THE ORIGIN OF THE BIGFOOT LEGEND

Stories of a giant, hairy creature that appears half man and half ape have existed
in various parts of the world for many centuries. In fact, the only continent not to
have stories of “wild men” is Antarctica. In the Himalayas, it’s the Yeti. In Canada,
it’s the Sasquatch. And in the northwest United States, it’s Bigfoot. Bigfoot is
described by believers as being between six and eight feet tall with a large
forehead and pronounced brow, like a cave man’s, and a rounded, crested head
like a gorilla’s. He is covered in brown or red hair and has enormous feet that are
his namesake, with the biggest estimation at a whopping two feet long by eight
inches wide. Some “witnesses” claim that the five-toed Bigfoot prints they saw on
the ground were accompanied by claw marks (not unlike a five-toed, clawed paw
print of a bear—but rational explanations aren’t as fun).
Stories of a “wild man” existed among the Native Americans of the Pacific
Northwest long before white colonists moved in. Versions of Bigfoot ranged from
harmless giants who stole fish from fishermen’s nets, to cannibalistic monsters
living on mountain peaks. These stories varied from tribe to tribe, and even from
family to family, which meant that Bigfoot had a lot of different names. In the
1920s, J.W. Burns compiled the local legends for a series for a Canadian
newspaper, coining the term “Sasquatch” in the process.
It wasn’t until 1958 that the Bigfoot legend really started to kick off in the United
States. That year, a man named Gerald Crew found a set of large footprints at a
construction site where he worked in California. He had his friend make plaster
casts of the prints. The story gained a lot of attention after being published in
the Humboldt Times, and was picked up by the Associated Press, drawing
international attention.
Turns out, the footprints were a hoax (surprise, surprise). After the death of a man
named Ray Wallace—the brother of the man in charge of the construction site
where the prints were found—his family stepped forward to say that he was
responsible for faking the prints. Scoop Beal, the editor of the Humboldt Times, is
also said to have been involved. Nevertheless, the 1958 prints find brought the first
“Bigfoot Hunters” to the area.
In 1967, the “Patterson-Gimlin film” was captured. The film shows a tall, hairy
“Bigfoot” walking through the forest. Believers in Big Foot note the creature’s
inhuman way of walking is a major point toward the film being real.
Patterson also claimed to have taken the film to a group of people working in
the special effects department at Universal Studios who supposedly said,
We could try (faking it), but we would have to create a completely new system of
artificial muscles and find an actor who could be trained to walk like that. It might be
done, but we would have to say that it would be almost impossible.
However, a number of factors lead to skeptics believing it’s a hoax: people who
knew Patterson have described him, frankly, as a liar; Patterson’s version of
events—including an estimate of how tall “Bigfoot” was— also changed and
escalated over time. More to the point, a man named Bob Heironimus claimed to
have worn the Bigfoot costume for the making of the film. Most likely, and not too
surprisingly, the film was a hoax.
The most common explanation for Bigfoot sightings is that people are playing
pranks. There was even once a thriving market for “Bigfoot feet” to create
your own prints to trick your family and friends. People still even dress up in
ape costumes and ghillie suits in order to perpetuate the legend.
Some sightings are also simply misidentified animals. In 2007, a photo was
snapped in Pennsylvania using an automatically triggered camera hanging from a
tree. While believers claimed the blurry photo—showing a large, hairy creature
standing on all-fours—was that of a “juvenile sasquatch,” the Pennsylvania Game
Commission said the creature was most likely “a bear with an extreme case of
mange.” Looking at the picture, it could also just as easily been a human in a suit.
One of the big questions posed to believers in Bigfoot is if there are enough of the
creatures to maintain a stable breeding population, and over a reasonably large
area given all the supposed sightings—which there must be, unless they have
extraordinarily lengthy lives—then why has a body of Bigfoot never been found? In
2008, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have solved this problem after
they supposedly found a Bigfoot body, posting a video of it on YouTube. The body
was nearly eight feet tall and weighed over 500 pounds. Despite even some
Bigfoot experts doubting the young men’s story, the discovery was covered by
CNN, ABC, Fox, and BBC News, and the pair received $50,000 from Searching for
Bigfoot, Inc. as “a measure of good faith.” However, when the body arrived in a
block of ice and was thawed and examined, researchers found that the “body” was
made up of rubber feet, fake hair, and a hollow head. Not exactly convincing. Dyer
and Whitton later admitted that it was a hoax. (shocker)
While the idea of a real Bigfoot is pretty unconvincing, the stories have caught on
and are so prevalent in pop culture that it’s unlikely the idea of Bigfoot will fade
away any time soon. As with everything, treat the stories and information you hear
or read with a healthy dash of skepticism. Someday real, solid proof of Bigfoot
might emerge, but I’m not holding my breath.

