Dr Jeff Meldrum is Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho University. He has extensively studied the adaptations of the feet of African primates with their implications in the evolution of human bipedalism, and was the senior editor of the scientific book, From Biped to Strider: the emergence of modern human walking, running, and resource transport. In short, he is an expert on human, monkey and ape feet and gaits, and the sort of footprints they produce. But then, in 1996 in the Blue Mountains of Washington State, he was introduced to a set of footprints which blew his mind.
Meldrum was aware of the legend of bigfoot or, as they call it in Canada, the sasquatch, and was sympathetic to the idea. An anthropologist, Grover Kranz had been investigating the subject since the 1970s, and had written a book on the subject, Big Footprints, since republished as Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence. So in 1996 Jeff Meldrum and his brother visited Kranz at the Washington State University to examine his vast collection of alleged bigfoot footprint casts. (In 2001 most of this collection was transferred to Meldrum's own laboratory.) After that the Meldrum brothers went to see the collection of amateur bigfoot investigator Paul Freeman. Much to their surprise, the latter told them he had found some fresh tracks earlier that morning. That sounded too much of a coincidence.
Nevertheless, they were driven to a private farm road where, in the mud, lay a trail of prints 14 inches long by 5 inches wide, suggesting that the maker had stood 7½ feet tall, while Freeman's own tracks were clearly visible walking alongside them, examining them. They appeared to have been made the previous night, or even in the wee hours of the morning. There were even subtle patches of skin ridges visible. Not only that, but
[i]n some tracks the toes were extended and often the fourth and fifth digits hardly left a discernable imprint. In others the toes clearly curled over protruding stones; in still others the stones were pressed into the ground beneath the weight of the forefoot or heel, while still showing signs that a compliant foot had conformed to them. There were distinct tension cracks about the margins of many of the tracks—signs of dynamic compression rather than a forceful stamped impact. [p 25]
One print lacked a heel impression. On a slight incline, it was pressed two inches into the mud, with signs of slippage.
It was similar to a person walking on the ball of his foot when going up an incline, except in this case the entire forefoot, not merely a ball, remained in contact with the ground. This indicated a greater degree of flexibility of the midfoot than is present in humans. [p 26]This, then, is how the book under review commences. It also indicates something which should be plain common sense: it is one thing to fake a footprint, but quite another to fake a track. The footprints of a real animal, taller and heavier than a human being, will be deeper than those of a man's, with a longer stride, and every print will be unique. However, a faked trail will, of necessity, be shallower because the weight is distributed over a larger area, with a stride no longer than a human's and every print will be the same.
Thus, since the author, as a scientist, is more concerned with physical evidence rather than sightings, he first addresses the contentious history of Ray Wallace, who is credited with "inventing bigfoot". Now in 1958 two significant events occurred. In British Columbia journalist John Green investigated the sasquatch legend and was surprised to discover actual eyewitness accounts, as he described in his 1971 book, On the Track of the Sasquatch. The other was a series of remarkable events at a road construction site at Bluff Creek, California, where something left gigantic humanoid footprints and threw or knocked around objects of tremendous weight. Ray Wallace was the man in charge, and he was known as a prankster. After that he spent years and years trying to sell obviously faked casts of footprints and telling whoppers about his encounters with bigfoot. The theory has thus grown up that he had faked everything from the beginning and so, presumably, every other footprint cast, no matter where found, must also have been a hoax. With a lot of explanation and a lot of photographs, Meldrum shows that Wallace's fakes are crude and unbelievable, and nothing like the original footprints. The fact is, Wallace's hoaxes were an attempt to extend his 15 minutes of fame once he had left the scene of the original phenomenon.
Meldrum also debunks the popular debunking of the Skookum body cast, produced when a bigfoot reclined on muddy ground in order to reach fruit deliberately placed low down. You may well have read that the cast was that of a deer. It sounds superficially attractive. However, it implies that the deer had lain down with its legs folded under it - which is what deer do - and Meldrum points out that it should have left four hoof marks when it stood up again. Furthermore, the hair pattern revealed by the cast is consistent with an ape rather than any other animal. The author also described hand and knuckle prints discovered in various other sites, all different from those of humans in shape as well as in size. Some footprints are also so clear that they left dermatoglyphics - the foot equivalent of fingerprints - visible.
Meldrum discusses the Patterson-Gimli film in detail, but since I have reviewed a much more detailed book in my previous post, there is no need to discuss it further here. Another chapter compares the behaviour of the animal as reported by eyewitnesses with those of known apes. Yet another chapter provides a statistical analysis of bigfoot dimensions. For example, the medium length of footprints is 15.6 inches [40 cm], with a standard deviation of 3.1 inches [8 cm]. The width of the foot is approximately half the length, which is much greater than with humans. Interestingly, the pressure applied to the ground per square inch is not much different from that of a bare human foot, but much greater than a booted foot. (Most of these data come from a paper by another scientist, Dr Henner Fahrenbach in volume 13 of Cryptozoology, the peer reviewed journal of the now defunct Society for Cryptozoology. I am pleased to have been a foundation member and possess the whole collection of publications. They have been willed to my alma mater, Queensland University.)
It is chapter 13, "Stepping through time: the evidence of footprints" which has the most bite, because this is his special area of expertise. A word of warning, however: in this chapter he tends to forget that he is writing for a popular audience and allows his use of jargon free rein. Non-mammalogists would be advised to read it very carefully, let they fail to follow his discussion. This be as it may, he shows that distinct differences exist between human and bigfoot footprints apart from size. Human beings walk with a jerky, straight legged gait. You may be surprised to hear it described thus because we observe it so often we take it for granted. Our feet possess a firm arch. The heel strikes the ground first, the foot bends just behind the ball, and the knee locks as the leg straightens, causing a slight bobbing of the head. It is a highly efficient bipedal motion, and also permits endurance running.
However, that is not how an ape walks on the rare occasions it rises up on two legs, nor is it the way a bigfoot walks, as indicated by eyewitness accounts, the Patterson-Gimli film, and the footprints. A bigfoot has a very smooth, gliding walk because its knees always remain bent to a certain extent. Its stride is long even in comparison to the size of its feet, and the footprints are more likely to be in a line rather than having a left-right "straddle" as with humans. The foot is comparatively wider than a human's, the heel is elongated, and there is no arch - it is flat-footed. Furthermore, it bends, not behind the ball, but in the middle. This is a consistent feature of the footprints, as illustrated by innumerable photos. It is also a primitive feature; it is present in both apes and newborn babies. He also discusses its possible presence in fossil prehuman tracks.
Special attention is warranted to the tracks of the "Old Cripple" discovered near Bossburg, Washington in 1969. It had a right club foot, which Dr John Napier, at the time one of the world's most famous primatologists, diagnosed as due to injury rather than being congenital. He said it was hard to believe any hoaxer would be knowledgeable enough, or sick enough, to construct such a fake.
I would strongly advise anybody with any doubts about the bigfoot phenomenon to read Meldrum's book. So, putting it altogether, what do we have?
- innumerable good sightings, consistent with each other, from apparently reliable persons,
- a film which can be proved to be genuine,
- footprints discovered all over vast areas of wilderness which, if they were all faked, would imply a conspiracy of mafia-like ramifications, and
- these footprints are consistent with the sort of giant ape being described and filmed.
What more do you need to be convinced that the animal really exists?
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