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The history of finding new species is full of initial misidentification. I think I published a link to a Ted Talk about a palentologist that made several dinosaur species go non existent. In several cases juvenile dinosaurs were misidentified as being adults of a separate species instead of the juvenile of known species. He proved they were known species juveniles because he could demonstrate the changes in morphology as they matured. All he had to do was find enough at various stages of maturity. The early dinosaur finds in England really had paleontologists at the time confused as to what they were looking at. Some of these early human finds with one or two bones are likely to turn out to be something completely different that what they are thought to be. Of course since BF does not exist, who would even consider it might be them.

Agreed. Sometimes there is a great deal of debate on whether a sample represents a new species of homo or is an outlier of an already established line.

Me, too, and I don't even have a mule.

Central Oregon is anything from the Cascade Crest east to where service starts to come from US 395 rather than US 97. There is an epic amount of forest on the east slope of the Cascades extending out to the edge of the basin and range sage country. The east slope of the Cascades has a huge number of bigfoot reports. Head of the Metolius River, for instance. There are also quite a few from the Ochoco Mountains NE of Prineville and around Paulina and East Lakes SE from Bend. Lot down towards Klamath Falls / Sprague River area, too. Funny thing .. there are some reports from out in the sage. They mostly come from areas around stock watering areas. I wonder if human activity, adding stock watering troughs in the desert which are filled from deep wells via propane pumps and wildmills, have created "islands" by which bigfoots can now leap-frog across what was previously uncrossable desert. I have lots of ideas ... but no certain knowledge. I'd guess either head of the Metolius, Camp Sherman, Tam McArthur Rim, or a little south around Century Drive / Mt Bachelor. I vaguely know Russ. Russ often transports Bob Gimlin to events. There was another bigfoot notable who did that until somewhat recently. That guy .. I won't name names .. seemed to be milking the relationship for every $$ he could. Russ **appears** to be treating Bob more respectfully, less as a resource to be leveraged for cash. I can change my mind if things prove otherwise down the road, but for now, I think Russ is ok. MIB

That might have happened if anyone with access to the ancient Homo DNA samples thought BF existed.

If Disotell is destroying samples he or his grad students could just be sloppy. Or his agenda is to cover up BF existence. New York is a big producer of forest products and finding bigfoot there would result in a big loss of revenue for the state. Maybe he is worried about how that impacts his paycheck at NYU.

Different scenarios with Sykes and Disotell testing. Sykes wanted to find something relevant, put significant effort into the testing process. His samples were widespread so there was little chance of cross contamination. Sykes got more than bear. But still, all verifiable animals or extinct animals for which a dna catalog already existed. Disotell ruined the snelgrove lake samples which was minimal to begin with. Then he ruined the Erickson samples. I think he's just a poor scientist in tandem with being insincere with his agenda. No need to denigrate Disotell but we can speculate his mohawk is an indication he still thinks he's a teenager into punk music, imitating British slang like "oy" at every opportunity.

Conditionally true, but not absolutely true. Most testing is done with the intent of matching a sample to a known species. You are looking at specific loci to find something the same. If it is a match on those known identifiers, it is assumed to be a match. Looking for a novel species closely related to some known species is very much a different matter. It requires first matching on the known identifiers to establish similarity, then has to proceed much farther than is done for species identification to locate differences. So yes, when a new human species is suspected, testing can determine if the new sample is a match to what is known or what is novel, but that is not the kind of testing that is done in almost all cases. This testing for a new species is a lot more involved and a lot more expensive. And the results are often controversial, both at the moment and sometimes for a long time afterwards .. the experts do not always agree on the interpretation of the data, sometimes for very good reasons.

^^^^Precisely. Paulides examines cases based on his experience as a police detective then gives his opinion. He cannot know what really happened in any of the cases unless he was involved in the disappearance. If you don't buy him or his opinion don't buy the book. I have not bought any of his books, not because of belief or rejection his opinion, I just don't want something that makes me worry more about disappearing. BF I have had contact with have not liked me around a couple of times.

After listening to a video of an apparently drunken late night tirade with Todd and what appeared to be his grad students ridiculing the bigfoot community, I have to completely agree with your assessment. I would not trust him to report results accurately so I would not involve him without having blind, independent verification of the testing I paid him for. (If that is necessary, why involve him in the first place?) MIB

Manufacturers often require retailers to advertise thermal imagers at MSRP. They are free to sell them at a lower price, but that has to be negotiated between buyer and seller. When I was looking to buy my Pulsar, it was a waste of time to look at advertised price at various websites. You had to do your own gumshoeing and call them. Yeah, it takes a little time but the savings were real. I would encourage anyone looking to buy a thermal imager to look at hunting websites such as Texashuntingforum.com and Rokslide.com and look at advertisers, sponsors, or other retailers mentioned by those who post there. That's how I found small retailers who would be very competitive in pricing and willing to negotiate. https://texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/forums/42/1/optics If there are specific issues you have technical questions about regarding thermal imagers, such as the interplay of field of vision and base magnification, the best forum I've found is in the UK. You may have to register there but you'll have access to a wealth of knowledge and in my opinion, they are the smartest of the smart. https://www.nightvisionforumuk.com/

Key word - "scrutiny". A critical examination. The evidence is examined in its entirety. Most seem to dismiss or mock it out of the gate, or after listening to a couple of podcasts at most.

For the record I am not saying Bigfoot isn't there. BUT... anyone in Paulides role needs scrutiny because there are just too many out there exploiting the subject to further their income or agenda or both, be it Him, the BFRO, the Conference Crowd and a crowd of others.

Bam? Like hit me over the head bam? Oh! Duh! You mean a gunshot! Sorry!

Patty's flat face, the movement of her arms while striding away, the craning of her neck during the look-back sequence, all indicate great ape. A close relative of sapiens. I don't care to speculate on other cryptids.

Safe to say that data interpretation is a process that is better served through repetitive testing by peer groups? I mean, papers get submitted and are reviewed but it would seem interpretation shouldn't be accepted without samples being further tested by others? In that way an interpretation could be better supported or accepted? In the case of say, Denisovans, the markers are there for identifying Homo, but there are enough differences to call Denisovans "Denisovans" as opposed tp Sapiens sapiens? Makes me wonder about a few things for sure. One of those musings being what if someone in science called the Denisovans Sasquatches instead? What would have happened? Another musing centers around the idea that since we have these "freshly-discovered" Homo genetic markers has anyone taken supposed Sasquatch DNA and run it against any of these new-found genomes? I mean, if Sasquatch is thought to be close enough to Humans to have alleged samples considered contaminated then why not run those samples against all of the recent ancient Homo genomes science has been coming up with? If the supposed Sasquatch markers match up with something recently discovered then we would have a winner.