Bigfoot is a large and mysterious humanoid creature purported to inhabit the wild and forested
areas of Oregon and the West Coast of North America. Bigfoot is also known as Sasquatch, an
Anglicization of the name Sasq’ets, from the Halq’emeylem language spoken by First Nations
peoples in southwestern British Columbia.
Most people who believe in Bigfoot’s existence, or claim to have seen one, assert that they are
hair-covered bipeds with apelike features up to eight feet tall that leave correspondingly large
footprints. They are generally characterized as nonaggressive animals, whose shyness and
humanlike intelligence make them elusive and thus rarely seen, though some wilderness
travelers claim to have smelled their stench or heard their screams and whistles.
A few physical anthropologists, such as Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University and Grover
Krantz at Washington State University, have espoused the biological reality of Bigfoot based
on their examination of the 1967 film footage of a purported Bigfoot taken in northern
California’s Klamath Mountains or on their morphological analysis of footprints, some of which
exhibit dermal ridges, as those found in the 1980s by a U.S. Forest Service employee in the
Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon. Most scientists, however, remain skeptics and dismiss
the phenomenon as the product of the mistaken identification of known animals or elaborate
hoaxes, with prints cleverly planted to deceive.
Over time, stories about Bigfoot have entered into oral tradition and become part of regional
folklore. The historical record of Bigfoot in the Oregon country begins in 1904 with sightings of
a hairy “wild man” by settlers in the Sixes River area in the Coast Range; similar accounts by
miners and hunters followed in later decades. In 1924, miners on Mount St. Helens claimed to
have been attacked by giant “apes,” an incident widely reported in the Oregon press. Local
Native Americans used this event to discuss publicly their own knowledge of tsiatko, hirsute
“wild Indians” of the woods, traditions first documented in 1865 by ethnographer George Gibbs.
After 1958, woods workers east and west of the Cascade Mountains began to report seeing
creatures and discovering their immense tracks along logging roads, enhancing public
recognition of the Bigfoot name. Witnesses observed these so-called humanoids crossing
roads at night, striding furtively through forest and mountain terrain, or digging for and eating
ground squirrels in rock piles.
Bigfoot quickly entered into the occupational culture of loggers, manifested as serious stories,
jokes, chainsaw sculptures, and fabricated prints as playful pranks. By the 1970s, former Yeti-
hunter Peter Byrne had established the Bigfoot Information Center at The Dalles, gaining
national media attention for his documentation of eyewitness testimony and footprints adduced
as evidence for a new species of primate. Footprints in dirt or snow continue to be found and
reported to various organized groups who have followed Byrne’s efforts.
Native Americans in Oregon have increasingly situated Bigfoot within traditional belief systems
as beings with deeply rooted cultural significance. Tribes in coastal Oregon related Bigfoot to
ancient tales of “wild men” who lurked near villages and left immense tracks, as described in
Clara Pearson’s tales from the Nehalem Tillamook. Members of Plateau tribes, such as those
at the Warm Springs Reservation, identify Bigfoot as a “stick Indian,” a diverse category of
potentially hostile beings who stole salmon or confused people by whistling, causing them to
become lost. Sightings and stories continue on reservations today, representing a spiritual
connection to the pre-contact past and the resilience of indigenous cultural heritage.
More recently, Bigfoot in popular culture has devolved into a series of sports mascots,
children’s entertainments, and cryptozoological reality shows. It has also been playfully
promoted in state legislation and celebrations. Politicians in both Oregon and Washington have
proposed bills to protect the creatures from hunters, and hairy humanoids have served as
official state mascots, first as Harrison Bigfoot for Washington’s Centennial in 1989 and then
Seski the Sasquatch for Oregon’s Sesquicentennial in 2009.
A number of prominent writers have reflected thoughtfully on the tradition in literature that
explores changing attitudes toward the natural world. Through fiction and science writing, they
have depicted Bigfoot as a kind of charismatic megafauna that emerged in the modern
environmental imaginary as an icon of enchantment and endangerment, employed to
remythologize connections between humans and the wild in the region’s compromised but not
unredeemable landscapes. In The Klamath Knot (1984), for example, natural historian David
Rains Wallace uses Bigfoot to discuss relict species, mythic themes, and evolutionary
narratives in his portrait of the Klamath Mountains. In Where Bigfoot Walks (1995),
lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle writes about his personal search for evidence of Bigfoot in
the mountains of the Columbia River Gorge as he contemplates the human need for
wilderness and what he calls the “divide” between human and animal. Portland-based novelist
Molly Gloss borrows from both Native American traditions and the legacy of feminist
primatology in Wild Life, an elegant fiction of ecological sensibilities and zoological mystery on
the lower Columbia River in the early twentieth century.
Like salmon, Bigfoot has become an important symbolic resource through which many
Oregonians and Northwest residents have defined their identities and considered their place in
the natural world.

