Simple Challenge For Bigfoot Supporters

[William Parcher]

I wonder if law enforcement detectives have ever made plaster castings of shoe or boot prints in the past. I wonder if the pseudodermal casting artifacts showed up. I suspect that if Chilcutt ever saw those dermal-like lines on a bootprint casting, he wouldn't think they were human foot dermals at all.

 

[tube]

Chilcutt has a personal website;

http://www.jhcforensicconsultant.com/index.html

But a quick look through it reveals it to be a very professional, non 'Squatch related site. The last time I talked to him he was still active doing latent fingerprint analysis in his lab at home.

It's somwhat difficult to really pin down his Sasquatch claims, as he as written only the one short article.

http://home.clara.net/rfthomas/papers/elkins.html

Even Skeptics like Dennett and Daegling have had to simply call him up on the phone to ask him questions!

He's spoken at several of these Bigfoot conferences, and so is on the Willow Creek DVD. But his core claim, the notion of "ridge flow pattern" is simply not being written down for any kind of critical analysis.

I strongly suspect, but cannot prove, that it's all based on CA-19 or the Onion Mountain cast, as that's the only one with any "ridge flow" beyond just a patch of texture here or there.

It costs nothing to post on Bigfoot Forums, JREF, or various other places. He knows full well about the desiccation ridge phenomenon, yet we see no written public rebuttal, formal or informal.

 

[Huntster]

Embarrassed when they're shown to be so catastrophically wrong?

Possibly.

And it's also entirely possible that one might also question his own good judgement when challenged and exit the stage for a number of "good" reasons.

 

[tube]

I wonder if law enforcement detectives have ever made plaster castings of shoe or boot prints in the past. I wonder if the pseudodermal casting artifacts showed up. I suspect that if Chilcutt ever saw those dermal-like lines on a bootprint casting, he wouldn't think they were human foot dermals at all.

Dude, you almost have it!!!!!

Cops use "fixatives" which prevent desiccation ridges. Green did not use any fixative in his tracks prior to casting. As a police officer, Chilcutt always used fixatives, and so was not familiar with what happens when you don't. How do I know Chilcutt was unfamiliar with the desiccation ridge process? Well, he told me so on two occasions.

http://www.orgoneresearch.com/fixatives.htm

 

[Huntster]

Originally Posted by Huntster
Maybe the same reason many sasquatch proponents get "quiet":

Backlash? Pressure?

If Chilcutt were a scientist currently employed I could entertain the thought. He's a retired law enforcement official. Who tells you to hush up then?

Mrs. Chilcutt?

Remember the purse and diaper bag?

The man's laid the sum total of the integrity of his life's work on the line. Why not more vigourously defend your findings?

No dog in the fight anymore?

Some folks are quite willing to throw in a couple of cents and let those who want the whole buck to fight it out.

Defending his findings doesn't endanger his career yet staying quiet does call his reputation into question.

Yup.

Maybe, being retired, he doesn't much care about his "professional" career anymore.

He's getting bean money.

 

[Correa Neto]

Only now found some time to finish this post...

My point is that acid soils will eat even teeth long before they can be buried in sediments (barring landsides). Is there some way I can make that clearer? Rapid burial is a requirement for fossilization. Gradual sedimentation doesn't cut it.

The top layer in forest is detrius, which decays to form acid soil.

Again:
Fossils are preserved in sediments, not soil.

LAL, please read again my post. It mentions how bones may survive and not be affected by the "acid soils".

Another variant you are not taking in to account is time.
Suppose just 0.05% of the bones of animals that die at a given forest are preserved each year. After say, 5000 years you may end with a lot of bones...

One extra factor: Ph is not the prime factor when it comes to preservation of organic matter. The key factor is the oxigen level. Reducing environments preserve organic matter while oxiding enviroments tend to destroy. Peat bogs are very acid environments, but still an excelent source of well-preserved specimens (soft tissues included).

BTW, on a slightly OT note, are you aware there are fossil soils? Including from forests? They are called paleosoils.

I will not bother pointing the mistake you made on the last line. I'll attribute it to an unhappy summarization.

Are there any late Pleistocene fossil beds with preserved remains of forest dwellers in any of the wet, mountainous regions of NA?

Here:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q...hl=pt-BR&lr=&newwindow=1&safe=off&oi=scholart
2990 hits on Pacific Northwest+Pleistocene+fossils
Not enought time to do any further filtering, there's lots of microfossils and marine creatures included, but at the very first page you will find papers on land-dwelling critters such as black bears and mountain goats.

Also here:
http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs/northwest_region/ofr95-680.pdf
Geology of the PNW, if you want to check the distribution of Pleistocene units.

