical to subtropical climates.

Apes are. Hominids aren't. Note the size may be an adaptation for cold.


I really don´t want to brag about this, neither use argument from authority, so please don´t get me wrong. I am a geologist, I know a lot of paleontologists. There are also other geologists here in this board. If I miss the mark here, they will surelly twist my ears. What goes now, is a bit of personal experience. Sometimes people use the argument that fossil register is incomplete to defend a number of points, some valid, some not valid. The fact is that fossil register is not so incomplete as some people think or say. Take Brazillian big fossil apes as an example. They were tree-dwellers from tropical rainforests. The type of animal that you would never expect to find a fossil from. However, they were found... ...

Lucky. See the excerpt I posted on the discovery of "Kaddaba"?


So, you have Africa, Asia and North America as possible places where these animals inhabited. Note that when one says a species migrated from Asia to the Americas, it is implied that actually its habitat expanded from Asia to the Americas, its not just the passage of a pack. Sure, only a small portion of these continents have the correct continions for fossilization. Still, chances are that in some of these places, the remains of something like bigfoot would have been found. Specially when you take in to account the climate changes at the end of the Ice Ages. Sinkholes attracted all sort of animals due to the shortage of water, that´s why caves have such a great fossil register. But so far no large primate fossil was found in sinkholes in North America. Neither in lake beds, etc.[QUOTE][B]

At least a fossil primate tooth was found at John Day. 20 million years old, as I recall.
[QUOTE][B]
Note also that we are tool-making "naked apes", the species from the Homo genus were the ones who managed to spread across a variety of climates.
[QUOTE][B]
I've mentioned H. georgicus. The tools were simple stone flakes. Chimpanzees make tools.
[QUOTE]
[B] Great apes are still restricted to warm climates. This is backed by the fossil register.

There are reports and evidence of living non-Homo hominids from several countries in Asia, including Tibet and Russia.
Sasquatches aren't Great Apes of the tree-swinging, knuckle-walking variety.


Regarding elephants... Actually there are different genus as well as species adpated to different climates and form different eras.

Same with primates.


With fossil register. Same thing when it comes to rhinos. But great apes and other animals are more demanding when it comes to environmental conditions.

And hominids are very adaptable. So are members of the cat family. They're found in all climes all over the world.
California once had Giant Sloths and Mammoths. Where did they come from? Over the Bering Strait. Got fossils from there?


Pratically everything I read about bigfoot only strenghtened my position that its an implausible idea. I know people who lived and worked in areas where bigfoot is supposed to live and they think its nothing but a myth.

Some do, some don't. You might find Conservatives are the most admantly opposed. They seem to think they're un-Biblical or something. People who've seen them don't seem to think they're a myth, nor do their friends.

These things aren't decided by majority vote anyway.

And why do you think I have not read Krantz? What would be your reaction if I say that still, I am not convinced? Don´t underestimate the people you´ll find here. Most of us, before declaring that are we not convinced of something, make our homework.

I do my homework before I'm convinced of something.
Okay, have you read Krantz' book? I assumed you hadn't because I haven't seen you criticize it yet.

[LAL]

Originally posted by casebro
Don't most scientific photos have captions about the scale? From these, we don't have a clue about how the sizes proprtion. But they do not look like carving artifacts. They look more like molding artifacts- he even says the ridges in area D were probably caused accidentally by whoever poured the casts. I'd guess sorta like pulling 'peaks' in chocolate frosting, pulling a cast from the mold, or a foot from mud, can make lines like those. Or the wrinkles in a thick coating, like paint or resin, that shrinks as it dries.

Oh well, nobodies going to convince anybody else here, it is just an interchange of ideas...called a forum, no?

He knows what he's doing. There are casting artifacts with a copy of the Onion Mountain cast as well.

Hey, Ray, didn't I say I thought he'd be able to tell the difference?

Here's this again:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1023_031023_bigfoot.html

More photos:

http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/papers/dermal.html

[LTC8K6]

Ever think of contaminated water supplies? That's how Cholera spreads.

Obviously I thought of them.

They don't live in villages.

Can you back that claim up?

Most people have never seen a bigfoot. Since we know they exist, logically they are hiding in groups somewhere. It is not logical to assume each one is living in isolation, hidden by itself. :D

The bear was killed in California in December of 2003 in a flood.

[LTC8K6]

But if the giraffe were unknown to science, five expert accounts, supported by photographs and footprints, would hardly suffice.

That article was hilarious, btw. Thanks for the laugh.

http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/papers/dermal.html

Paul Freeman is the guy who I am pretty sure was faking dermal ridges.

The hoaxer had to penetrate a watershed area that is closed to the public by the U.S. Forest Service.

And what was Paul's job? :D

http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/articles/skeptical.htm

Dermal ridges can be faked, they were faked by Freeman, and they fooled people, imo.

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Why isn't there a large population of bigfoot?

It has virtually no competition at all. It is under no hunting pressure from humans or other animals. It has a huge range available and an ample food supply available. It has ample area for shelter.

It is at the top of the food chain. Possibly a large grizzly could kill one, but I doubt that.

It is supposedly intelligent. Intelligent enough to almost totally avoid conflict with the only other animal that could possibly harm it. In any case, it is physically superior in every way to that species even if it were regularly coming into conflict with it.

It is not being killed off rapidly by disease or we'd find a body or three.

There is no control at all on the population of bigfoot that I can see. The population should be increasing at a decent rate.

It should really be exploding.





According to Michael Gordon Pyle's 1995 book" Where Bigfoot Walks" the Population of any purported Bigfoot has and is declining rapidly. Many postulate that Bigfoot is a forest creature and since in the northwest of America the temperate rainforest is being depleted very rapidly due to clearcuts and timber extraction there is little to hide in and little to feed on. Second growth and plantation forest is a poor ecological excuse for primary forest when it comes to feeding and hidiing large apes as well as many other animals. Even small invertebrate populations have suffered from this damage, not to mention the nearly total destruction of the wild salmon populations in that area.If salmon was a staple of its diet , as many Amerindians claim, then this alone might have led to a population decline.

[casebro]

Originally posted by LAL
He knows what he's doing. There are casting artifacts with a copy of the Onion Mountain cast as well.