Bigfoot (Sasquatch) legend

PDF
Bigfoot is a large and mysterious humanoid creature purported to inhabit the wild and forested
areas of Oregon and the West Coast of North America. Bigfoot is also known as Sasquatch, an
Anglicization of the name Sasq’ets, from the Halq’emeylem language spoken by First Nations
peoples in southwestern British Columbia.
Most people who believe in Bigfoot’s existence, or claim to have seen one, assert that they are
hair-covered bipeds with apelike features up to eight feet tall that leave correspondingly large
footprints. They are generally characterized as nonaggressive animals, whose shyness and
humanlike intelligence make them elusive and thus rarely seen, though some wilderness
travelers claim to have smelled their stench or heard their screams and whistles.
A few physical anthropologists, such as Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University and Grover
Krantz at Washington State University, have espoused the biological reality of Bigfoot based
on their examination of the 1967 film footage of a purported Bigfoot taken in northern
California’s Klamath Mountains or on their morphological analysis of footprints, some of which
exhibit dermal ridges, as those found in the 1980s by a U.S. Forest Service employee in the
Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon. Most scientists, however, remain skeptics and dismiss
the phenomenon as the product of the mistaken identification of known animals or elaborate
hoaxes, with prints cleverly planted to deceive.
Over time, stories about Bigfoot have entered into oral tradition and become part of regional
folklore. The historical record of Bigfoot in the Oregon country begins in 1904 with sightings of
a hairy “wild man” by settlers in the Sixes River area in the Coast Range; similar accounts by
miners and hunters followed in later decades. In 1924, miners on Mount St. Helens claimed to
have been attacked by giant “apes,” an incident widely reported in the Oregon press. Local
Native Americans used this event to discuss publicly their own knowledge of tsiatko, hirsute
“wild Indians” of the woods, traditions first documented in 1865 by ethnographer George Gibbs.
After 1958, woods workers east and west of the Cascade Mountains began to report seeing
creatures and discovering their immense tracks along logging roads, enhancing public
recognition of the Bigfoot name. Witnesses observed these so-called humanoids crossing
roads at night, striding furtively through forest and mountain terrain, or digging for and eating
ground squirrels in rock piles.
Bigfoot quickly entered into the occupational culture of loggers, manifested as serious stories,
jokes, chainsaw sculptures, and fabricated prints as playful pranks. By the 1970s, former Yeti-
hunter Peter Byrne had established the Bigfoot Information Center at The Dalles, gaining
national media attention for his documentation of eyewitness testimony and footprints adduced
as evidence for a new species of primate. Footprints in dirt or snow continue to be found and
reported to various organized groups who have followed Byrne’s efforts.
Native Americans in Oregon have increasingly situated Bigfoot within traditional belief systems
as beings with deeply rooted cultural significance. Tribes in coastal Oregon related Bigfoot to
ancient tales of “wild men” who lurked near villages and left immense tracks, as described in
Clara Pearson’s tales from the Nehalem Tillamook. Members of Plateau tribes, such as those
at the Warm Springs Reservation, identify Bigfoot as a “stick Indian,” a diverse category of
potentially hostile beings who stole salmon or confused people by whistling, causing them to
become lost. Sightings and stories continue on reservations today, representing a spiritual
connection to the pre-contact past and the resilience of indigenous cultural heritage.
More recently, Bigfoot in popular culture has devolved into a series of sports mascots,
children’s entertainments, and cryptozoological reality shows. It has also been playfully
promoted in state legislation and celebrations. Politicians in both Oregon and Washington have
proposed bills to protect the creatures from hunters, and hairy humanoids have served as
official state mascots, first as Harrison Bigfoot for Washington’s Centennial in 1989 and then
Seski the Sasquatch for Oregon’s Sesquicentennial in 2009.
A number of prominent writers have reflected thoughtfully on the tradition in literature that
explores changing attitudes toward the natural world. Through fiction and science writing, they
have depicted Bigfoot as a kind of charismatic megafauna that emerged in the modern
environmental imaginary as an icon of enchantment and endangerment, employed to
remythologize connections between humans and the wild in the region’s compromised but not
unredeemable landscapes. In The Klamath Knot (1984), for example, natural historian David
Rains Wallace uses Bigfoot to discuss relict species, mythic themes, and evolutionary
narratives in his portrait of the Klamath Mountains. In Where Bigfoot Walks (1995),
lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle writes about his personal search for evidence of Bigfoot in
the mountains of the Columbia River Gorge as he contemplates the human need for
wilderness and what he calls the “divide” between human and animal. Portland-based novelist
Molly Gloss borrows from both Native American traditions and the legacy of feminist
primatology in Wild Life, an elegant fiction of ecological sensibilities and zoological mystery on
the lower Columbia River in the early twentieth century.
Like salmon, Bigfoot has become an important symbolic resource through which many
Oregonians and Northwest residents have defined their identities and considered their place in
the natural world.
Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch) is a cryptid in American folklore, supposedly a simian-like
creature[2] that inhabits forests, especially those of the Pacific Northwest. Bigfoot is usually
described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid. The term sasquatch is an Anglicized derivative
of the Halkomelem word sásq'ets.[3][4][5]
Scientists discount the existence of Bigfoot and consider it to be a combination of folklore,
misidentification, and hoax,[6] rather than a living animal. They note the lack of physical
evidence after centuries of investigation, despite the fact that numerous creatures would have
to exist in order to maintain a breeding population.[7][8] A small group of investigators are
sustained in their interest by occasional new reports of sightings.[9] Such reports are attributed
to persons seeing various animals, particularly black bears

Description
Individuals claim to have seen Bigfoot, describing it as a large, hairy, muscular, bipedal ape-
like creature, roughly 6–9 feet (1.8–2.7 m), covered in hair described as black, dark brown, or
dark reddish.[7][10] Some descriptions include details such as large eyes, a pronounced brow
ridge, and a large, low-set forehead. The top of the head has been described as rounded and
crested, similar to the sagittal crest of the male gorilla.[11] The creature has been reported as
having a strong, unpleasant smell.[12]
The enormous footprints for which the creature is named are claimed to be as large as 24
inches (60 cm) long and 8 inches (20 cm) wide.[10] Some footprint casts have also contained
claw marks, making it likely that they came from known animals such as bears, which have five
toes and claws.[13][14]
Proponents of Bigfoot's existence claim that the creature is omnivorous and
mainly nocturnal.[15]

History
Wild men stories are found among the Pacific Northwest coastal Indian
tribes. Anthropologist and cryptozoologist Grover Krantz has written that stories of
the Indians which can be confidently related to the Sasquatch correspond to the areas where
white Americans have reported similar sightings.[16] According to David Daegling, the legends
existed before there was a single name for the creature.[17] They differed in their details both
regionally and between families in the same community. Similar accounts and legends of wild
men are found on every continent except Antarctica.[17]
Ecologist Robert Pyle argues that most cultures have accounts of human-like giants in their
folk history, expressing a need for "some larger-than-life creature."[18] Each language had its
own name for the creature featured in the local version of such legends. Many names meant
something along the lines of "wild man" or "hairy man", although other names described
common actions that it was said to perform, such as eating clams or shaking trees.[19] Chief
Mischelle of the Nlaka'pamux at Lytton, British Columbia told such a story to Charles Hill-
Tout in 1898; he named the creature by a Salishan variant meaning "the benign-faced-one".
Members of the Lummi tell tales about Ts'emekwes, the local version of Bigfoot. The stories
are similar to each other in the general descriptions of Ts'emekwes, but details differed among
various family accounts concerning the creature's diet and activities.[20] Some regional versions
tell of more threatening creatures. The stiyaha or kwi-kwiyai were a nocturnal race. Children
were warned against saying the names, lest the monsters hear and come to carry off a
person—sometimes to be killed.[21] In 1847, Paul Kane reported stories by the Indians
about skoocooms, a race of cannibalistic wildmen living on the peak of Mount St. Helens in
southern Washington state.[13]
Less-menacing versions have also been recorded, such as one by Reverend Elkanah
Walker from 1840. Walker was a Protestant missionary who recorded stories of giants among
the Indians living near Spokane, Washington. The Indians said that these giants lived on and
around the peaks of nearby mountains and stole salmon from the fishermen's nets.[22]
In the 1920s, Indian Agent J. W. Burns compiled local stories and published them in a series of
Canadian newspaper articles. They were accounts told to him by the Sts'Ailes
peopleof Chehalis and others. The Sts'Ailes and other regional tribes maintained that the
Sasquatch were real. They were offended by people telling them that the figures were
legendary. According to Sts'Ailes accounts, the Sasquatch preferred to avoid white men and
spoke the Lillooet language of the people at Port Douglas, British Columbia at the head
of Harrison Lake. These accounts were published again in 1940.[23][24] Burns borrowed the term
Sasquatch from the Halkomelem sásq'ets (IPA: [ˈsæsqʼəts])[3] and used it in his articles to
describe a hypothetical single type of creature portrayed in the local stories.[13][19][25]
Spotted Elk, bears, and the origin of the "Bigfoot" name

