50 Years of Scientific Evidence for the Existence of Bigfoot
This is certain to be a very controversial topic, but I’ve been meticulously researching and investigating the Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti phenomenon since 1971, when I first read Ivan T. Sanderson’s breakthrough, 1968 book, Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life ( still rated 4.9 out of five stars by Amazon.com), and realized that the actual, physical and forensic evidence of its existence was insurmountable. Over the past half-century, I gradually compiled a wealth of compelling evidence on this fascinating, scientific and historical mystery. Whether you choose to believe in Bigfoot or not, the official, conclusive, DNA evidence (which is absolutely impossible to fake) of very modern science has been on record for the past nine years, with an inescapable conclusion.
“You’re talking about a Yeti, or Bigfoot, or Sasquatch…
I’m SURE that they exist…British scientists have found…
Yeti hair…They don’t match up with the DNA cells
from (any) known animals.”
Doctor Jane Goodall, on National Public Radio, September 27, 2002, world’s foremost authority on chimpanzees.
“You can’t fake DNA evidence…the nuclear genome seems to have
human and nonhuman sequences…Sasquatch is REAL, as proven
by (DNA) genetic analysis…The genome has some good, human
matches and some unknowns…with sequences that match nothing.”
Doctor David Swenson, Ph.D., biochemist with Green Resources Redux, Inc., 2013.
Frame 352 of the Patterson-Gimlin film, alleged to depict a female Bigfoot, shot on October 20, 1967, by Bob Gimlin. (Screenshot / Patterson–Gimlin film)
Bigfoot Caught on Film in 1967 In a California Canyon!
The greatest and most-famous, Bigfoot incident of all time took place on October 20, 1967, along Bluff Creek, California, when Roger Patterson and Robert “Bob” Gimlin rode on horseback down into a canyon in a national forest, carrying a Cine-Kodak K-100 16mm film camera, at about 1:30 PM, in search of any of the Bigfeet sighted in that same area the previous year. They were both taken by surprise when they came upon a tall creature just 25 feet (7.6 meters) away, and Patterson dismounted and began filming for 59 seconds as the creature was 80 to 120 feet away.
They estimated the creature’s height at 6.5 to 7.5 feet (2 to 2.3 meters), and its weight at 350 pounds (159 kilograms), and later made two plaster casts of the 16-inch (41-cm) footprints. The creature had a 41-inch (104-centimeter) average stride, which increased to 65 inches (165 centimeters) as she sped up. By comparison, this author is 6 feet and one inch (1.85 meters) tall, has a 27-inch (69-centimeter) stride in normal walking, and a stride of 48 inches (122 centimeters), when I’m in a very big hurry. Gimlin later noted that, “The horse never made tracks as deep as the creature did, so…she was a heavy, well-muscled creature.”
It’s an absolutely amazing film by any standard, depicting a very tall, very muscular, humanoid, female creature in full motion, walking briskly away from the camera and glancing back just once (most-famously at Frame 352, which is now in the public domain.) Both men have consistently denied any allegations of a hoax, and no one has ever been able to prove the film to have been faked in any manner.
“Toward a Resolution of the Bigfoot Phenomenon,” usually just called the NASI Report, used detailed, forensic, computer analysis to examine the Patterson-Gimlin film great detail. (The Bigfoot Habitat)
The Patterson-Gimlin Film Was Analyzed In Every Way
In 1998, the North American Science Institute (NASI) of Hood River, Oregon, issued a formal report entitled, “Toward a Resolution of the Bigfoot Phenomenon,” usually just called the NASI Report, after having used detailed, forensic, computer analysis to examine the controversial film in great detail. They stated, “ The 1967 Patterson - Gimlin Film ( PGF )… converted to digital data via a film scanner so that the imagery could be processed by computer.The computed height of the subject in the film is 7’ 3 1/2”. If the subject was a person wearing a costume... a seam or interface in the costume would be detected. No seams or interfaces were detected.”
“Subject’s hand (and foot) appears to be between that of the gorilla and the human…The appearance and sophistication of musculature as seen in the Patterson-Gimlin film has not yet been reproduced in costumes for the entertainment industry…The film subject is not employing typical, human locomotion…while the stride can be duplicated, the continuous, forward motion seen in the film cannot…To date, the Patterson-Gimlin film has defied explanation…after three years of rigorous, forensic examination…(the) film is of an uncatalogued animal…the Patterson-Gimlin film cannot be demonstrated to be a forgery.”