Hey, Ray, didn't I say I thought he'd be able to tell the difference?

Here's this again:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1023_031023_bigfoot.html




Soo, according to National Geographic, Moneymaker and Mulder agrre on bigfoot? Isn't that like the pot and the kettle agree on Black Power?

And Re: "More photos:

http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/papers/dermal.html where in they say that the shoe companies say the BF prints don't match to the proportions of human feet of that length, according to this site:

http://www.2bigfeet.com/inchtosize.php they are correct. BF foot prints are not as skinny as a human foot that length ought to be. But do a little exttrapolating from the chart, youll see that BF footprints DO SCALE from a normal size human foot. Like this: A Hoaxer has size 10 feet, 11 inchs long, 4 inch wide. He carves BF dummies 16 long, and naturally makes them 6 inch wide. Size 24 ? His own foot, 1 1/2 times as big. Sort of in the range of BF prints eh? Normal size feet are proportionally 2.5 :1, l to w. Human feet 16"long would have a 2.8 ratio. Looks like most BF prints are scaled by Americans with small feet.

[Correa Neto]

Originally posted by LAL
It's hard to get much speed on a winding mountain road. And they tend to inhabitat roadless areas. They're not stupid.
Humans are more stupid than bigfeet, so that´s why just them get killed?

Originally posted by LAL
It may have been in John Green's The Apes Among Us........I reread that a few months ago. Many of his reports were years or even decades old when he received them. I don't know the exact circumstances. Since there's apparently only one such report, it's not evidence burying the dead is normal Sasquatch behavior, assuming it happened at all. There's no lack of hiding places in the PNW for a sick, wounded or dying animal.

How can one trust and check decades-old reports? This a major problem with this line of bigfoot investigation.

Originally posted by LAL

Who's looking? How would you spot them after they've been buried in detrius and covered in club moss? Where would you start?.

Simple. Ask the witnesses the location, even if just a general one. Or go with them at the site. One would not forget the location of such a remarkable fact so easily.

Originally posted by LAL
Elephants conceal their dead, don't they? Concealing corpses is an intriguing possibilty, but it's not necessary to explain why no bodies have been found yet.

Do they? They scatter bones. That´s what has been filmed. Concealing the body is one of the many interpretations of the act, as well as investigating the remains.

Originally posted by LAL

Click, click. Inconclusive. Could have been faked.

I doubt a high-quality photo taken by a wildlife photographer (amateur or pro), or any researcher would be easilly dismissed as a fake. People have reputations to care of.

Originally posted by LAL

Hiker: "Man, that's a mighty big bone."
Camper: "Yeah. Big bear."
Hiker: "Oh."

Camper: "Uh... Bears have skulls that look like those from gorillas?"
Hiker: "No."
Camper: "Hmmmm... What about taking this to someone who may know what it is?"
Hiker: "Yep."

Note that, despite the size, you are talking about something that looks like a human. A dried decomposed carcass, seen from a certain distance could be mistaken with a human corpse. Next step- call the cops, what would result in bigfeet´s "discovery".

Originally posted by LAL

No. Florida's a little iffy with some known shenanigans there. Canada's sparsely populated compared to the US, but like here, the people tend to be near cities. Canada has had quite a few sightings. There are sightings in Ohio, too. There are some wild spots left even in the overpopulated eastern US.

This does not explain why there are no bodies. And I find hard to accept that with all the outdoor activity that happens in USA -even in the wild spots (that quite probably are not as inacessible as those from several othger countries) no solid evidence was found.

Originally posted by LAL
I don't recall seeing roadkills of much of anything other than cats dogs and 'possums in the area I lived in. Most of the county was roadless, but even the few highways were pretty clean. Deer were hit sometimes, but I never heard of a Cougar being killed.

What does not mean other animals do not become roadkills! Note that other people have reported in this thread cases of big cats becoming roadkills.

Originally posted by LAL
Black Bear are the largest, I believe in the PNW, and occupy the same habitat.

And comparing with bigfoot, black bears are smaller, same size or larger?

Originally posted by LAL

Even in Virgin forest the trees have quite a bit of space between them. In fact, one of the hypotheses on the origins of bipedalism has it that it offered an advantage in slipping between trees on the ground.

Never heard that before, but I don´t want to start another OT discussion on bipedalism.

Originally posted by LAL

Ample. It supports a healthy population of Black Bear, which seem to eat about the same things.

Roots, fruits, animals (hunted and scavenged), fish, garbage left by humans... Bigfoot eat meat?

Still waiting for pictures of bigfoot done by baiting methodology. I will not hold my breath, but I wish succes. I would not mind saying "I was wrong". But I will not hold my breath.

Originally posted by LAL
One paid regular visits to a trailer park in The Dalles, Oregon. When "Bigfoot hunters" showed up with dogs and campfires, it was never seen again.

And no one managed to get a nice clear picture of it? Adn the forest there are as isolated, dense, unexplored, unsurveyed, with strong scavenging activity, as PNW? If no, then why no body was found? Why no one managed to ke a goot photo of an exemplar?

Originally posted by LAL
1967. I don't know who did the aerials (government survey, I suppose), but it was a roadless area in Northern California. There are still many wilderness areas and areas where the only roads are logging roads.

Exactly what I thought. It´s the date of the topographic survey. It does not mean that no one else has made any other types of survey there later. Mineral prospecting, biology works, planning for logging, all these works surely were carried out and still are, not to mention hikers, mountaineers, etc. The claim that these areas are not accessible and never visited or surveyed is not valid.

[/B] Originally posted by LAL

Other than John Day, which is far from Sasquatch habitat, what fossil beds are there in the PNW. I keep asking this, but I never get an answer.

Here´s you answer: The fossils do not need to be found in PNW. Its not the only place where bigfeet are supposed to live, after all. Nowdays and in the past. Any cave, any Pleistocene sedimentary deposit, located anywhere within its supposed geographic distribution area, past and present (and this includes quite a big bunch of North America and Asia) could potentially host bigfeet fossils. If the species do exist.

[/B] Originally posted by LAL

Well, most of it's underwater now...........

Poor excuse. Fossil remains of animals that migrated from Asia to the Americas are found along the parts of the migration route that are still over the water -and a great part still is. If I recall correctly, animal bones and even stone tools were found in sediment dragged from the ocean.

