Comments on: Norcal Bigfoot Tracks Found

By: scout242

scout242 — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 04:59:23 +0000

Wet sand? And only that deep? Not to mention that they look “flat”, that is too evenly distributed.

By: DWA

DWA — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:56:12 +0000

Kittenz,

Oh, it fits perfectly. It’s routine.

This is another area in which reading too many sighting reports comes in real handy.

People who aren’t steeped in crypto know the sas can’t exist. It’s impossible. Seeing one certifies mental illness. So seeing one, or seeing powerful evidence of one’s presence, for many people, is an impossible event to either process properly or deal with with other people. (One sighting report describes one of the witnesses telling the others that they didn’t see a thing – and then instantly starting to pray aloud, with another of the witnesses joining right in.) Folks report sightings ten to forty YEARS after they had them. They bury it. They deny it. Maybe life makes it go away for a while. Then it comes back and keeps coming back. People talk about seeing a TV show or a website and having a Eureka! moment. Old experiences, now validated, come back with such crystal clarity that they have to do SOMETHING.

It sounds as if they brought back the tracker pretty quickly. (And either they were incredibly naive, or they knew this guy, or they were incredibly naive AND found a guy who’s been wondering lately whether there might not be something to this noise.) Then everybody had that wait a minute we’re NUTS moment…and spent a while, and I bet a long while, talking about it. (“Hey, you hear our expert tracker thinks he found a Bigfoot? Sounds like somebody’s slippin’ here, don’ it?”)

Not saying anything about the validity of this find, mind you. But.

Four months is nothing in this field.

By: kittenz

kittenz — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:42:05 +0000

dogu4,

I understand your speculation that the feet may have weight-distributing properties different from human feet, and your mention of elephant feet too. In fact I have brought up similar ideas in another thread. I agree, Bigfoot, if they are the size that is popularly attributed to them, must have a foot structure, and probably a gait, somewhat different from humans, or from any other known animal for that matter.

By: kittenz

kittenz — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:37:11 +0000

DWA,

I do see your point. But if that is the case, why break the story at all? It just does not fit.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:34:10 +0000

Graybear, good point on the fossil feet. Upon thinking about it, I realized that you are indeed right and that not only are fossilized feet hard to come by, but Giganto is indeed thought by some to have been a somewhat quadrapedal creature which would make comparisons to its foot inaccurate since we are obviously dealing with a bipedal creature with Bigfoot. Interesting info on the mechanics of a cbiped of Bigfoots size but was this information calculated using humans as a benchmark? If that is the case, it is still a lot of speculation, but I suppose it is a good start.

By: DWA

DWA — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:57:57 +0000

Kittenz: you say “It still begs the question: why wait four months? Why not let an expert examine the prints themselves?”

I saw what could possibly have been sas tracks in Northern CA over 20 years ago. I’ve told almost no one. (My girlfriend, whom I later married, maybe to shut her up, was with me. I might have told one or two other people, and definitely no one whose reaction I was not pretty certain of before I talked.) If I actually saw a sas tomorrow, I might file a sighting report, but I probably would do everything I could to make sure no one I knew found out anything about it. If another person were with me and didn’t appear to notice anything unusual, he would persist in his ignorance, and I in mine about whether or not he was keeping mum on what he had seen, because I would not say a thing to him. I sure as hell would not let my thoughts about this animal appear in any forum that could be directly attached to my name.

THAT’s why. The world isn’t ready. That’s why. It seems stupid that you can’t talk about this. Which makes it only one of many things about us which are, well, pretty stupid.

I’m grateful for the people who are brave enough to challenge the stupidity of the masses on this topic. But my life is too nice the way it is for me to be one of them just yet.

By: Artemis

Artemis — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:06:51 +0000

What I think Leto’s trying to say is they could test the feces and see if it matches with an animal that we know exists. If it comes back inconclusive or species unknown or something we may be dealing with a sasquatch or something.

But I doubt it’s an actual sasquatch.

By: graybear

graybear — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:00:24 +0000

Several people have asked for comparison between BF tracks and fossil feet. Let’s not forget that feet are very rarely fossilized, as they are composed of numerous small bones which are usually lost before the fossilization process can be completed. Same goes for hands. In the case of Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest and latest of the two Giganto species, the fossil remains consist of a few mandibles and fewer than two thousand teeth. Not a lot of foot information there. Most scientists, in fact, consider that Giganto was a quadraped, knuckle-walking like the modern great apes.

I’ve seen some analyses on the possible mechanics of the feet of a biped of BF’s size. They indicate that the heel would be longer than in humans with the ankle more centrally located. This would bring the weight down more solidly on the foot, with a more even weight distribution than in humans, leading to much less roll as the foot came in contact with the ground. So these footprints might look more like a stamped impression than a human print. In fact, Patty looks to me as if she were stamping her feet as she moves up the wash in the Patterson film. Maybe this is just the animal’s normal method of locomotion.

But we won’t know until we find one. As has been said before; we need a bench mark.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:42:45 +0000

Well a lot of what I wanted to say has been said. As DWA and some others have pointed out, it is really hard to make any assertions about what a Bigfoot track should really look like without a definitive holotype. Bigfoot tracks may be able to lead us in the direction of more compelling evidence, but in the end, we can only guess what their feet are supposed to look like and hope we are accurate in our pronouncements of “fake”. I do not personally find the lack of arches to be totally strange. As Dogu4 said, something of this kind of mass may have developed flatter feet as the arches may not be ideal to them. Sure bipedal creatures as we know them, within our own size range, have typically arched feet, but we are dealing with a creature of much more impressive mass, so who knows? Heck, some Bigfoot may even have more arched feet than others just like with people. What about comparisons with early human ancestors such as Giganto? Did they have flat feet or arches? Finding a precedent for it in the fossil record may alleviate people’s doubts as to whether Bigfoot could have archless feet.

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:58:48 +0000

When I compared BF feet to elephantine feet I was referring to their functionality not their structure per se. Ancestors of elephants, prior to their acheiving their renown size, did not need their feet to absorb and cushion their great bulk, and likewise, the human foot were it to adapt to the great bulk of the reported size of the BF, would find the graceful arches of our feet less than ideal. I seem to recall a close reading of Meldrum’s analysis also addresses how the presumed arch-less structure of the foot would also lend itself to the distinctive in-line, toes-forward pattern that the feet make while transporting the owners considerable mass over flat ground.
But I would love to see a sample of a human tracks from someone with severe fallen arches in contrast to someone who’s arches are still within their design specs.