1895 article describing a giant grizzly bear named "Bigfoot".[26]

The name "Bigfoot" was first recorded by Americans in the late 19th century. Spotted Elk, also
called Chief Big Foot, was a well-known Lakota leader who was killed during the Wounded
Knee Massacre in 1890. He was famous in his time and may have been the namesake for two
fabled bears in the West. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at least two enormous
marauding grizzly bears were widely noted in the press and each nicknamed "Bigfoot". This
may have inspired the common name of the ape-creature and been a matter of confusion in
early stories.
The first grizzly bear Bigfoot was reportedly killed near Fresno, California in 1895 after killing
sheep for 15 years; his weight was estimated at 2,000 pounds (900 kg).[26] The second one was
active in Idaho in the 1890s and 1900s between the Snake and Salmon rivers, and nearly
supernatural powers were attributed to it.
Nearly twice the size of an ordinary grizzly, Bigfoot for years has levied his tribute of prime
steers and no one has been found brave enough or clever enough to catch or kill him. With a
single blow of his giant paw he kills the largest and best animal he can find and he usually
takes the pick of a herd. He makes a single meal of the animal, and it is usually a meal that
would provide a camp full of men for a week, and disappears, never to return to that locality
again that season.[27]
The Idaho Bigfoot was shot and killed in 1902 near Pierce City and was credited with killing
1,000 cattle in his lifetime.[28]

Sightings
Distribution of reported Bigfoot sightings in the United States and Canada

About one-third of all claims of Bigfoot sightings are located in the Pacific Northwest, with the
remaining reports spread throughout the rest of North America.[13][29][30] Most reports are
considered mistakes or hoaxes, even by those researchers who say that Bigfoot exists.[31]
Bigfoot has become better known and a phenomenon in popular culture, and sightings have
spread throughout North America. Rural areas of the Great Lakes region and the Southeastern
United States have been sources of numerous reports of Bigfoot sightings, in addition to the
Pacific Northwest.[32] The debate over the legitimacy of Bigfoot sightings reached a peak in the
1970s, and Bigfoot has been regarded as the first widely popularized example of
pseudoscience in American culture.[33]

Proposed explanations for sightings

Various explanations have been suggested for the sightings and to offer conjecture on what
type of creature Bigfoot might be. Scientists typically attribute sightings either to hoaxes or to
misidentification of known animals and their tracks, particularly black bears.[34]

Misidentification

A 2007 photo of an unidentified animal that the Bigfoot Research Organization claims is a "juvenile
Sasquatch"[35]

In 2007, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization put forward some photos which they
claimed showed a juvenile Bigfoot. The Pennsylvania Game Commission, however, said that
the photos were of a bear with mange.[36][37] Anthropologist Jeffrey Meldrum[38], on the other
hand, said that the limb proportions of the creature were not bear-like, they were "more like a
chimpanzee."[39]

Hoaxes
Both Bigfoot believers and non-believers agree that many of the reported sightings are hoaxes
or misidentified animals.[9] Author Jerome Clark argues that the Jacko Affair was a hoax,
involving an 1884 newspaper report of an apelike creature captured in British Columbia. He
cites research by John Green, who found that several contemporaneous British Columbia
newspapers regarded the alleged capture as highly dubious, and notes that the Mainland
Guardian of New Westminster, British Columbia wrote, "Absurdity is written on the face of it."[40]
Tom Biscardi is a long-time Bigfoot enthusiast and CEO of Searching for Bigfoot Inc. He
appeared on the Coast to Coast AM paranormal radio show on July 14, 2005 and said that he
was "98% sure that his group will be able to capture a Bigfoot which they had been tracking in
the Happy Camp, California area."[41] A month later, he announced on the same radio show that
he had access to a captured Bigfoot and was arranging a pay-per-view event for people to see
it. He appeared on Coast to Coast AM again a few days later to announce that there was no
captive Bigfoot. He blamed an unnamed woman for misleading him, and said that the show's
audience was gullible.[41]
On July 9, 2008, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton posted a video to YouTube, claiming that
they had discovered the body of a dead Sasquatch in a forest in northern Georgia. Tom
Biscardi was contacted to investigate. Dyer and Whitton received $50,000 from Searching for
Bigfoot, Inc. as a good faith gesture.[42] The story was covered by many major news networks,
including BBC,[43] CNN,[44] ABC News,[45] and Fox News.[46] Soon after a press conference, the
alleged Bigfoot body was delivered in a block of ice in a freezer with the Searching for Bigfoot
team. When the contents were thawed, observers found that the hair was not real, the head
was hollow, and the feet were rubber.[47] Dyer and Whitton admitted that it was a hoax after
being confronted by Steve Kulls, executive director of SquatchDetective.com.[48]
In August 2012, a man in Montana was killed by a car while perpetrating a Bigfoot hoax using
a ghillie suit.[49][50]
In January 2014, Rick Dyer, perpetrator of a previous Bigfoot hoax, said that he had killed a
Bigfoot creature in September 2012 outside San Antonio, Texas. He said that he had scientific
tests performed on the body, "from DNA tests to 3D optical scans to body scans. It is the real
deal. It's Bigfoot, and Bigfoot's here, and I shot it, and now I'm proving it to the world."[51][52] He
said that he had kept the body in a hidden location, and he intended to take it on tour across
North America in 2014. He released photos of the body and a video showing a few individuals'
reactions to seeing it,[53] but never released any of the tests or scans. He refused to disclose
the test results or to provide biological samples. He said that the DNA results were done by an
undisclosed lab and could not be matched to identify any known animal.[54] Dyer said that he
would reveal the body and tests on February 9, 2014 at a news conference at Washington
University,[55] but he never made the test results available.[56] After the Phoenix tour, the Bigfoot
body was taken to Houston.[57] On March 28, 2014, Dyer admitted on his Facebook page that
his "Bigfoot corpse" was another hoax. He had paid Chris Russel of Twisted Toy Box to
manufacture the prop from latex, foam, and camel hair, which he nicknamed "Hank". Dyer
earned approximately US$60,000 from the tour of this second fake Bigfoot corpse. He said that
he did kill a Bigfoot, but did not take the real body on tour for fear that it would be stolen.[58][59]
Gigantopithecus