[/B] Originally posted by LAL
Apes are. Hominids aren't. Note the size may be an adaptation for cold.

Neanderthals were adapted to cold. Adaptations include a stocky body with short limbs to decrease heat loss. And they were actually shorter than most humans, again to decrease heat loss.

Originally posted by LAL
Lucky. See the excerpt I posted on the discovery of "Kaddaba"?

And what about all the other fossil findings? All lucky? Sorry, but fossil records of such creature must have been found, if they exist or existed, specially with such widespread geographic distribution.

Originally posted by LAL
There are reports and evidence of living non-Homo hominids from several countries in Asia, including Tibet and Russia.
Sasquatches aren't Great Apes of the tree-swinging, knuckle-walking variety.

Again, except for the fossil hominids, there´s no solid evidence. Large apes are restricted to warm climates. Note also that most hominid species are from warm climates. Few species, and all from the Homo genus, spreaded to colder areas.

Originally posted by LAL And hominids are very adaptable. So are members of the cat family. They're found in all climes all over the world.
California once had Giant Sloths and Mammoths. Where did they come from? Over the Bering Strait. Got fossils from there?

No, the giant sloths evolved in South America and expanded their habitats to North America when both continents were linked by the Panama land bridge. Same thing happened with giant carnivorous flighless birds, armadillos and opossuns. This is is well documented by fossil finds. Saber-toothed cats, wolves and other non-marsupial mammals expanded their habitats to South America at the same time. Again, fossil documentation is avaliable. Mammoths came from Asia, through the Bhering land bridge, with many other mammals, humans included. And the spreading of these populations is well documented by fossil finds.

Originally posted by LAL
Some do, some don't. You might find Conservatives are the most admantly opposed. They seem to think they're un-Biblical or something. People who've seen them don't seem to think they're a myth, nor do their friends.

These things aren't decided by majority vote anyway.

They are not conservatives. You will not find too much biblical fundamentalist geologists. They are people that actually worked in the field. They think bigfoot is implausible for the reasons that are being shown here. Not just because they never saw one.

[LTC8K6]

since in the northwest of America the temperate rainforest is being depleted very rapidly due to clearcuts and timber extraction there is little to hide in and little to feed on.

Little to hide in huh? :D

Little to feed on? :D

Sightings/photos/videos are way up then, right? Clashes with humans and other animals are way up as well as they are forced into new areas to obtain food.

Bait is working very well to lure them in then, right? Incidents of stolen food are way up too, right? Campers are reporting more and more conflicts, right?

Fights between bears and bigfoot over salmon and other scarce resources are getting more common..... bears killed by 8' tall 900 pound bigfoot are commonly found these days, aren't they?

Maybe the bears are killing bigfoot instead? No, we'd know about that for sure, wouldn't we? Even though Bigfoot can apparently throw your average bear quite a distance, or uproot a tree and cave a bear's skull in with it.

[LTC8K6]

There are plenty of fossil beds in the area.

For example, during the construction of Sea-Tac airport, a 12,000 year old giant ground sloth skeleton was found.

You also have nat'l parks, such as the John Day Fossil Beds in Oregon, and the Hagerman in Idaho.

Mastodon skeletons have been found in the PNW, including one with a bone projectile point in it near Sequim, WA.

American Lion bones have been found in Idaho, about 10K years old.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Obviously I thought of them.



Can you back that claim up?

Most people have never seen a bigfoot. Since we know they exist, logically they are hiding in groups somewhere. It is not logical to assume each one is living in isolation, hidden by itself. :D

They've been spotted in small family groups or pairs a few times, but most sightings are of lone individuals, at night.

The high-pitched calls may be an adaptation for communication over long distances.

The bear was killed in California in December of 2003 in a flood.

Poor thing.

[LTC8K6]

The high-pitched calls may be an adaptation for communication over long distances.

It seems bigfoot is not as smart as an elephant, who knows that it's low frequencies that are good for that. :D

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by RayG
Shouldn't be that hard if it's the common consensus. :D



Nope, it's news to me. I've not yet found an article where scientists speculate that a species walked upright and then became a knuckle-walker.




In the first chapter of a book entitled "Hominid Culture From A Primate Perspective" {which is a compilation of articles on different aspects of this topic written by about a dozen authors} , Sue Savage-R umbaugh does speculate that the common ancestor of humans and the African primates was bipedal and that both gorillas and the two species of chimpanzees each adopted knuckle-walking afterwards.{ I do not have the bok in front of me as it was a library book so I cannot cite the publishers or date of same}. Orangutans are not knuckle walkers but gibbons and siamangs are bipedal under many circumstances, so Rumbaugh speculates that humans gained bipedalism thru a suspensory habit while arboreal. She even cites fossils which seem to indicate bipedalism which date older than the supposed split between humans and the chimps.








Maybe it's not such common knowledge after all.



Uh, what's the difference?

Big difference. You're putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. For example, at six months age all of my children were able to crawl, but one of them started walking bipedally at the age of 9 months. It took most of the rest of them around 12 months to learn to walk upright. Just because we know the one child walked at 9 months (earlier time-line), it doesn't mean he was able to walk prior to learning to crawl.



You tossed out the statement that bipedalism preceeded knuckle-walking. ;)

RayG [/QUOTE]

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Little to hide in huh? :D



I see that my statement has caused you to lose control of any logical processing of new info. Your outrageous statements are not the logical results of my statements. Perhaps I should have said less to hide in, in their original haunts.






Little to feed on? :D


Yes, in their original territories where clearcutting has moved them out and where dams have damaged the salmon fisheries.



Sightings/photos/videos are way up then, right? Clashes with humans and other animals are way up as well as they are forced into new areas to obtain food.


Not a logical conclusion. This did not happen with other species such as the spotted owl. Instead species were seen les and thrived less, with reduced populations. The same applies to the salmon. Sightings and catches have declined dramatically as the loss of habitat increased. As a simple matter of fact the sixth extinction in which we are now embedded is partially a result of our destruction and alteration of habitats. Your conclusions are exactly opposite to logical reality.


















Bait is working very well to lure them in then, right? Incidents of stolen food are way up too, right? Campers are reporting more and more conflicts, right?