Distinguished anthropologist Doctor Grover Krantz of Washington State University concluded in 1999 that, “I fully accept the Patterson film…consistent with a 500-pound biped. I’ve attempted to imitate it, and I really can’t do it…The (subject’s) knee is regularly bent at more than 90 degrees, while the human leg bends less than 70 degrees.” In fact, no human being has ever replicated this extreme, lower leg lift while maintaining the smoothness, posture, and stride length of the creature on the film.
Doctor Jeffrey Meldrum, Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University, has also analyzed the Patterson Film: “The film subject possesses arms…disproportionately long for its stature…Anthropologists typically express limb proportions as an intermembral (IM) index…an IM index somewhere between 80 and 90 (actually, 84 for Bigfoot), intermediate between humans (72) and African apes (122)…is well beyond the mean for humans, and effectively rules out a man-in-a-suit explanation…Let there be no confusion about it. The PGF shows a real, giant ape-woman in the wild.”
Doctor Dmitry Donskoy, Chief of the Department of Biomechanics at the Russian Central Institute of Physical Culture, and later associated with Moscow’s Darwin Museum, concluded that the Patterson film creature was “a very massive animal that is definitely not a human being,” because its smooth gait cannot be replicated by any human.
Author Ivan T. Sanderson added that, “The Patterson film…is…the only footage I have ever seen with very real, flawless motion…beyond the level that Hollywood movie-makers were using at the time…to walk in such a way that to this day it cannot be replicated…Dale Sheets, head of the Documentary Film Department (at Universal Pictures)…(said) ‘Maybe if you allotted a couple of million bucks, we could try, but we’d have to invent a whole set of new, artificial muscles, get a gorilla’s skin, and train an actor to walk like that…it would be nearly impossible.’”
John Chambers, the Oscar-winning, costume designer for “Planet of the Apes,” filmed in 1968, later said of the PGF film: “If this is a suit, it is the finest ever devised, for it was beyond our capability in the 1960s. Every hair would have had to have been individually attached to the model for this to do what it does in the (PGF) film.”
In 1984, The Sasquatch and Other Unknown Hominoids was published, a 335-page compilation of scientific papers, edited by Yugoslavian-born, Russian hominologist Vladimir Markotić (with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University, and Associate Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at the University of Calgary), with introductory comments by Doctor Grover Krantz. Chapter 5 (14 pages) is entitled, “Analysis of the Patterson-Gimlin Film: Why We Find It Authentic,” by Dmitri Bayanov, Doctor Igor Burtsev (Russia’s foremost authority on the Yeti), and René Dahinden, a world-renowned expert on Bigfoot/Sasquatch:
“We have subjected the film to systematic and many-sided analysis both in its technical and biological aspects…The film has passed all our tests and scrutinies…who other than God or natural selection is sufficiently conversant with anatomy and bio-mechanics to ‘design’ a body which is so perfectly harmonious in terms of structure and function? Here we confidently give this verdict: The Patterson-Gimlin movie is an authentic documentary of a genuine, female hominoid, popularly known as Sasquatch or Bigfoot.”
So, not only is the Patterson-Gimlin film definitely NOT a hoax, but virtually everyone, including the BBC in 1998, who have tried to demonstrate how it was done, have failed miserably, and BBC was forced to apologize to the Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO.) On the contrary, EVERY SCIENTIST who has studied the Patterson Film has either stated that it shows a real, unclassified species, or that a conclusion cannot be made.
A huge hairy gorilla-like Bigfoot or Sasquatch glaring from a steamy forest. (Daniel / Adobe Stock)
The Severed Bigfoot Hand of 2002 In Montana
In 2002, a severed hand was delivered anonymously to a police station in Butte, Montana. The local coroner took X-rays, examined it, and concluded that it was not human. The police took the hand to Bigfoot researcher Don Monroe of Spencer, Montana, who showed it to several scientists. No one could identify it as human. In 2006, Monroe gave it to Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi, who had it tested by the DNA Diagnostics Center of Fairfield, Ohio, in May 2006. The official result was: “Not human. Not any known primate. Not even in the system.” This was the first confirmed, DNA testing of any Bigfoot or Sasquatch forensic evidence.