Fossil jaw of Gigantopithecus blacki, theorized to be from an extinct primate

Bigfoot proponents Grover Krantz and Geoffrey H. Bourne believed that Bigfoot could be
a relict population of Gigantopithecus. All Gigantopithecus fossils were found in Asia, but
according to Bourne, many species of animals migrated across the Bering land bridgeand he
suggested that Gigantopithecus might have done so, as well.[60] Gigantopithecus fossils have
not been found in the Americas. The only recovered fossils are of mandibles and teeth, leaving
uncertainty about Gigantopithecus's locomotion. Krantz has argued that Gigantopithecus
blacki could have been bipedal, based on his extrapolation of the shape of its mandible.
However, the relevant part of the mandible is not present in any fossils.[61] An alternative view is
that Gigantopithecus was quadrupedal. The Gigantopithecus'senormous mass would have
made it difficult for it to adopt a bipedal gait.
Matt Cartmill criticizes the Gigantopithecus hypothesis:
The trouble with this account is that Gigantopithecus was not a hominin and maybe not even
a crown group hominoid; yet the physical evidence implies that Bigfoot is an upright biped with
buttocks and a long, stout, permanently adducted hallux. These are hominin autapomorphies,
not found in other mammals or other bipeds. It seems unlikely that Gigantopithecuswould have
evolved these uniquely hominin traits in parallel.[62]
Bernard G. Campbell writes: "That Gigantopithecus is in fact extinct has been questioned by
those who believe it survives as the Yeti of the Himalayas and the Sasquatch of the north-west
American coast. But the evidence for these creatures is not convincing."[63]

Extinct hominidae
Primatologist John R. Napier and anthropologist Gordon Strasenburg have suggested a
species of Paranthropus as a possible candidate for Bigfoot's identity, such as Paranthropus
robustus, with its gorilla-like crested skull and bipedal gait[64] —despite the fact that fossils
of Paranthropus are found only in Africa.
Michael Rugg of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum presented a comparison between
human Gigantopithecus and Meganthropus skulls (reconstructions made by Grover Krantz) in
episodes 131 and 132 of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum Show.[65] He favorably compares a
modern tooth suspected of coming from a Bigfoot to the Meganthropus fossil teeth, noting the
worn enamel on the occlusal surface. The Meganthropus fossils originated from Asia, and the
tooth was found near Santa Cruz, California.
Some suggest Neanderthal, Homo erectus, or Homo heidelbergensis to be the creature, but no
remains of any of those species have been found in the Americas.[66]

Scientific view
The evidence that does exist supporting the survival of such a large, prehistoric ape-like
creature has been attributed to hoaxes or delusion rather than to sightings of a genuine
creature.[7] In a 1996 USA Today article, Washington State zoologist John Crane said, "There is
no such thing as Bigfoot. No data other than material that's clearly been fabricated has ever
been presented."[18] In addition, scientists cite the fact that Bigfoot is alleged to live in regions
unusual for a large, nonhuman primate, i.e., temperate latitudes in the northern hemisphere; all
recognized apes are found in the tropics of Africa and Asia.
Mainstream scientists do not consider the subject of Bigfoot an area of credible science[67] and
there have been a limited number of formal scientific studies of Bigfoot.
Evidence such as the 1967 Patterson–Gimlin film has provided "no supportive data of any
scientific value".[68]
As with other similar beings, climate and food supply issues would make such a creature's
survival in reported habitats unlikely.[69] Great apes have not been found in the fossil record in
the Americas, and no Bigfoot remains are known to have been found. Phillips Stevens,
a cultural anthropologist at the University at Buffalo, summarized the scientific consensus as
follows:

It defies all logic that there is a population of these things sufficient to keep
“ them going. What it takes to maintain any species, especially a long-lived
species, is you gotta have a breeding population. That requires a substantial
number, spread out over a fairly wide area where they can find sufficient food
and shelter to keep hidden from all the investigators.[8]
”
In the 1970s, when Bigfoot experts were frequently given high-profile media coverage, Mcleod
writes that the scientific community generally avoided lending credence to the theories by
debating them.[33]

Researchers
Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans have spent parts of their career searching for
Bigfoot.[70] Later scientists who researched the topic included Carleton S. Coon, George Allen
Agogino and William Charles Osman Hill, although they came to no definite conclusions and
later drifted from this research.[71]
Anthropologist Jeffrey Meldrum has said that the fossil remains of an ancient giant ape
called Gigantopithecus could turn out to be ancestors of today's commonly known
Bigfoot.[72][73] John Napier asserts that the scientific community's attitude towards Bigfoot stems
primarily from insufficient evidence.[74] Other scientists who have shown varying degrees of
interest in the creature are David J. Daegling,[75] George Schaller,[18][76][77] Russell
Mittermeier, Daris Swindler, Esteban Sarmiento,[78] and Carleton S. Coon.[79]