Doubtful. You are working backwards and not thinking critically. It seems that emotions have taken over your posts. Less habitat means less of the animal in question unless they are generalists and can survive as a pest species amongst humans like rats and mice.





Fights between bears and bigfoot over salmon and other scarce resources are getting more common..... bears killed by 8' tall 900 pound bigfoot are commonly found these days, aren't they?







No, not that I am aware of, but since this is irrational and illogical, I wouldn't expect such to occur.High infant mortality and cannibalism are one more logical consequence as is migation .








Maybe the bears are killing bigfoot instead? No, we'd know about that for sure, wouldn't we? Even though Bigfoot can apparently throw your average bear quite a distance, or uproot a tree and cave a bear's skull in with it.



Your bizarre speculations have little or no merit, nor do they folow from what I wrote about clear cuts of forest in the American northwest

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
There are plenty of fossil beds in the area.

For example, during the construction of Sea-Tac airport, a 12,000 year old giant ground sloth skeleton was found.

You also have nat'l parks, such as the John Day Fossil Beds in Oregon, and the Hagerman in Idaho.


John Day spans 40 of the 65 million years of the Cenozoic Era
They are both National Monuments, BTW, not Parks.

"Here scientists have unearthed countless fossils of land plants and animals dating back 6 to 54 million years as well as evidence of the dramatic climatic changes that have occurred."

Too old.

Hagerman:

"The environment was much different than the sagebrush landscape we see today and has been classified as savanna-like, with higher annual rainfall, isolated patches of pine woodland and abundant hardwood trees growing along the bodies of water including willow, alder, birch and elm."

http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/geog/parks/hagerman/text/mural.htm

Not forest.


Mastodon skeletons have been found in the PNW, including one with a bone projectile point in it near Sequim, WA.

American Lion bones have been found in Idaho, about 10K years old.

"Therefore, the cave lion stock that gave rise to American lions, probably entered Alaska from Siberia during the second-last (Illinoian) glaciation. Lions had penetrated the North American plains by late Illinoian or early last (Sangamonian) interglacial time. As ice of the last (Wisconsinan) glaciation (about 80,000 to 10,000 years ago) spread, American lions were isolated in unglaciated parts of the northwest (Eastern Beringia) and south. Toward the end of the last glaciation, lions ranged southeast to Florida and as far south as Mexico and Peru. Perhaps rather dense forests prevented their entering eastern Canada and the northeastern United States."

http://www.beringia.com/02/02maina5.html


Thanks. Mastodons and Giant Sloths didn't live in dense forest either, did they?

"During the Pleistocene Epoch, from about 1.5 million to 10,000 years ago, the world grew cold. Great sheets of ice, sometimes a thousand feet thick, moved down from the north gouging out the land. These harsh conditions seemed to encourage the development of giant mammals (Probably because larger animals are better at competing for scare resources like food). Among them were the Mastodon, and the Mammoth."
>snip<
Other Pleistocene creatures include the Gigantopithecus, a huge ape larger that current gorillas. Glyptodon, a giant armadillo-like animal, that had a shell some five feet in length, not including the animal's head or war club-like spiked tail it used for defense. Camelops, as the name implies, was an oversized camel that lived in North America. The Irish Elk, Megaloceros, was larger than any existing deer and had antlers that spread 13 feet across. There was also a rhinoceros, or Elasmotherium, that had a six foot long spear for its central horn.

Predators of the Pleistoncene included the Dire Wolf, Canis dirus, which was larger than current wolves, but the most famous predators were the Saber-toothed cats. Some were capable of hunting and killing even the largest Pleistoncene games like the mammoth.

One of the strangest creatures of the Pleistocene was the Megatherium, or Giant Sloth. They were huge relatives of today's tree sloth. Tree sloths are small, sleep creatures that seem to move in slow motion. They spend much of there life hanging upside down from a branch. Megatherium, in contrast, spent his life on the ground and used his size to reach up to eat in the trees.
>snip<
We know that the dwarf branch of mammoths survived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Sea north of Siberia until just 4,000 years ago. About the same time the pyramids were being raised in Egypt, the last mammoth died.


Or did it? Thirty-six hundred years later Cossack Ermak Timofeyevich was traveling among tribes on the Eastern side of the Ural mountains and heard stories about large hairy elephants. The natives used these for food referring to them by the name 'mountain of meat.'

More recently, in 1918, a story was told to the French Consul in Vladivostok, Russia, by an elderly hunter about how he tracked a huge animal for several days. When he caught up with it he found it was "a huge elephant with big white tusks, very curved. It was a dark chestnut color. It had fairly long hair on the hind quarters, but it seemed shorter on the front. I must say I had no idea that there were such big elephants."

Are there other giant creatures from the pleistoncene hiding somewhere? There are stories of early European explorers seeing elephant-like creatures in North America, but there is apparently no proof. Ramon Lista, an explorer, geographer and adventurer of Argentina in the late 1800's, was convinced that South American jungles hid surviving giant sloths. He even claimed to have seen a gigantic armadillo, but was unable to kill it and bring it back to display it to civilization because his bullets just bounced off the monster's armored body. "

http://www.unmuseum.org/mastodon.htm

As of 1997:

"GAP: There are no known fossil hominids or apes from Africa between 14 and 4 Ma. Frustratingly, molecular data shows that this is when the African great apes (chimps, gorillas) diverged from hominids, probably 5-7 Ma. The gap may be another case of poor fossilization of forest animals. At the end of the gap we start finding some very ape-like bipedal hominids:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2a.html

There have been a couple found since, but as Henry Gee put it when "Toumai" was discovered, the number of fossils from that era would fit in a shoebox.

Evidently forest animals have poor fossilization in general.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Little to hide in huh? :D


Currently, the National Wilderness Preservation System contains 106,498,016 acres, mostly in Alaska.

Logged over land is hardly overrun by people once the planting crews have gone. Deer and Elk hunters are confined to a few weeks a year and they hunt by day, staying fairly near the roads and the vehicles.

Logging in the PNW is done in a checkerboard sort of way leaving Large patches standing. There's also some selective logging. Better forest practices encourage narrow clear-cuts for erosion control. And quite a bit is preserved.


