Fossils are fabulously rare when it comes down to it. I’ll bet my lifetime salary that no one that ever sees this blog will become a fossil no matter how hard they try. (Now to figure out how to collect.) We probably don’t have any trace of the vast majority of the animal species that have inhabited this earth. (Invertebrates, bet on it. But even if you have bones, dying in the right place under the right circumstances is …well, play the lottery, it’s safer by a lot.) The absence of fossils means…wait for it…we don’t have any, yet. It says nothing at all about what might be now; it doesn’t even tip my hand one direction or the other.

Matt Bille: I guess I’m not too troubled by the fossil absence for pretty much the reason you state: here we have two extant species, and your hat holds all the evidence of their lineage. In fact, we may have sasquatch lineage already in hand and not even know it, just not the links that got from the fossils we have to what exists now. Links are missing, a ha, get it? (Beats a Messin’ with Sasquatch joke.) Aaaanyway. We don’t know we have anything with the sasquatch because we don’t know what the sasquatch is. Knowing what the chimp and gorilla are helped us make the connections in those cases…long after the live animals were in the scientific catalogue.

But given her experience with them, Bones should know that even if bones tell the story, their absence doesn’t, necessarily.

Booth having seen a yeti just gives me the warm fuzzies. Never would have seen that as a skeleton in his closet.

So to speak.

But a scientist should never attempt to deduce current existence from fossil evidence. In the instant case, the scientist should pay attention to the 5% – that is five percent – of all the primate species estimated to have lived for which we have any evidence, at all. Paleontologists constantly gush over how many dinosaur fossils remain to be found. And, what, we’re done with primates? We are certain that no ape species have ever lived in North America? But that’s how we think, isn’t it?

I think the problem for folks like Bones is that, when they are confronted with a scientific conundrum outside their narrow field of specialty, their need to sound like experts trumps their scientific objectivity. They refer back to stuff that’s been pounded in their heads since childhood – ghosts aren’t real, silly! and neither is Bigfoot! – and spout them back.

Bones would never react favorably to my telling her: look. You can’t deduce anything from a six-month-old pile of bones.

She should learn a lesson from that, ya think? Booth has.

Of course, there are fossil candidates for the Yetis, including Gigantopithecus, needless to say!

Indeed. “The sasquatch does not exist. Therefore (1) any explanation for it that sounds mundane – e.g., a bipedal cow, a bear running on two legs or a ten-foot-tall actor – is automatically the most likely one, regardless of how real-life whacko it actually is; (2) the absence of fossils proves it isn’t real…”

Just sayin’.

I find Temperance Brennan to be one of the more annoying characters I have ever seen on screen. She makes Mr. Spock look and sound like a goodtime bar buddy. Booth, though, I really like. You saw a yeti, man. Stick to your guns. You might enjoy a beer with Peter Matthiesssen.

(From personal experience, I know. He would.)