Formal studies
The first scientific study of available evidence was conducted by John Napier and published in
his book, Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality, in 1973.[80] Napier wrote that if a
conclusion is to be reached based on scant extant "'hard' evidence," science must declare
"Bigfoot does not exist."[81] However, he found it difficult to entirely reject thousands of alleged
tracks, "scattered over 125,000 square miles" (325,000 km²) or to dismiss all "the many
hundreds" of eyewitness accounts. Napier concluded, "I am convinced that Sasquatch exists,
but whether it is all it is cracked up to be is another matter altogether. There must
be something in north-west America that needs explaining, and that something leaves man-like
footprints."[82]
In 1974, the National Wildlife Federation funded a field study seeking Bigfoot evidence. No
formal federation members were involved and the study made no notable discoveries.[83]
Beginning in the late 1970s, physical anthropologist Grover Krantz published several articles
and four book-length treatments of Sasquatch. However, his work was found to contain
multiple scientific failings including falling for hoaxes.[84]
A study published in the Journal of Biogeography in 2009 by J.D. Lozier et al. used ecological
niche modeling on reported sightings of Bigfoot, using their locations to infer Bigfoot's preferred
ecological parameters. They found a very close match with the ecological parameters of
the American black bear, Ursus americanus. They also note that an upright bear looks much
like Bigfoot's purported appearance and consider it highly improbable that two species should
have very similar ecological preferences, concluding that Bigfoot sightings are likely sightings
of black bears.[85]
In the first systematic genetic analysis of 30 hair samples that were suspected to be from
bigfoot, yeti, sasquatch, almasty or other anomalous primates, only one was found to be
primate in origin, and that was identified as human. A joint study by the University of
Oxford and Lausanne's Cantonal Museum of Zoology and published in the Proceedings of the
Royal Society B in 2014, the team used a previously published cleaning method to remove all
surface contamination and the ribosomal mitochondrial DNA 12S fragment of the sample was
sequenced and then compared to GenBank to identify the species origin. The samples
submitted were from different parts of the world, including the United States, Russia, the
Himalayas, and Sumatra. Other than one sample of human origin, all but two are from common
animals. Black and brown bear accounted for most of the samples, other animals include cow,
horse, dog/wolf/coyote, sheep, goat, raccoon, porcupine, deer and tapir. The last two samples
were thought to match a fossilized genetic sample of a 40,000 year old polar bear of
the Pleistocene epoch;[86] however, a later study disputes this finding. In the second paper,
tests identified the hairs as being from a rare type of brown bear.[87][88]

Bigfoot claims
After what The Huffington Post described as "a five-year study of purported Bigfoot (also
known as Sasquatch) DNA samples,"[89] but prior to peer review of the work, on November 24,
2012, DNA Diagnostics, a veterinary laboratory headed by veterinarian Melba Ketchum, issued
a press release claiming that they had found proof that the Sasquatch "is a human relative that
arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an
unknown primate species." Ketchum called for this to be recognized officially, saying that
"Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately
protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and
cultural differences a 'license' to hunt, trap, or kill them."[90]
Failing to find a scientific journal that would publish their results, Ketchum announced on
February 13, 2013 that their research had been published in the DeNovo Journal of
Science. The Huffington Post discovered that the journal's domain had been registered
anonymously only nine days before the announcement. This was the only edition of DeNovo
and was listed as Volume 1, Issue 1, with its only content being the Ketchum paper.[90][91][92]
Shortly after publication, the paper was analyzed and outlined by Sharon Hill of Doubtful
News for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Hill reported on the questionable journal,
mismanaged DNA testing and poor quality paper, stating that "The few
experienced geneticists who viewed the paper reported a dismal opinion of it noting it made
little sense."[93]
The Scientist magazine also analyzed the paper, reporting that:

Geneticists who have seen the paper are not impressed. "To state the obvious,
“ no data or analyses are presented that in any way support the claim that their
samples come from a new primate or human-primate hybrid," Leonid Kruglyak
of Princeton University told the Houston Chronicle. "Instead, analyses either
come back as 100 percent human, or fail in ways that suggest technical
artifacts." The website for the DeNovo Journal of Science was setup [sic] on
February 4, and there is no indication that Ketchum's work, the only study it has
published, was peer reviewed.[94]
”
Bigfoot organizations
There are several organizations dedicated to the research and investigation of Bigfoot
sightings in the United States. The oldest and largest is the Bigfoot Field Researchers
Organization (BFRO).[95] The BFRO also provides a free database to individuals and other
organizations. Their website includes reports from across North America that have been
investigated by researchers to determine credibility.[96]
In February 2016, the University of New Mexico at Gallup held a two-day Bigfoot conference,
at a cost of $7,000 in university funds.[97]
In his pursuit of Bigfoot, David Paulides, author of two self-published books on the
subject,[98][99] created the research group "North America Bigfoot Search" for which he serves as
director,[100] and which Paulides says was instrumental[101][citation needed] in the genesis of the
Ketchum paper published in 2013 claiming Bigfoot was real.[90]

In popular culture
Main article: Bigfoot in popular culture
Bigfoot has had a demonstrable impact as a popular culture phenomenon. It has "become
entrenched in American popular culture and it is as viable an icon as Michael Jordan" with
more than forty-five years having passed since reported sightings in California, and neither an
animal nor "a satisfying explanation as to why folks see giant hairy men that don't exist".[102]
When asked for her opinion of Bigfoot in a September 27, 2002, interview on National Public
Radio's "Science Friday", Jane Goodall said "I'm sure they exist", and later said, chuckling,
"Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist", and finally, "You know, why isn't there
a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to."[103] In 2012, when
asked again by the Huffington Post, Goodall said "I'm fascinated and would actually love them
to exist," adding, "Of course, it's strange that there has never been a single authentic hide or
hair of the Bigfoot, but I've read all the accounts."[104]
A TV show about Sasquatch titled Finding Bigfoot began airing in 2011 and rose to some
popularity on Animal Planet.

See also
Bigfoot: Man-Monster or Myth?
Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a giant ape-like creature that is said to roam
the Pacific Northwest. There is scant physical evidence that such creatures exist,
but Bigfoot buffs are convinced that they do, and that science will soon prove it.

