Sightings aren't required prior to obtaining a type specimen.
Wouldn't someone normally see it while collecting the type specimen, at least in the case of mammals?
Not necessarily. New species of rodents have been discovered in standard small mammal live traps. A field researcher is studying Rodent X, and all of a sudden Rodent Z shows up in the trap. It was never observed before becoming the type specimen.
You were talking about identification, I was talking about discovery. Seems most large mammals were discovered long after the local people knew bout them.
Your use of "discovery" is about scientific description. Historically (and to a great extent today) scientific descriptions were coming from an entirely different society and culture than that of "local people". Moreso, science was largely a Western pursuit. When you think about the "discovery" of gorillas, okapis, etc., it was from a time when the local people were not scientists and had little or no connection with the scientific community. Expeditions were sent from the West to acquire and describe the actual animal. That does not need to be done as much now because these regions have resident or nearby scientists.
I know that Bigfooters tend to liken the history of big mammal discoveries to that of Bigfoot. But there is a great difference between the present status of Bigfoot and what happened with those other famous mammals. The most striking difference is that nobody can confirm Bigfoot no matter who they are, or where they are coming from. That didn't happen with gorillas, okapis, etc. It appears that Bigfoot only exposes himself to local people. When professionals (who could easily acquire DNA from hair, saliva, etc.) go to Bigfoot territories they do not bring back evidence of their presence. Even "hotspots" yield nothing at all.
This brings me back to that question I asked last month. Do all Bigfoots live in some remote valley that nobody ever goes to? IOW, do Bigfoots make walking forays away from their permanent residence - leading to sightings away from where they are based with nobody actually finding their base.
What type of investigation do you think should have happened and why?
The sort Roger Patterson expected, with scientists swooping down on the area because he obtained photgraphic evidence. Don Abbott, curator of Archaeology at the Royal British Columbia Museum, had almost succeeded in getting zoologists to look at the trackways found months earlier. There was a group of animals in the area leaving prints and being seen; science might at least have been curious.
Patterson only would have gotten his wish if so many scientists thought the film was authentic. It seems quite clear that important scientists and scientific institutions saw the PGF and decided it was a hoax. You do not launch a field expedition after that. But nonetheless, countless numbers of Bigfoot hunters have gone looking for the animal. All have come back with no kind of biological specimen. The scientific community can look at the long history of people intentionally looking for BF, biologists working in BF country, and everybody else who goes into the forest - and see that the animal really does appear to be a myth. The situation in the late 60's (after PGF) is the same as it is now.
Very few people thought that the PGF was authentic. Very few think it is authentic now. If the PGF ever were to serve as the "spark" for a professional field investigation, the principals must already believe that it is authentic. It would be a waste of time, money and human effort to launch any expedition to find out
if the film is authentic, rather than deciding that the film
is authentic and then launching an expedition to acquire
the animal that
was filmed by Patterson.
