![]() "The bottom line is, they don't have a body," said Michael Dennett, who writes for Skeptical Inquirer magazine and who has followed the Bigfoot debate for 20 years.īigfoot buffs note that it's rare to find a carcass of a grizzly bear in the wild. They wonder why no Bigfoot has ever been captured, dead or alive. The Skepticsīut the vast majority of scientists still believe Bigfoot is little more than supermarket tabloid fodder. Renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall last year surprised an interviewer from National Public Radio when she said she was sure that large, undiscovered primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, exist. "The anatomy doesn't jive with any known animal."Ī few academics believe Meldrum could be right. "It's 40 to 50 percent bigger than a normal human," he said. Meldrum says the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, buttocks, an Achilles tendon and heel. The cast was made in September 2000 from an impression of a large animal that had apparently lain down on its side to retrieve some fruit next to a mud hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State. Meldrum, meanwhile, says a 400-pound (180-kilogram) block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast provides further evidence of Bigfoot's existence. ![]() The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin." The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. ![]() "It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined. "The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen," he said. Investigator Jimmy Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger- and footprints, has analyzed the more than 150 casts of Bigfoot prints that Meldrum, the Idaho State professor, keeps in a laboratory.Ĭhilcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla in Washington State has convinced him that Bigfoot is real. Now, Bigfoot advocates are increasingly turning to forensic evidence to prove the existence of the giant creature. Perhaps the most compelling photographic evidence of Bigfoot is a controversial short film shot by Roger Patterson in 1967, which appears to document a female Bigfoot striding along a riverbank in northern California. Unfortunately, no one has been able to snap a clear picture of the beast. In his spare time, he leads the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a network of more than 3,000 people who claim to have seen the Sasquatch. Moneymaker, who lives in Dana Point in southern California, is a lawyer who runs his own marketing agency. He wanted to let me know I was in the wrong place." "Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away, growling at me. "It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full," recalled Moneymaker. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive primate. Matt Moneymaker had been searching for Bigfoot for years. The creatures are described as shy and nocturnal, and their diets consist mostly of berries and fruits. ![]() They believe there are at least 2,000 ape men walking upright in North America's woods today.Īn adult male is said to be at least 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall, weigh 800 pounds (360 kilograms), and have feet twice the size of a human's. In Australia, Bigfoot is known as the Yowie Man.īigfoot advocates hypothesize that the primate is the offspring of an ape from Asia that wandered to North America during the Ice Age. The Himalaya has its Abominable Snowman, or the Yeti. Tales of mythical giant apes lurk in the oral traditions of most Native American tribes, as well as in Europe and Asia. "Given the scientific evidence that I have examined, I'm convinced there's a creature out there that is yet to be identified," said Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University in Pocatello. Risking ridicule from other academics, they propose that there's enough forensic evidence to warrant something that has never been done: a comprehensive, scientific study to determine if the legendary primate actually exists. Yet a small but vociferous number of scientists remain undeterred. Countless pranksters have admitted to faking footprints. There are few clear photographs of the oversized beast. Thousands of people claim to have seen the hairy hominoid, but the evidence of its existence is fuzzy. ![]() A camera-elusive, grooming-challenged, bipedal ape-man that roams the mountain regions of North America. It's been the subject of campfire stories for decades. ![]()
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