By the way, bigfeet, if real, are scattered all over North America, so, restrict the discussion to PNW?

Now, we may argue on this forever, you providing reasons to explain why there are no known remains and I saying there could be remains. The truth, however, is the fossil records provides no backing for the claim bigfeet are real animals.

Remember:
Bigfeet- 2 to 3 m high, bipedal, looking like most common renderings of bigfeetand/or Patty and coehxisting with humans for some time in North America.

We are not talking about yowies, yetis, woodwoose, etc. We are discussing the North American giant bipedal ape.

Why have so many species left no fossil record at all? I hope you're not saying every animal that dies by a lake gets fossilized.

What I am saying is that its not impossible, there are known examples, primates included and acid soils have nothing to do with it. I can't see how one can interpret what I wrote as "saying every animal that dies by a lake gets fossilized"...

Page cannot be found.

Its your link, LAL... Here it is again:
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes...sAndFossilisation/Fossilation/Fossilation.htm (its the very link you posted a quote from).
And the part you seem to have missed is quoted below:

The best chances of preservation occur when an animal falls into a fissure or cave, is drowned and sinks to the bed of a lake, sinks into a swamp, is swept by a flood into a swamp or lake, is buried in a cool volcanic ash shower, or is overtaken by some other rapid process which preserves the body intact and buries it quickly. The great majority of hominid and early human remains have been found in cave deposits, river terrace deposits, lake beds and in down-faulted troughs (such as East
African Rift Valleys) which have been infilled by sediment and volcanic ash.

Is it so different from what I wrote?

The fossils were found in sand dunes, not lava tubes.

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2000/00_01_20.html

Read again, since you seem to have missed this part:

The discoveries didn't stop there. Archeologists found bird bones in limestone sinkholes at Barber's Point. Most importantly, ancient bird bones turned up in lava tubes on Maui and the Big Island.

It says fragmented bones were found, not fossilized bones. The rare find of fossils in igneous rocks were trees, evidently with high moisture content allowing their preservation.

You have at least a fragment of a bigfoot bone?

See what I wrote some lines above on our current discussion. I will as soon as I find some more extra time- propose an examination from a slightly different POV.

I've never agreed with you on that. They seem to be restricted to forests, usually in mountainous regions. Individuals sighted outside such an environment haven't been far from one.

LAL, please check the geographic distribution of sightings.
http://www.bfro.net/GDB/ will do (if you have something better online, please post a link); the sighting maps from Texas http://www.texasbigfoot.com/habitat.html can also be used.

Thats not exactly "restricted"... Its a species that - if real - has a wide geographic span. Taking in to account the sightings distribution they are not restricted to mountainous and/or inaccessible areas. Unless not much can be draw from sighting reports, in other words, its unreliable or inconclusive evidence.

Yep. And the wronger you are, the more condescending you get.

So, are saying you are making a lot of mistakes?

I would say you make some mistakes, as anyone else.

 

[desertyeti]

Many, many, MANY fossils of Pleistocene and Quaternary mammals from mice to mammoths to humans, are known from cave deposits and alluvium in the Rocky Mountain region, as well as the Pacific Northwest, but no giant ape-men.
It is a myth that fossils are very rare in these deposits.
On to the next urban legend...

and just to be an equal-opportunity nit-picker (sorry Correa), some fossils are preserved in paleosols...rhizoliths, burrows, and even teeth and (yes) bones can be preserved even in very acidic soils, so long as the permineralization occurs quickly enough...in some cases, this is measurable in hours. Carry on...

 

[LAL]

I would like to have some kind of time sensitive information that indicates a Chilcutt's silence being directly attributable to Tube's contributions but nonetheless it astounds me in Chilcutt's proclamations, well established prior skepticism, and subsequent findings that he remains so quiet of late.

It's odd after throwing his heaving professional reputation on the line that he's not more active in engaging recent developments.

Have there been many big conferences since Jefferson? He gave a chalk talk showing the difference between casting artifacts and dermal ridges after the last one:

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=11363&st=75&p=270344&#entry270344entry270344

Matt/tube himself said this:

"Just so we do not get off on the "wrong foot" let me be clear about the scope of these investigations. I am not "debunking" the claims made about all casts that are claimed to have dermal ridges. My scope of investigation has been limited to ONE cast which was made under rather extrordinary conditions. Various other casts such as Paul Freeman's "Wrinkle Foot" or the Elkins cast made in Georgia were made in mud. My tests suggest that this ridge artifact process does not occur in mud. Various other casts are claimed to exhibit dermal ridges. Of those I have no first hand knowledge or opinion, as I have not seen the casts nor do I have any knowledge of the soil conditions under which they were made."