While most sightings of Bigfoot occur in the Northwest, the creatures have been
reported all over the country. There are many native myths and legends of wild
men in the woods, but Bigfoot per se has been around for only about 50 years.
Interest in Bigfoot grew rapidly during the second half of the 20th century, spurred
by magazine articles of the time, most seminally a December 1959 "True" article
describing the discovery of large, mysterious footprints the year before in Bluff
Creek, California.
A frame from the film by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin.
If you don't believe in Bigfoot (singular or plural), you're not alone. According to a
2007 Baylor Religion Survey, only 16 percent of Americans said that Bigfoot
"absolutely" or "probably" exist, with 44 percent responding "probably not" and
about 40 percent saying that they "absolutely [do] not" exist. (In contrast, over
twice as many people believe in ghosts or astrology.) [Infographic: Tracking Belief
in Bigfoot]







Eyewitness evidence
By far the most common evidence for Bigfoot is eyewitness reports. Unfortunately,
this is also by far the weakest type of evidence. Psychologists and police know that
eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and that people are simply not very
good at accurately describing something they saw — especially at a distance in
low light and when the subject is partially hidden by trees and foliage (as most
Bigfoot reports are).

Anyone can be mistaken, and pilots, policemen, priests, and public officials are no
exception. Most Bigfoot researchers admit that the vast majority of sightings are
mistakes or hoaxes (up to 95 percent, by some estimates). Still, they insist that a
Bigfoot must be hiding in that tiny portion of sightings and reports that can't be
easily explained.

Photographic evidence

The most famous image of a Bigfoot is the short film taken in 1967 by Roger
Patterson and Bob Gimlin. Shot in Bluff Creek, Calif., it shows a dark, man-sized
and man-shaped figure striding through a clearing. Widely considered a hoax, it
remains to this day the best evidence for Bigfoot. However this poses a serious
blow to the film's credibility: if it's real, and these Bigfoot creatures are really out
there wandering in front of people with cameras, it's very suspicious that better
films and videos haven't emerged since Lyndon Johnson's administration.

These days almost everyone has a 5 megapixel, HD camera in their pocket with
their iPhones or other devices. At no time in history have so many people had high-
quality cameras on them virtually all the time. If Bigfoot exist, logically the
photographic evidence for them should improve over the years. Yet it hasn't.
Photographs of people, cars, mountains, flowers, sunsets, deer, and everything
else have gotten sharper and clearer over the years; Bigfoot is a notable exception.
One possibility is that there is some supernatural explanation, such as that Bigfoot
somehow emits special, unknown light waves that inexplicably cause the beasts to
always appear out of focus in photographs, no matter how good the camera is. The
more logical explanation suggests that these things don't exist, and that
photographs of them are merely hoaxes and misidentifications. [News: Did Hiker
Film Bigfoot, Black Bear or 'Blobsquatch'?]
Elusive hard evidence

In his book "Big Footprints," veteran researcher Grover Krantz (Johnson Books,
1992) discussed alleged Bigfoot hair, feces, skin scrapings and blood: "The usual
fate of these items is that they either receive no scientific study, or else the
documentation of that study is either lost or unobtainable. In most cases where
competent analyses have been made, the material turned out to be bogus or else
no determination could be made."

When a definite conclusion has been reached through scientific analysis, the
samples have invariably turned out to have ordinary sources — "Bigfoot hair" turns
out to be elk, bear, or cow hair, for example, or "Bigfoot blood" is revealed to be
transmission fluid. Sometimes alleged Bigfoot samples are subjected to DNA
analysis and are deemed "unknown" or "unidentified." However "unknown" or
"unidentified" results do not mean "Bigfoot." There are many reasons why a DNA
sample might come back unknown, including that it was contaminated or too
degraded by environmental conditions. Or it could simply mean that the animal it
came from was not among the reference samples that the laboratory used for
comparison. We have no reference sample of Bigfoot DNA to compare it to, so by
definition there cannot be a conclusive match.

In fact, genetics provides another reason to doubt the existence of Bigfoot: there
cannot just be one elusive creature, there would need to be tens of thousands of
them in order to assure enough genetic diversity to maintain the species. With so
many of them out there, surely at least one of the creatures would be killed by a
hunter or hit by motorist on a highway, or even found dead (by accident, disease,
or old age) by a hiker or farmer at some point. Yet no bodies, bones, or anything
else have been found.

Hoaxers have further contaminated the problem of sorting fact from fiction. Dozens
of people have admitted faking Bigfoot prints, photographs, and nearly every other
type of Bigfoot evidence. One man, Rant Mullens, revealed in 1982 that he and
friends had carved giant Bigfoot tracks and used them to fake footprints for
decades. Which are real? Which are fake? Often the Bigfoot experts themselves
can't agree.

The lack of good evidence hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of Bigfoot buffs; they
have all they need in sighting reports, fuzzy photos, inconclusive hair samples, and
footprints to keep the search going. Until better evidence comes along, old
evidence will be rehashed and re-examined — and unless Bigfoot is proven to be
alive, the search will continue.
Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of "Skeptical Inquirer" science magazine and author
of six books, including "Tracking the Chupacabra" and "Scientific Paranormal
Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries." His website is
www.BenjaminRadford.com.

https://www.cnet.com/news/bigfoot-sasquatch-patterson-gimlin-film-1967-sightings-2017/

Bigfoot of North America

If the Himalayas of Asia has it's Yeti, the Pacific Northwest of America has it's
Bigfoot: A hairy, ape-like, biped that stands seven to nine feet tall and weighs
between 600 and 900 pounds.

Bigfoot, or as it's often called in Canada, the Sasquatch, is mentioned in several

native American legends. In fact, the term "Sasquatch" is Indian for "hairy giant."
The first sighting of a Sasquatch by a white man apparently came in 1811 near
what now is the town of Jasper, Alberta Canada. A trader named David
Thompson found some strange footprints, fourteen inches long and eight inches
wide, with four toes, in the snow.