Little to feed on? :D

There's plenty to feed on, from Carpenter Ants to Deer.


Sightings/photos/videos are way up then, right? Clashes with humans and other animals are way up as well as they are forced into new areas to obtain food.

Compared to the 1920's, I'd say yes. All the videos are since then for obvious reasons. Reports are up anyway. Humans are encroaching on their territory and they may be expanding into new territory, or they could just be being seen and reported more often.


Bait is working very well to lure them in then, right?

What organizations that have even attempted that, other than the BFRO on the Skookum Meadow expedition?

There's a problem in broadcasting calls in that it's not known what they mean. They could mean something like,"Don't go there, those stupid humans are back." ;)


Incidents of stolen food are way up too, right?

I haven't read any reports of that.


Campers are reporting more and more conflicts, right?

Not conflicts, but there have been a few sightings by campers, and one where a huge hairy hand reached into the tent.


Fights between bears and bigfoot over salmon and other scarce resources are getting more common..... bears killed by 8' tall 900 pound bigfoot are commonly found these days, aren't they?

I mentioned the nocturnal lifestyle may have evolved as a means of avoiding competition with bears, didn't I?


Maybe the bears are killing bigfoot instead? No, we'd know about that for sure, wouldn't we? Even though Bigfoot can apparently throw your average bear quite a distance, or uproot a tree and cave a bear's skull in with it.

I vaguely recall one report of a fight between a bear and a Sasquatch, but then I haven't read all 8000+ reports. They probably practice mutual avoidance. Black Bear aren't aggressive except where a sow is defending cubs, e.g..

[LAL]

Originally posted by Gorillagator
Your bizarre speculations have little or no merit, nor do they folow from what I wrote about clear cuts of forest in the American northwest

:biggrin:

I've seen plenty of clears-cuts. Too many, in fact.
Weyerhauser overcut their own lands and wanted to move into the Southeast where they had land with maturing timber so they backed the Scenic Act in the Gorge with intent to sell their lands there to the Government for top dollar. The intent of the Act was to keep development where development is. The timber industry got a lot of concessions, but even so a lot of land was set aside in National Heritage.

The Gifford Pinot was the worst-managed National Forest in the country, according to Sierra Cubbers, but even it had plenty of areas set aside for recreation and timber sales were no longer a priority, according to a ranger friend.

I'm not sure a trip to the wilds of Virginia would qualify a person to judge conditions in the PNW, would you? ;)

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
Shouldn't be that hard if it's the common consensus. :D

I'm trying to find the article where Stringer said it was. That's what I was challenged on. Having used it at least twice on AOL's Creationism-Evolution boards, I know I've got it. I just don't know where. Some articles only have the URL for a title, so that doesn't help much. I'm trying to remember what it was in regards to; that would help narrow it down.

I only get asked to produce a source when I can't find the darn thing. :book:


Nope, it's news to me. I've not yet found an article where scientists speculate that a species walked upright and then became a knuckle-walker.

Maybe it's not such common knowledge after all.

It's been kind of big news since the "family tree" got uprooted by the discovery of new fossil bipeds, which confirmed the speculation.


Uh, what's the difference?

Big difference. You're putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. For example, at six months age all of my children were able to crawl, but one of them started walking bipedally at the age of 9 months. It took most of the rest of them around 12 months to learn to walk upright. Just because we know the one child walked at 9 months (earlier time-line), it doesn't mean he was able to walk prior to learning to crawl.


Excuse me for being exceptionally dense, but what does that have to do with the Great Apes developing knuckle walking as a later adaptation, i.e. after the split, rather than hominids developing bipedalism after evolving from a knuckle-walking ancestor?


You tossed out the statement that bipedalism preceeded knuckle-walking. ;)

RayG

It did.

I seem to have been hugely misunderstood, somehow.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
It seems bigfoot is not as smart as an elephant, who knows that it's low frequencies that are good for that. :D

Animals don't develop adaptations through intelligence; adaptations come about from mutations.

High pitch is not unusual in primates.

Ever hear a hog-caller? Or a Chimpanzee screeching? Or Leontyne Price?

[LTC8K6]

The Gifford Pinot was the worst-managed National Forest in the country, according to Sierra Cubbers

Pinchot

Clubbers

Unnecessary hyphen

:D

Are you sure it was me who couldn't get out of high school, Lu? :D

The Sierra Club? ROTFLMAO

Gorillagator, since you seem to have completely missed my point, I won't bother to respond. Lu got it, though. Thank goodness.

Lu, why is it that you only hear the bass when one of those idiots with the 2,000 watt stereo system drives by?

What about a trip to Ft. Lewis, Lu? :D

[LTC8K6]

http://www.nps.gov/joda/paleonews1.htm

Evidence of the last known primate to inhabit North America prior to humans has recently surfaced among the field collections from the 1997 fossil prospecting season at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

That's a pretty cool find, actually.

I actually still have a few of the fossils my father collected as a hobby many years ago. I may go and look through them again for the memories.

[aggle-rithm]

Originally posted by LAL

High pitch is not unusual in primates.

Ever hear a hog-caller? Or a Chimpanzee screeching? Or Leontyne Price?

You're either comparing Leontyne Price to a chimpanzee (which is racist) or saying that Bigfoot has a beautiful singing voice (which is ludicrous). ;)

Seriously, I have sat in on a master class by Leontyne Price, back when I was a music major. I can tell you with a fair amount of authority that her ability to be heard over great distance has nothing to do with a high-pitched voice, but the same careful training that all opera singers receive, which allows them to be heard over an orchestra.

[LTC8K6]

There is also Kennewick man, of course.

We'd all love to know what he witnessed in his lifetime.

[LTC8K6]

That's an odd coincidence, aggle-rithm. I am following a discussion on another board where amplitude and frequency seem to be being mixed up......

Bill quips:
It seems bigfoot is not as smart as an elephant, who knows that it's low frequencies that are good for that. :D

Lu responds:
Animals don't develop adaptations through intelligence; adaptations come about from mutations.

There I was being a smart-aleck, and Lu completely missed it...

Oh well.

