Yep!
I've made them in dry sand, on moist sand, on dry silt, and even dry mud. All it takes is some sort of dessicant in the matrix. This can be elevated salinity, or mineralogical composition as is the case when certain clay minerals like illite or kaolinite or smectite are present, or simply degree of dry-ness of the matrix.
Very repeatable and
very open-and-shut. The Onion Mtn. and other casts listed above show
dessication,
not dermals...case closed.
On to the Patterson Film!
I think some people may underestimate Desertyeti, as his public "style" as it were is somewhat freewheeling and hyperbolic. I think this is going to take several years to really sink in, but I think that history is going to record that Dr. Wroblewski has almost single handedly demolished about half of what passes for strong physical evidence for the existence of Sasquatch.
For my part, once I saw how the elk features matched up with the features of the Skookum cast, I more or less had an epiphany. Up until that time I posted freely on Bigfoot Forums, and in fact was a member of two of these Bigfoot groups. I was so shocked that the best and brightest of Bigfootery couldn't (or wouldn't) see the obvious that I decided that I really didn't want to participate in such an enterprise.
Up until fairly recently, skepticism about the "dermal ridges" was always focused on things like "expanding a latex mold of real dermal ridges" then using that to impress into the soil. No one really considered that at least some of these textures were simply an interaction between cement and soil.
While I'd like to see the textures of Paul Freeman's "Wrinkle Foot" cast duplicted, it is obvious to me that they are NOT dermal ridges. I examined and photographed a cast copy made by Jeff Meldrum in Bellingham, and have examinded other cast copies. The textures of "Wrinkle Foot" are simply way too big, too irregular and way too dendritic to be real dermal ridges. You don't need to be a human fingerprint expert to see the obvious.
Again, it's a case of WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???
Until the Internet came along, and the specifics of this physical evidence publicly and openly examined, people like Grover Krantz could hold court and make claims about a lot of this stuff which really couldn't be publicly examined. Or you would get fuzzy black and white photos in books or journals.
Until very recently, the only texture on the "Onion Mountian" cast was a black and white plate in Coleman's book or a quick shot in Legend Meets Science. But until I posted photographs on Bigfoot Forums and later on my own website of OTHER textures on the cast, no one knew about this stuff. Even Jeff Meldrum's book only includes one patch of "desiccation ridges" on the OM cast.
Bigfootery has changed over the years. Back in the 1960's and 1970's it was more focused on the "hunt" for Bigfoot. You would see Dahinden out there in the bush, sometimes with a long arm in hand, looking for the Sasquatch. "Something is making those goddamn tracks", was his motto.
Now it's more about promotion. We have the book and TV show "Legend Meets Science", which purports that there is lots of strong physical evidence. The focus is not really on the search anymore, it's on promoting these claims.
Well, now you have a problem, because once you allow what claims to be strong physical evidence to be critically examined, it more or less falls apart. Frankly I think the advocates have severly overplayed their hand.
To make the claim there exists "strong physical evidence" for Bigfoot means you at least have to go through the motions of being scientific. That means you have to allow independant examination of this stuff. I find it a great irony that it was John Green himself who commisioned the duplication of the Skookum Elk cast, on the grounds that IT SHOULD BE TAKEN AROUND THE COUNTRY AND EXAMINED BY UNIVERSITY PROFESSIONALS. Well, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED!!!! It was examined by a professional, and the obviousness of the elk impression was publicized.
This has been the worst decade for Bigfoot advocacy of them all;
1. Ray Wallace hoax trackways
2. Dermals and desiccation ridges
3. Skookum Elk cast
4. Patterson revelations
5. Steenburg and Matthew's coyote call discovery
The advocates have been pushed into a frenzy of defending ever more tenuous physical evidence, which makes for a rather cult-like enterprise. One which I am no longer willing to participate in. I like the idea of Bigfoot, but I don't like the quasi-religious promotion of it by the human beings involved.