On August 14, 2006, Scott Mosbeck discovered blood, tissue, strange hair, and a bloody, 18-inch (46-centimeter) footprint on a “screw board” (a nasty and illegal booby trap) outside his remote cabin at Snelgrove Lake, Canada, and he called Doctor Jeffrey Meldrum (Idaho State University) and Doctor Curt Nelson (University of Minnesota) to the scene. The hair appeared human, but had no medullas, and did not match any primate known to science, or any other known animal!
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Doctor Nelson said that “The DNA says primate, but not quite human and not quite non-human (chimp/ape)…it was identical to human DNA (99.5-percent), except it had one nucleotide polymorphism…a difference that is shared with chimpanzees…I knew that I might be looking at the DNA of a Sasquatch.”
On October 8, 2010, Justin Smeja, age 25, of Sacramento, California, was hunting for black bear near Gold Lake. Instead, he shot and killed two large, hairy, upright creatures, an adult and a child, with his .25-06 rifle. Smeja did not believe in Bigfoot then. He does now.
His neighbor/driver was an eyewitness, and insists that the incident was horrible, disgusting, and true. Smeja kept a piece of the smaller, dead creature, and gave a sample of skin and dark, auburn hair to Doctor Melba S. Ketchum, DVM (a veterinarian), the director of DNA Diagnostics, Inc., of Timpson, Texas, for DNA analysis. Eight separate, DNA labs tested it: “Not human, not any known animal, an unknown primate.”
The evidence for Bigfoot comes in all forms from hair to DNA. (Elnur / Adobe Stock)
The Long List of Bigfoot Evidence
Doctor Ketchum made very exciting news three years later. On February 13, 2013, her groundbreaking, Bigfoot DNA study was finally released, entitled “Novel North American Hominins,” at 63 pages in length. Here are the DNA samples used in the astounding report:
- Bigfoot samples submitted: Over 200.
- Tested positive for “Unknown Primate” (Bigfoot): 111, tested at 34 different labs.
- # of Bigfoot individuals represented: 20 to 28.
- Tested positive for “Unknown Primate” (Yeti): 1.
- # of Yeti individuals represented: 1.
Details of successful, Bigfoot samples:
- 5 hair samples from Golden Ears Provincial Park, BC, Canada, five separate creatures.
- 1 toenail from Larry Jenkins in the Grand Canyon area of Arizona.
- 1 blood sample from J.C. Johnson in the Four Corners area of New Mexico.
- 1 blood sample from Crittenden, Kentucky, gathered by the Erickson Project.
- 1 hair sample from Hoopa Valley, California.
- 1 hair sample from Larry Surface in southern Ohio.
- 1 hair sample from Joe Black in the Great Smoky Mountains, Eastern Tennessee.
- 1 slice of Bigfoot flesh from Sierra Buttes, California, shot dead by Justin Smeja.
- 1 large sample of saliva from the Olympic Project, Bigfoot licking a camera, 2009.
- 1 hair sample from SE Oklahoma collected by TEXLA Cryptozoological Research.
- 1 blood, tissue, and hair sample from “screw-board” trap at Snelgrove Lake, Canada.
These are only 15 of 111 successful, Bigfoot samples.
Details of successful, Yeti samples:
- 1 Yeti hair sample from “Destination Truth” TV series, collected in Bhutan.
The nuclear DNA of Bigfoot creatures is an evolutionary form somewhere between primates and humans. (Jackie Niam / Adobe Stock)
Bigfoot DNA Reveals They Are Similar to Us But Not Much
The testing results, independently verified by 34 different laboratories, and utterly impossible to fake, showed that Bigfoot samples tested positive for a single, non-human polymorphism, and the default, genetic hair color was “red” (“auburn,” in current terminology.) The nuclear DNA results were “one-third of the way from a human to a chimp,” or even closer to human. The results did not appear in GenBank, the master, DNA database of all known animals. In other words, according to the Ketchum tests, Bigfoot/Sasquatch is at least 99.7-percent human!