At any rate, it's certainly possible that elephants adapted their ability to make LF sound into a form of communication. They would have done so through their intelligence.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Pinchot

Clubbers

Unnecessary hyphen

:D


Typos I missed because I was in a hurry (I really can't type) and why is the hyphen unnecessary?


Are you sure it was me who couldn't get out of high school, Lu? :D

No, I just recall misspelling "sophomoric" as in "humor". I didn't say anyone couldn't get out of high school. On the boards I'm used to, criticizing spelling and grammar is against Community Standards.

The Sierra Club? ROTFLMAO

What's funny about the Sierra Club? My ranger friend, who was in charge of checking out reproduction that was only there on paper pretty much confirmed that.......before he shot himself. They were allowing 3% over the allowable cut annually.

Gorillagator, since you seem to have completely missed my point, I won't bother to respond. Lu got it, though. Thank goodness.

Lu, why is it that you only hear the bass when one of those idiots with the 2,000 watt stereo system drives by?

That's a lot lower than an elephant's trumpet, isn't it? Seems I've read elephants may communicate with sounds that are below the range of human hearing. Got anything on that?

What about a trip to Ft. Lewis, Lu? :D

Ft. Lewis? A friend of mine used to date the sargeant who ran the floating crap game there...........probably before your time. Ft. Lewis is on the "corridor" that has most of Washington's population.

[aggle-rithm]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
That's an odd coincidence, aggle-rithm. I am following a discussion on another board where amplitude and frequency seem to be being mixed up......


Exactly! I think the confusion comes from the fact that greater frequency tends to make greater amplitude easier to achieve.

[LAL]

Originally posted by aggle-rithm
You're either comparing Leontyne Price to a chimpanzee (which is racist) or saying that Bigfoot has a beautiful singing voice (which is ludicrous). ;)

None of the above. I was giving examples of primates who can deliver high pitched sounds. I would have said Beverly Sills if I'd known you'd make something out of that, but I couldn't think of her name at the time.

Seriously, I have sat in on a master class by Leontyne Price, back when I was a music major. I can tell you with a fair amount of authority that her ability to be heard over great distance has nothing to do with a high-pitched voice, but the same careful training that all opera singers receive, which allows them to be heard over an orchestra.

Mahalia Jackson received no training at all, seldom sang with an orchestra, had a four octave range and could practically (or actually) shatter glass on the high end. (My dad produced her TV show, and, as I recall, the engineers had a workout when she sang.) She said the Bible said, "Make a loud noise unto the Lord", so she did.

(Note I left out all hyphens. I was taught to use them.)

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6

Lu responds:


There I was being a smart-aleck, and Lu completely missed it...

Oh well.


Miss you being a smart-aleck? Never.

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
There is also Kennewick man, of course.

We'd all love to know what he witnessed in his lifetime.

I'd like to know his origins. He was found to be unrelated to any modern tribe.

"Maybe the bones were not those of a European, but belonged to a long-dead American Indian whose ancestors migrated to America as early as 10,000 years ago. But, another anthropologist, Grover Krantz of Washington State University, confirmed that the bones did not match any existing tribe in the area or any western Native American type."

http://www.crf-usa.org/bria/bria14_1.html

Same Dr. Krantz.

[LTC8K6]

Seems I've read elephants may communicate with sounds that are below the range of human hearing.

Yeah, I just told you that they did, and that they were smart for using it for long distance commo.

Tap,tap, tap.....Is this thing on....??? Hello?

[LTC8K6]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002373062_kennewick11m.htmlh

On the boards I'm used to, criticizing spelling and grammar is against Community Standards.

Nitpicking is bad form as well.

You quit, and I'll quit. :D

[RayG]

Originally posted by LAL
It's been kind of big news since the "family tree" got uprooted by the discovery of new fossil bipeds, which confirmed the speculation.

Was the tree uprooted or merely pruned a bit?

Excuse me for being exceptionally dense, but what does that have to do with the Great Apes developing knuckle walking as a later adaptation, i.e. after the split, rather than hominids developing bipedalism after evolving from a knuckle-walking ancestor?

Because they aren't the same thing. You earlier suggested that a species went from bipedalism to knuckle-walking, back to bipedalism. You've provided no sources that support that suggestion.

I seem to have been hugely misunderstood, somehow.

That's why I asked for sources and clarification.

RayG

[LAL]

Originally posted by LTC8K6
Yeah, I just told you that they did, and that they were smart for using it for long distance commo.

You didn't mention the sounds were below the range of human hearing and I had forgotten about that. It's a fairly recent discovery.

Elephants trumpet as well. That can be high-pitched and we can hear it just fine.

"high-pitched (hī'pğcht')
adj.
High in pitch, as a voice or musical tone.
Steeply sloped, as a roof.
Marked by or indicating intense emotion: a high-pitched debate."

http://www.answers.com/topic/high-pitched

Again, adaptations come about from mutations. If they confer a benefit, they tend to spread through the population. Intelligence itself came about this way.

Elephants roam in herds. Why would they need long distance communication anyway, even if they could use their intelligence to use the low sounds that way?


Tap,tap, tap.....Is this thing on....??? Hello?

S-o-p-h-o-m-o-r-i-c. I'll never misspell that one again

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by LAL
:biggrin:

I've seen plenty of clears-cuts. Too many, in fact.
Weyerhauser overcut their own lands and wanted to move into the Southeast where they had land with maturing timber so they backed the Scenic Act in the Gorge with intent to sell their lands there to the Government for top dollar. The intent of the Act was to keep development where development is. The timber industry got a lot of concessions, but even so a lot of land was set aside in National Heritage.

The Gifford Pinot was the worst-managed National Forest in the country, according to Sierra Cubbers, but even it had plenty of areas set aside for recreation and timber sales were no longer a priority, according to a ranger friend.



You're right about the Gifford Pinchot being heavily overcut and also the Forest Service has allowed motorcycles{recreation} to screw up the built in trails. Roads for the cutting crew are quite numerous as well. Much of the cut areas were done on steep embanjments were erosion has been problematical, to say the least.
In the area of Bluff Creek in Calif., where the Patterson/Gimlin film was shot, the redwoods have been reduced bt 98% leaving 2% of their original {at time of European discovery} area size.Georgia Pacific and later Louisiana Pacific commited this act of violence.

