Skookum Cast copyright Ron Noll
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After Ray Wallace died recently, his family revealed that he
wore molds on his feet to produce a famous set of Bigfoot
tracks. However, scientists think the Skookum Cast, with the
impression of a Bigfoot's rear end, is definitely not a hoax.
Daris Swindler is a professor of anthropology at the University
of Washington, and an expert on living and fossil primate
teeth. He believes that the 400 pound plaster cast made by
amateur Bigfoot researchers in 2000 is a genuine record of a
Bigfoot that sat down by a mud hole to eat some fruit.
Swindler notes the convincing evidence on the Skookum
Cast: a hairy forearm the size of a small ham, an enormous
hairy thigh, an outsized buttock, and the impression of an
Achilles tendon and heel. "Whatever made this was very well
adapted to walking on two feet," he says. "It's not
conclusive, but it's consistent with what you'd expect to see
if a giant biped sat down in the mud."
A group of amateurs made the Skookum Cast, after they
spent two days in Washington state's Gifford Pinchot National
Forest, putting out pheromone soaked plastic chips and
playing sasquatch calls in an attempt to attract a Bigfoot. On
the second night, they heard a reply to their broadcasts,
says Richard Noll, who has spent 30 years researching the
mystery. The next morning, he found an unusual impression of
a large animal on the edge of a mud hole near their camp,
and took a plaster impression of it.
The January 5 Denver Post reports that many respected
scientists take Bigfoot seriously.
George Schaller, director of science at the Wildlife
Conservation Society, has spent 40 years studying rare
animals in remote places. He?s troubled by the fact that no
Bigfoot remains have been produced, such as samples of
feces with DNA that can be tested. But he says, "There have
been so many sightings over the years. Even if you throw out
95% of them, there ought to be some explanation for the
rest. The same goes for some of these tracks."
"Either the forgers are spending an awful lot of time on this,
or there is reason to give this evidence another look," says
primate researcher Esteban Sarmiento of the American
Museum of Natural History. "I think a serious scientific inquiry
is definitely warranted."
Most scientists think the ancestor of Bigfoot was
Gigantopithecus blacki, a giant bamboo-eating Asian ape that
lived 5 to 24 million years ago. But is it possible that
scientists have overlooked a living species of great ape?
Russell Mittermeier, of Conservation International, points out
there have been several spectacular discoveries of new
species, such as the antelope-like spindlehorn from Vietnam
and a South American peccary thought to have gone extinct
thousands of years ago.
The persistence of reported sightings of Bigfoot-type
creatures in North America and elsewhere has convinced
leading primate researchers like Jane Goodall to call for a
legitimate scientific study to determine whether Bigfoot still
lives in the world's mountainous regions. A Bigfoot-like
creature is in nearly every Native American tradition, as well
as ancient legends from parts of Europe and Asia. Each year,
Bigfoot sightings are reported by hundreds of hunters, hikers
and motorists all over the world.
"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," Jane
Goodall says. "As far as I am concerned, the existence of
hominids of this sort is a very real probability."
John Mionczynski, a wildlife researcher who studies Wyoming?s
bighorn herds, has a personal reason to believe. In 1972, he
slapped at what he thought was a bear as it sniffed at a
bacon stain on 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. He says, "That hand
was three times as wide as mine and had an opposed thumb
that stuck out as plain as day."
To spot a Bigfoot, maybe you need to learn
how to
see things in a new way. Keep up with the news about the
Skookum
Cast. Hear the facts behind the top 10
Cryptozoology stories of 2002 from Loren Coleman on
Dreamland Saturday, January 18.