In 1884 the newspaper, Daily Colonist, of Victoria, British Columbia told of the
capture of a "Sasquatch." The creature was spotted by a train crew along the
Fraser River. The crew stopped the train, gave chase, and captured the animal
after following it up a rocky hill. The creature was given the name "Jacko" and
was "...Something of the gorilla type, standing four feet seven inches in height
and weighing 127 pounds. He has long black, strong hair and resembles a human
being with one exception, his entire body, excepting his hands (or paws) and feet
are covered with glossy hair about one inch long...he possesses extraordinary
strength, as he will take hold of a stick and break it by wrenching it or twisting it,
which no man could break in the same way."

The description of Jacko is so much like that of a chimpanzee, and so unlike later
Bigfoot reports, that some have suggested the animal actually was a chimpanzee.
If brought back by a sailor from Africa, the animal might have escaped or been
turned loose. There is also the strong possibility that the entire story was a hoax.
Newspapers of that era often printed hoax stories to amuse their readers (perhaps
not unlike some tabloids sold today).

Rumors about the Sasquatch continued through the end of the century. Then, in
1910, the murder of two miners, found with their heads cut off, was attributed to
the creatures, though there was little supporting evidence that the killing wasn't
human in origin. In any case, the place of the murders, Nahanni Valley, in
Canada, was changed to Headless Valley, because of the incident.

The year 1924 turned out to be a

banner year in Bigfoot history. Three
major sightings occurred: According
to a Canadian lumberjack named
Albert Ostman, he had been
prospecting near Tobet Inlet when he
was captured by a family of
Bigfoots. The father and daughter
guarded him while the mother and
son prepared the meals. The family
was vegetarian and ate roots, grass
and spruce tips. After about a week
Ostman was able to slip away. He didn't tell his story to anyone till 1957, fearing
people would think him crazy.

The second incident in 1924 involved a group of miners near Mount St. Helens,
Washington. The story goes that the miners spotted a Bigfoot and shot at it,
apparently killing the animal. That night their cabin was surrounded by the
creature's friends. They proceeded to throw stones at the building, pound on the
walls and climb on the roof. The attack continued till dawn. The next day the
miners packed up and abandoned the mine. The place is now called Ape Canyon
(years later a miner came forward swearing he'd been the one throwing rocks at
the cabin as a joke).

The final sighting came also from the region of Mount St. Helens when a
prospector complained to a forest ranger that he'd been woken in the middle of
the night when stones were thrown at his cabin. Peeking outside he saw
Sasquatches and "they was screaming like a bunch of apes." The man hid under
his bed till morning came. Going outside he found the cabin surrounded by big
footprints.

Interest in Bigfoot began to pick up in the United States in 1958 when a

bulldozer operator named Jerry Crew found enormous footprints around where
he was working in Humboldt County, California. Crew made a cast of the
footprint. A local newspaper ran the story of Crew and his footprint with a photo.
The story was picked up by other papers and ran throughout the country. It was
the picture of Crew holding the "Bigfoot" that made the name stick.
In 1967 Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, Bigfoot buffs, announced they'd
captured Bigfoot with a movie camera. They filmed a few seconds of a an ape-
like creature, apparently female, moving across a clearing near Bluff Creek in
northern California. While the film is not perfectly clear, there is no mistaking
the creature in the film for a common animal. The movie shows either a real
Bigfoot, or a man in a clever costume. Nobody has ever proved the film fake,
though some viewers were suspicious about the unnatural stride the creature had.
One scientist who viewed the film, John Napier, of the Smithsonian Institution,
admitted, "I couldn't see the zipper, and I still can't."

Scientists have
a right to be
suspicious of
Bigfoot
evidence. Two
known hoax
films exist. A
controversial
carcass,

the "Minnesota Iceman", was thought to be a hoax, too. In addition, hoax foot
prints have been made from fake wooden feet and altered boots. One company
even produced a set of oversized plastic strap on feet that you could use to fool
your friends and family.

Putting on a gorilla suit and wandering through the woods, in Bigfoot country, is
probably not a good idea no matter what fun you'd have scaring people. The local
people often carry guns and one researcher, Grover Krantz, of Washington State
University, thinks that the only way to ever prove scientifically Bigfoot exists is
to shoot it so the body can be examined (Krantz does not recommend that
anybody but experienced "big-game" hunters should attempt to bring the creature
down as a typical deer rifle might not be heavy enough for a clean kill). There's
even rumored to be a million dollar reward for the first real Bigfoot carcass
found.

Some local authorities have moved to protect Bigfoot. In Skamania County,

Washington, it is illegal to kill a Bigfoot under penalty of $1,000 fine and five
years in jaile best evidence for the Sasquatch remains the many footprints that
have been found. Typically these run from 16 to 18 inches long and about 7
inches wide. There is no foot arch and the heel has a distinct double ball that
might suggest an adaptation to handle great weight.

Is there really a Bigfoot? Well, despite the many tracks and a large number of
sightings nobody has ever found a carcass. This is strange if you believe there are
enough of these creatures in the forests and mountains of the Northwest United
States and Canada to sustain a breeding population. They must go somewhere
when they die.

If they are alive, what do they eat? Ostmans story

tells us they were vegetarians, but the diet he
describes seems inadequate to meet the needs of
such large creatures. Glenn Thomas offered a
story that might explain the creatures feeding
habits. Thomas was walking through the woods
when he spotted a family of Bigfoots in a clearing.
They were digging through a pile of rocks and
eating the small animals they found underneath.
(Mostly woodchucks and marmots) Investigators
returned to the spot later and found some 30 holes
dug. Some of the boulders shifted weighed 250
pounds.
Was the first
Sasquatch, Jacko, a
chimp? (Copyright 1996 Lee Krystek)
If you travel to Humboldt County, California, you
may want to look for Bigfoot yourself among the forests and mountains in one of
the many state or federal parks found there. If you don't see him, though, don't
dispare. You can always visit the town of Willow Creek in the center of the
county. It has declared itself the capital of BigFoot country and in the center of
the village stands a wooden, life-size carving of the creature.