I'm not sure a trip to the wilds of Virginia would qualify a person to judge conditions in the PNW, would you? ;)

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by LAL
You didn't mention the sounds were below the range of human hearing and I had forgotten about that. It's a fairly recent discovery.

Elephants trumpet as well. That can be high-pitched and we can hear it just fine.

"high-pitched (hī'pğcht')
adj.
High in pitch, as a voice or musical tone.
Steeply sloped, as a roof.
Marked by or indicating intense emotion: a high-pitched debate."

http://www.answers.com/topic/high-pitched

Again, adaptations come about from mutations. If they confer a benefit, they tend to spread through the population. Intelligence itself came about this way.

Elephants roam in herds. Why would they need long distance communication anyway, even if they could use their intelligence to use the low sounds that way?

Am merely guessing here: perhaps the long distance calls of elephants came about for the adaptive reason of finding mates in an outgroup; finding waterholes, or yelling "Fire!". Then again perhaps these lond distance calls developed as a way to avoid expensive roaming charges?
<g>


S-o-p-h-[B]o-m-o-r-i-c. I'll never misspell that one again

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by LAL
Found one of the "et als", anyway (from John Waters clear back in 1996):

"However, all available evidence
shows that hominids never used knuckle walking. Their fossils
never show the strengthened digits which are typical of knuckle
walkers.


This raises the question of how they moved on the ground. If
they did not knuckle walk, what did they do? Did they turn
somersaults? Do backflips? Cartwheels?


Sometimes orang utans do use somersaults ro progress quickly while agound.


If the Gibbon analogy has any value, then it is most probable
that they were bipedal on the ground. Not good bipedalists
perhaps, but bipedalists nevertheless.


According to all the evidence, the Gorilla/Bonobo/Chimpanzee and
their ancestors only evolved knuckle walking after their
collective split from the hominids. This raises the question of
why did they evolve knuckle walking. Why did they not become
bipedal?"
According to what I remember of the Sue Savage-Rumbaugh article, the hairier chimps and gorillas could allow infants to cling to them while traveling on all fours while on the other hand hominids ere required to hold the infant with one free hand due to lack of fur This put a burden on homonids while releasing some selection against chimps and gorillas. Our system must have had some sort of adaptive benefit in a particular context not found in the habitats of the other great apes.
http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/anthropology/sci.anthropology.paleo/archive/september-1996/0363.html

[LAL]

Originally posted by RayG
Was the tree uprooted or merely pruned a bit?


Rearranged and more deeply rooted and root pruned with question marks in our lineage instead of solid lines. The discovery of the Ardipiths shot down the idea that bipedalism evolved because the African forests retreated. Bipedalism evolved in a forested environment. A. afarensis is no longer thought to be an ancestor; they may have been a kind of cousin. The Ardipiths are now thought to be ancestors of humans, but a minority opinion had them ancestral to the pongids. Orrorin may be an ancestor to the Ardipiths and the jury seems to still be out on Kenyanthropus.


Because they aren't the same thing. You earlier suggested that a species went from bipedalism to knuckle-walking, back to bipedalism. You've provided no sources that support that suggestion.

That wasn't my suggestion. You asked if that's what I meant.

The common ancestor(s) of the Great Apes and humans were bipedal. The hominid line stayed bipedal. The Great Apes developed knuckle-walking after the split.

No one's saying a Great Ape "devolved" to bipedalism. I said I didn't think that was likely.

If Gigantopithecus was a knuckle-walker or even a fist-walker, I think that might rule it out as a Sasquatch ancestor, but the mode of locomotion can't be established for certain without more bones. Since there seems to be no lack of bipedal primates from 13 mya even to the present (counting us), there's no reason they couldn't have evolved from another species exhibiting the midtarsal bend, such as an Australopith or even something as yet undiscovered.


That's why I asked for sources and clarification.

Still looking for Stringer's comment. I remember finding that during or after a debate with an IDer/Creationist on "Lucy" after Richmond and Strait published. I deduced bipedalism was first (I'd been taught "up from the apes", of course) and was glad to see it confirmed, though a little disappointed to find out I wasn't the first to think of that. ;)

I'm hoping it wasn't in the Nature article. That's for sure been archived by now and I don't have a subsciption.

[Gorillagator]

Originally posted by LAL
:biggrin:

I've seen plenty of clears-cuts. Too many, in fact.
Weyerhauser overcut their own lands and wanted to move into the Southeast where they had land with maturing timber so they backed the Scenic Act in the Gorge with intent to sell their lands there to the Government for top dollar. The intent of the Act was to keep development where development is. The timber industry got a lot of concessions, but even so a lot of land was set aside in National Heritage.




One other item, that I forgot to mention earlier is the forest "management' practice of spraying the clearcut land with herbicides before replanting of a monocultural tree farm.
It would seem plausible that Sasquatch may be omnivorous and even practice coprophagy as do gorillas. Food and proper nutrition may not be available for some time in these clearcuts so then some migration into Canada and Alaska might be beneficial.







The Gifford Pinot was the worst-managed National Forest in the country, according to Sierra Cubbers, but even it had plenty of areas set aside for recreation and timber sales were no longer a priority, according to a ranger friend.

I'm not sure a trip to the wilds of Virginia would qualify a person to judge conditions in the PNW, would you? ;)

[LTC8K6]

Elephants trumpet as well. That can be high-pitched and we can hear it just fine.

Wow! I didn't know that. I thought people followed them around and played trumpets. They actually make that sound themselves?

"high-pitched (hī'pğcht')
adj.
High in pitch, as a voice or musical tone.
Steeply sloped, as a roof.
Marked by or indicating intense emotion: a high-pitched debate."

Yeah, I thought you might have been talking about roofs when you mentioned high pitch. I'm glad you cleared that up. I was wondering what bigfoot was doing up on roofs all the time. That could be dangerous.

Could you look up low pitch for me now?

Elephants roam in herds.

Oh! I thought they just didn't know where they were going and were milling around in confused family groups. Again, thanks for clearing that up.

Why would they need long distance communication anyway

To communicate over long distances regarding mating, food, water, etc.?

[bruto]

Originally posted by LTC8K6



To communicate over long distances regarding mating, food, water, etc.?

It's called a long distance trunk call.