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=11363&st=0&p=231337&#entry231337entry231337


" 'QUOTE (RogerKni @ Jul 4 2005, 10:33 AM)


There are only six casts that exhibit these longitudinal dermal ridges.'


Well Roger, I think there are only six casts that are claimed to contain dermal ridges. As much as I have tried to learn all I can about the subject, there are certain fundamental questions that I have yet to solidly understand. I think that the six casts that are claimed to contain Sasquatch dermal ridges are:

1. Onion Mountain, cast by John Green on Onion Mountain California August 1967. This is the cast I have been investigating. Unfortunately, there seems to be some confusion which I am presently trying to clear up about the identity of this cast, whether it is the "Onion Mountain" or the "Blue Creek Mountain" cast. I sure hope Chilcutt and I are studying the same cast!

2. "Wrinkle Foot", A cast made from a track found by Paul Freeman in the early 1980's in Washington state. The track was made in mud, I'm told by Dr. Meldrum and Owen Caddy.

3. Elkins Creek Georgia. This too was in mud, I'm told.

4. Hyampon California (?) I'm unclear about this one. Made way back in the early 1960's by Bob Titmus in Northern California. Soil conditions, Again unsure. I've seen a photo in one of John Green's early books that could be these tracks which seem to be dry soil but I hesitate to infer from just a photo. I'm not certain this cast is being claimed to contain dermal ridges.

5. and 6. Two other Paul Freeman casts. Again, I'm not sure about this. Soil conditions unknown (at least by me).

I'm currently planning to attend the conference in Jefferson Texas. I'm sure Mr. Chilcutt and I will be discussing casts. I'm hoping, like other people here, to get a clearer understanding of the specifics of all of this."


http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=11713&st=25&p=242337&#entry242337entry242337

All except OM/BCM that I've been able to find anything out about were in mud. How do you get "desication ridges" in mud? Hyampon was sanded, to make it look better, but it some detail survived. I don't think anyone has ever, everaccused Bob Titmus of hoaxing..

Does anyone find it strange that tube didn't get his "dessication ridges" in actual Onion Mountain soil? He gets them in volcanic ash (none on OM) and silica, and even to an amateur like me, they don't have the continuity or the crisp little "V's of real ridges.

What's next? Styrofoam?

 

[drapier]

Thats not exactly "restricted"... Its a species that - if real - has a wide geographic span. Taking in to account the sightings distribution they are not restricted to mountainous and/or inaccessible areas. Unless not much can be draw from sighting reports, in other words, its unreliable or inconclusive evidence.

I've been lurking on this forum for the last week, and this paragraph raises a question that I've been thinking about. If the secondary evidence (footprints, eye witness testimony) is compelling enough for some to conclude that bigfoot does exist in the Pacific Northwest, then what do we do with all the sightings in less remote areas in the East? The BFRO website, for example, lists 34 sightings in New Jersey -- the most densely populated state. Are such eastern sightings of such poor quality that we can discount them, or does bigfoot live in the East too?

Drapier

 

[desertyeti]

If footprints and sightings are compelling enough for anybody, then they should also be seriously looking for Elvis, fairies, vampires, and werewolves. The whole point of this particular thread is to tease out just what it is about those prints that makes them compelling...as usual...no answers here, but I'll be trying to get some so-called BF "researchers" to look at some known real and known forged tracks and see what they score. Should be greater than 50-50, or else their opinions are 100% worthless.

 

[LAL]

Glitch problems.

 

[Correa Neto]

If footprints and sightings are compelling enough for anybody, then they should also be seriously looking for Elvis, fairies, vampires, and werewolves. The whole point of this particular thread is to tease out just what it is about those prints that makes them compelling...as usual...no answers here, but I'll be trying to get some so-called BF "researchers" to look at some known real and known forged tracks and see what they score. Should be greater than 50-50, or else their opinions are 100% worthless.

This reminds me of something...

A lot of posts ago someone used the following reasoning:

"There are no footprints from werewolves"

Or something like that...

Guess what?

Around the same time period, a dairy farmer from Elkhorn (near Delavan) named Scott Bray reported seeing a “strange looking dog” in his pasture near Bray Road. He said that the beast was larger and taller than a German Shepherd and had pointed ears, a hair tail and long gray and black hair. He added that it was built very heavy in the front, as if it had a strong chest. He followed the “dog” to a large pile of rocks but the creature had vanished. He did find that it had left behind huge footprints though, which disappeared into the grass of the pasture.

http://www.prairieghosts.com/werewolves.html

Sightings and footprints!