This was fully supported by previous, DNA testing by Bigfoot researcher Richard Stubstad in June 2011, who wrote, “Sasquatch DNA…tested 100-percent Homo sapiens (human, on the mitochondrial side)…No current, GenBank Homo sapiens genomes perfectly match either sample…clearly and unequivocally from the ‘Franco-Cantabrian glacial refuge’…some 15,000 years ago…The only conceivable migration path was…towards the…Asian-North American land bridge…an approximately 99.98-percent mitochondrial DNA match…for both purported, Sasquatch specimens.”
The Franco-Cantabrian glacial refuge, from about 15,000 to 20,000 B.C., encompassed most of southern France and the snow-capped, Pyrenees Mountains. During my PowerPoint presentations on this subject, I used to joke at this point in the discussion, “No wonder Bigfeet are so standoffish and difficult to understand. They’re French!”
These DNA results should really not be too surprising, considering that Cornell University and other noted scientists state that there is only a one-percent difference in the DNA and overall genetic makeup of chimpanzees and humans. Bigfoot DNA samples so far contain only about 600 gene variations, versus 2,000 for chimpanzees, so they are genetically about 99.7-percent to 99.995-percent human! They even have an official, Latin name now, Homo sapiens hirsuti, meaning “hairy humans.”
Washington State animal bones were found with chewing marks that indicated Bigfoot teeth evidence, which left marks two times the size of human teeth. (Rebecca / Adobe Stock)
Chew Marks Left On Animal Bones Are Twice Human Size Marks
Doctor/Professor Mitchel N. Townsend, a leading, Bigfoot expert, wrote for Ancient Origins on April 7, 2021, that, “Is Bigfoot Real? Let’s Look at Emerging, Scientific Evidence: (On) Mount Saint Helens in Washington State. In 2013 and 2014…I located three different, ungulate, rib prey bone assemblages (elk and deer rib bones) that had seemingly inexplicable, chewing marks left in them…Of the 25 total hominin incisor measurements taken from all three sites, 92 percent are…at least two times the size of modern humans. The evidence was clear and consistent across all three locations. After identifying the teeth marks as Hominin, we…were able to estimate mouth size, which again was over double the size of a modern human.
“(It) enable(s) the construction of a currently-unclassified, hominin profile…(with) hominin incisor measurements primarily outside the possibility of Homo sapiens…The conclusions are accurate, well supported, repeatable…of a currently-unclassified hominin living (Bigfoot) at Mount Saint Helens. Once again, we are faced with the central question of why mainstream science has failed to comprehensively examine the possible existence of what some people refer to as Bigfoot. Credible, multi-disciplinary evidence continues to emerge…of a giant, unclassified hominin living and thriving in the Pacific Northwest .
“At the end of the day, why are we still asking the same question: ‘Is Bigfoot real?’ We encourage the scientific community to move beyond their skepticism in order to conduct deep examination…in this emerging area of research. Science has an obligation by definition to explain the unexplained, whatever that may be.”
We are intrigued with the Yeti, both for its scientific importance and for what it says about our own human interests and biases. If the Yeti is an old human-like form that we have driven into the mountains, it seems our current goal is to display them in zoos . . . (AlienCat / Adobe Stock)
Hopefully We Will Not Put Bigfoot On Display In A Zoo!
I’ll conclude this tale of nature, science, mystery, and intrigue with two great, thought-provoking quotes to consider. First, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) wrote that, “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
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Secondly, noted zoologist and explorer Edward W. Cronin, Jr., of Santa Barbara, California, wrote insightfully in his article, “The Yeti,” in The Atlantic magazine, November 1973 (page 53), that:
“Even though I am intrigued with the Yeti, both for its scientific importance and for what it says about our own interests and biases, I would be deeply saddened to have it discovered. If the Yeti is an old form that we have driven into the mountains, now we would be driving it into the zoos.”
“We would gain another possession, another ragged exhibit in the concrete world of the zoological park, another Latin name to enter on our scientific ledgers. But what about the wild creature that now roams free of man in the forests? Every time man asserts his mastery over nature, he gains something in knowledge, but loses something in spirit.”
Top image: A mysterious bigfoot figure walking through a remote, lush forest in North America. Source: Dave / Adobe Stock
By Warren Gray