[aggle-rithm]

Originally posted by LAL


Mahalia Jackson received no training at all, seldom sang with an orchestra, had a four octave range and could practically (or actually) shatter glass on the high end. (My dad produced her TV show, and, as I recall, the engineers had a workout when she sang.) She said the Bible said, "Make a loud noise unto the Lord", so she did.

(Note I left out all hyphens. I was taught to use them.)

There are those lucky few who have an instinctive ability to sing with proper vocal control, and thus need no training. I believe Charlotte Church falls in this category. Still, high pitch is not the same thing as being loud. Although this further raises the question of how Bigfeet can remain so elusive, when they are shrieking to each other across great distances...?

(BTW, shattering glass is just a matter of hitting the exact frequency at which the glass resonates. )

[Correa Neto]

Originally posted by LAL
Thanks. Mastodons and Giant Sloths didn't live in dense forest either, did they?
"During the Pleistocene Epoch, from about 1.5 million to 10,000 years ago, the world grew cold. Great sheets of ice, sometimes a thousand feet thick, moved down from the north gouging out the land. These harsh conditions seemed to encourage the development of giant mammals (Probably because larger animals are better at competing for scare resources like food). Among them were the Mastodon, and the Mammoth."
>snip<
Other Pleistocene creatures include the Gigantopithecus, a huge ape larger that current gorillas. ...snip...
One of the strangest creatures of the Pleistocene was the Megatherium, or Giant Sloth. They were huge relatives of today's tree sloth. Tree sloths are small, sleep creatures that seem to move in slow motion. They spend much of there life hanging upside down from a branch. Megatherium, in contrast, spent his life on the ground and used his size to reach up to eat in the trees.

Depends on the giant sloth species you are talking about. Some were not really that gigantic and lived in forests. Many species were about the size of a bear, or even smaller. Megatherium was among the largest. Nowdays it is belived that Megatherium used its long claws to dig for roots and tubercules. Some even consider it may occasionally have acted as a scavenger.

Gigantopithecus fossils were never found in the Americas. Neither have any fossil ape in USA and Canada dating from the Pleistocene.

And the pattern of habitat expansion -and retreat- of the habitats of these creatures is well registered by the fossil record.

Noting above serves as an explanation for the absence of bigfoot or bigfoot-related species fossils.

Originally posted by LAL
>snip<
We know that the dwarf branch of mammoths survived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Sea north of Siberia until just 4,000 years ago. About the same time the pyramids were being raised in Egypt, the last mammoth died.

Or did it? Thirty-six hundred years later Cossack Ermak Timofeyevich was traveling among tribes on the Eastern side of the Ural mountains and heard stories about large hairy elephants. The natives used these for food referring to them by the name 'mountain of meat.'

More recently, in 1918, a story was told to the French Consul in Vladivostok, Russia, by an elderly hunter about how he tracked a huge animal for several days. When he caught up with it he found it was "a huge elephant with big white tusks, very curved. It was a dark chestnut color. It had fairly long hair on the hind quarters, but it seemed shorter on the front. I must say I had no idea that there were such big elephants."

Oh, but weren´t they a dwarf subspecies, evolved to adapt to the restricted space of an island? How come the reports are from large animals? Again, thesame problem. Reports, nothing else. No solid evidence. Could just as well be "hunter tales". You can not deny the possibility. "You should have seen the one that escaped"...

Not all megafauna animals lived in cold areas. No one actually knows why they reached that size. Competition for food favoring larger sizes is just one possibility. What would by fored bigfeet to decrese their size...
Not to mention that Wrangel Island mammoths left remains. And where are the bigfeet remains?

Originally posted by LAL
Are there other giant creatures from the pleistoncene hiding somewhere? There are stories of early European explorers seeing elephant-like creatures in North America, but there is apparently no proof. Ramon Lista, an explorer, geographer and adventurer of Argentina in the late 1800's, was convinced that South American jungles hid surviving giant sloths. He even claimed to have seen a gigantic armadillo, but was unable to kill it and bring it back to display it to civilization because his bullets just bounced off the monster's armored body. "

And you belive that? There are stories of people seeing dinosaurs in the Amazon forest, as well. Do you belive that? Giant armadillos probably were so slow that one could easilly approach and target their unprotected necks with spears. Saber-toothed cats could crack their skulls with their teeth, so a bullet would do the same. Not to mention that there are some armadillos in South America that can be over 1m long, so, confusion with an ordinary animal plus some added colorful tones can generate the report... "You should have sees the one that escaped"...

One can not also trust in reports based on local myths. An example- In northern Brazil (Amapa State), an area covered by Amzon jungle not subject to extensive flooding at the wet season, there is the legend of the mapinguari. It was "interpreted" by a number of people as a giant sloth or the equivalent of bigfoot. Yeah, right... But the original mapinguari has just one eye, among many other features that do not fit with either "interpretations". Ask the local if they ever saw one. The usual answer is "no, but my [add relative or friend-of-a-friend here] has". On occasion, you will find someone who claims to have seen one. And he/she will turn out to be one of those persons that love to tell stories, quite often not true ones.

If these myths and stories were true, in Amazonia there would be, among many others, vampire monkeys and a poisonous beetle that can saw the upper part of a palm tree. Why these are not credited by cryptozoologists, as well as headless mules that breath fire by their nostrils and giant fire snakes? There are reports of sightings and myths about them...

Just out of curiosity, do you think Charcarodon megalodon is still around? That Ogopogo and Nessie may be real? That all tales of strange man or ape-like creatures report actual creatures? That mokelembembe exists and is some species sauropod still living in Congo? Mothman? Bid bird? Phantom cats? Jersey Devil? Sea serpents? Where, how and why the line is drawn?

Originally posted by LAL
As of 1997:

"GAP: There are no known fossil hominids or apes from Africa between 14 and 4 Ma. Frustratingly, molecular data shows that this is when the African great apes (chimps, gorillas) diverged from hominids, probably 5-7 Ma. The gap may be another case of poor fossilization of forest animals. At the end of the gap we start finding some very ape-like bipedal hominids:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq...nal/part2a.html

There have been a couple found since, but as Henry Gee put it when "Toumai" was discovered, the number of fossils from that era would fit in