Shall we suggest a werewolf research project funded by the government?

 

[LAL]

Many, many, MANY fossils of Pleistocene and Quaternary mammals from mice to mammoths to humans, are known from cave deposits and alluvium in the Rocky Mountain region, as well as the Pacific Northwest, but no giant ape-men.
It is a myth that fossils are very rare in these deposits.
On to the next urban legend...

How many forest dwellers? There are horse bones, and, I think, Mammoth, a mere 30,000 years old but they too were from animals that lived in the open. If Sasquatches were a late Pleistocene arrival, any bones left might not have had time to fossilize.

There are a very few bear fossils, but bears utilize caves whereas Sasquatches apparently do not.

Why are there no Gorilla fossils? Only three Chimpanzee teeth? Why did it take the Leakey's thirty years to find the first hominid fossils in an area that was fossil-rich?

In another debate we found quite a few fossil beds and a non forest-dweller under Sea-Tac, but none were of the right age or environment.

Daegling found a bear skull, but it was in eastern Washington where elk bones lie in piles. In wet western Washington you pretty much find zip.Two Red Panda teeth have been found in NA. Where are all the rest?

and just to be an equal-opportunity nit-picker (sorry Correa), some fossils are preserved in paleosols...rhizoliths, burrows, and even teeth and (yes) bones can be preserved even in very acidic soils, so long as the permineralization occurs quickly enough...in some cases, this is measurable in hours. Carry on...

Glad to hear it. Now we just need someone to sift through the club moss and find some.

 

[LAL]

Possibly.

And it's also entirely possible that one might also question his own good judgement when challenged and exit the stage for a number of "good" reasons.

Such as wanting to play golf?

If he speaks up he'll get attacked. If he doesn't speak up he'll get attacked.

Maybe he has better things to do than develop an addiction to message boards.

 

[LAL]

So, are saying you are making a lot of mistakes?

I would say you make some mistakes, as anyone else.

No. I said you get condescending when you're wrong.

I made three mistakes right after I told Hunster (in jest) I'm never wrong. I'm usually not, but I don't see you saying things like, "You have a point there......." or even "I'm sorry I twisted your meaning again."

Texas has the Big Thicket.

http://www.nps.gov/bith/

That's pretty lush and about as inaccessible as it gets.

Let me get this straight; the BFRO has been the butt of the board and now you want me to rely on their reports? Got anything reliable from around Reno?

 

[LAL]

Shall we suggest a werewolf research project funded by the government?

Not until there's video of one morphing into a human. It's quite possible there's an undiscovered quadrupedal canid in Wisconsin, but that's not my area of interest.

 

[LAL]

I've been lurking on this forum for the last week, and this paragraph raises a question that I've been thinking about. If the secondary evidence (footprints, eye witness testimony) is compelling enough for some to conclude that bigfoot does exist in the Pacific Northwest, then what do we do with all the sightings in less remote areas in the East? The BFRO website, for example, lists 34 sightings in New Jersey -- the most densely populated state. Are such eastern sightings of such poor quality that we can discount them, or does bigfoot live in the East too?

Drapier

Possibly. The western Piedmont in NC is likely, as are Georgia swamps. NJ has some unruined land left,

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/

but note reports for the whole state are less than Skamania County in Washington State.

There's a larger population of sas and researchers in the PNW. There's a sighting map somewhere online (still looking) that shows sightings all over the country. In looking closer, I noticed while some areas seem to have a lot of sightings, they're very few and far between.

In some areas they may be making a comeback after years of logging and possible decimation by white man's diseases.

 

[William Parcher]

Virginia Bigfoot Research Organization

 

[LAL]

Read again, since you seem to have missed this part:

Bones, not fossils. I didn't miss it.

I'm looking for fossilized remains of any large forest dweller (other than a bear that might have died in a limestone cave), late Pleistocene, in the forested, mountainous regions of NA, preferably temperate rainforest. I'll take swamps and Whitehall, NY, too.

Where are the Gorilla fossils?

 

[LAL]

Virginia Bigfoot Research Organization

Yeah, I was thinking of Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia. The Shenandoah practically runs right into WNC. There are quite a few sightings from the Tennessee-North Carolina line.

I'm just going by ones I know something about.

Alabama seems to have activity too. One that impressed me was a match for a description in a sighting from Cherokee County, 1835. They seem different than NW SAsquatches. They're shorter and seem to have longer hair, at least on the head.

Can you find the national map? I thought I had it saved, but I'm not finding it.

Check out the distribution here:

http://www.freewebs.com/casr/sightingmaps.htm