Forensic expert Jimmy Chilcutt, of the Conroe Police
Department in Texas, says he has strong evidence that
Bigfoot exists. Scientific debate about whether or not he's
real hasn't stopped Bigfoot from being spotted in Argentina.
Chilcutt, who specializes in finger and footprints, says the 6
Bigfoot footprints that have been found are genuine,
especially the 18-inch print found in Washington in
1987. "The unique thing about this cast is that it has dermal
ridges?and the flow and texture matches the ridge flow
texture of one from California," he says. "The ridges are about
twice as thick as in a human being."
For an earlier project, Chilcutt collected a large number of
ape and monkey prints, which he compared to the Bigfoot
prints. He says their ridge flow pattern proves they were not
been made by a large-footed human or other primate. "The
ridges run down the side of the foot," he says. "In humans,
the ridges run across the width of the foot. That's what
makes it unique. The only other animal I've seen this in is a
howler monkey in Costa Rica.
"As a crime scene investigator, I don't deal in what I believe
or what I think. I examine physical evidence and make a
determination...I know there's an animal out there, because
I've seen the physical evidence."
"There have been reported sightings in every state of the
United States, other than Hawaii and Rhode Island," says
Craig Woolheater, of the Texas Bigfoot Research Center. "It's
not the missing link, it's not an extra-terrestrial, it's just an
animal?a flesh-and-blood primate that has learned to be
elusive around man and avoids man where possible."
Besides footprints, researchers have recorded strange sounds
and found "limb twists," where branches of trees have been
twisted by an animal with massive strength.
"Every now and again big things turn up," says zoologist Colin
Tudge. "The acarpi?a horse-sized relative of the giraffe?
turned up only in the early 20th Century. A few years ago
somebody discovered an absolutely enormous shark in the
ocean. The most recent?and I think the most spectacular?is
an animal that people think is a goat-antelope, some kind of
relative of the shamuar, which has turned up in the forests of
Vietnam. This is an animal about the size of a Shetland pony
with long horns, that nobody even suspected was there until
just a few years ago?it was finally identified in about 1994."
Phenomena Magazine reports there have been over 20 Bigfoot
sightings in Argentina since 2001, and recently, two athletes
training for a biathlon on forest trails spotted the creature.
Humberto Sosa says, "We were training with Susana Romano.
At around 17:00 hours, upon reaching a curve we heard the
crashing of branches from the hill. We stopped to see what it
could be, and amid the foliage, we saw it briefly. It was a
large animal, some kind of ape, moving with great agility.
"Susana and I exchanged glances as though to confirm if
what we'd just seen was a product of our imaginations or
real. We remained still, with our eyes riveted to the place
where we'd seen it jump and become lost in the vegetation.
We tried to listen, but everything remained silent. Suddenly,
all of the birds flew away, as though fleeing from something.
And once again, with the same speed as before, it jumped."
"It was like a giant ape. We were scared and decided to run
as quickly as possible toward the unforested area. However,
that "thing" seemed to follow us, running parallel to us some
10 meters down the slope, through the wilderness, which is
impossible for a human to do given the thickness of the
vegetation. Through the leaves and branches we could see
its enormous silhouette and every so often could hear how
timber was violently shattered, which led us to believe that
the creature's weight was tremendous.
"It was evident that this critter was following us and I
therefore feared it would attack us. I felt fear for my
companion and asked her to run as fast as she could. I told
myself that if the situation reached the brink, I'd give my life
for her. We ran and ran, always feeling that the animal was
running beside us among the dense woods. In an area where
the vegetation isn't quite so dense and the possibility of
observing was greater, we stopped to look around us. But the
noise stopped and the jumping shadow that had followed us
had vanished. In the distance, we could see that birds
flocked together, as if frightened by something. In my 30
years of covering these trails, I'd never seen anything like it."
A man riding his horse in the same area that day also saw the
creature. He says it was almost 7 feet tall, covered in hair
and had long arms ending in sharp claws. It also had an
enormous, oval-shaped mouth with menacing fangs.
Could
Bigfoot really be roaming the backwoods of
America?
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