Unknown Primate Dna

[dmaker]

There isn't even enough provisional evidence. The notion is rather absurd to be honest. Why not declare unicorns real while we're at it?

Edited February 14, 2014 by dmaker

[dmaker]

The plural of anecdote is not proof despite what many here seem to think or wish.

[Guest]

@WSA, the existence of a species is one of the few things in science that we can confirm 100%. There's no comparison between that and theories like evolution, gravity, plate tectonics, ect.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Jerrymanderer

[Guest Urkelbot]

Some of the problems with just declaring bigfoot to be a real species involve taxonomy. How can you give it a name and without knowing the phylogeny. Whats the closest relative? The anatomical details are unknown and only one clear video or photo exists with no other similar media to corroborate its authenticity.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Urkelbot

[Guest]

Was watching the previews to the Spike TV's 10 million dollar bigfoot bounty finale...........saw that Dr. Todd Disotell claims a couple of samples were primate DNA.

 

Don't know all the details, but it will be interesting to watch.

 

Do you know how excited I was when they showed that preview. All the way up to the reveal I was hollering at my husband in the other room to come here and see this. Well if you watched the show ( spoiler alert! ) you will know they were talking about the primate....HUMAN. My husband laughed at me and left the room. Thanks Spike TV.

[norseman]

I hate it when they do that.

 

Watching now.

[Guest]

Do you know how excited I was when they showed that preview. All the way up to the reveal I was hollering at my husband in the other room to come here and see this. Well if you watched the show ( spoiler alert! ) you will know they were talking about the primate....HUMAN. My husband laughed at me and left the room. Thanks Spike TV.

SPOILER ALERT!

Well, to be honest as soon as Stacy held up the hair and said it was 2.5" long and red, the first thing I did was look at his long red beard.

[hiflier]

Hello Caenus,

LMAO! Good one and good to see you around here, welcome.

[southernyahoo]

Do you know how excited I was when they showed that preview. All the way up to the reveal I was hollering at my husband in the other room to come here and see this. Well if you watched the show ( spoiler alert! ) you will know they were talking about the primate....HUMAN. My husband laughed at me and left the room. Thanks Spike TV.

 

Sorry you got your hopes up simplyskyla, bigfoot just doesn't want to be "nonhuman primate". 

[SWWASAS]

I think Mike and Kat should have suggested that their sample be tested by an independent lab since they did not even get any runner up money.    One could not know what agreements were in place between Dr. Disotell and Spike to avoid paying out 10 Million.     With the controversy about Ketchum's interpretation of DNA, Disotell could have blown off genuine BF DNA as something contaminated with human rather than get involved in that interpretational mess.    Since BF does not have an accepted DNA type,  accepting any DNA as BF is interpretation.    Without an accepted DNA signature for BF, the best that could be hoped for would be unknown primate.    But if there is any human hybridization with BF,  then human contamination would be suspected.     With a lot of human hybridization,   the closer the BF DNA would be to human and more difficult to differentiate from human.    I have always wondered if that has been the problem finding BF DNA to date.   When human DNA is 95% the same as a known primate DNA like a chimpanzee,  surely DNA of something closer to human, would be several percent more similar.   98%?   So much so, that telling the difference between human and BF might be difficult without an established type with certain accepted markers to differentiate the two.   RR  

Edited February 18, 2014 by SWWASASQUATCHPROJECT

[Guest DWA]

There is something I often ponder, and it is this: What would biological science have to lose, really, if a discovery is declared prematurely, and the perception of discovery gets ahead of the confirmed/actual discovery itself? After all, LOTS of "final" discoveries are reversed once new information is found. Science amends the record and we move on. Why not a sort of provisional discovery, based on the current evidence and information to date ?  You know, take your best educated shot, and then let everyone have at it from there? Why is it so distasteful to think you may have to  "un-discover" a species? Plenty of species are "presumed extinct." Why is that risk of being wrong deemed insignificant? Why does the idea of "presumed to exist" raise such a ruckus?

 

The field of biology is hung up (to a degree I think is unhealthy to the discipline) on the requirement of a type specimen. If this were physics we were talking about, or medicine, or geology, mainstream science would be having all kinds of debates within the boundaries of the evidence so far. This whole "Do not admit without type specimen" boundary is anathema in so many other fields.  

It is far more likely, based only on evidence, that the sea mink and the short-faced bear are still around, and ground sloths to boot, than that the sasquatch evidence is a comprehensive false positive.

 

It is interesting how scientists will go on and on about "you can't prove a negative"  (Um, sorry, 2+2 do not equal 5, I just did).  And yet they're totally comfortable saying that something doesn't exist anymore.  And have been proven wrong any number of dozens of times.

 

There is way more than far too much consistent evidence for the scientific mainstream to avoid concluding, beyond reasonable doubt, that the world's largest primate exists in North America - and probably elsewhere in the world's temperate zones - and should be provisionally recognized pending evidence allowing formal taxonomic classification.  This is elementary, dirt-basic science.

(And I should have added something I have said here more than once:  look at astronomy, a field that is probably 99% speculation.  Biology could learn much from astronomy. Sasquatch would have been in field guides a century ago if biology played by the same rules.  Unhealthy, no kidding.  No field driven in any aspect by denial is healthy.)

Edited February 18, 2014 by DWA

[Guest DWA]

^^^Summing up that post, here is astronomy, if it ran by the rules of zoology:

 

Earth:  confirmed.

 

Moon:  confirmed (but probably not, because we wouldn't know enough to be able to get there).

 

Everything else in the sky:  a light (the sun, whoa, pretty bright one there!) that could be anything.

[WSA]

So, I see a black hole is predicted to swallow Sagittarius A in about a month....an event that will happen at a remove of about 2,600 light years. Says so right here. And, umm, you don't see anything the least bit provisional about such predictions? That is:Twenty-six-HUNDRED. Not that I don't believe it. I do. But, it is anecdotal, even if we see it happen hundreds of times.

Really, truly, as a species we are way too stupid to survive much longer (in a geologic time reference sense, you understand).

[Guest DWA]

^^Nowhere can one see as one can in this field how much of our individual "knowledge" is anything but.

[dmaker]

So, I see a black hole is predicted to swallow Sagittarius A in about a month....an event that will happen at a remove of about 2,600 light years. Says so right here. And, umm, you don't see anything the least bit provisional about such predictions? That is:Twenty-six-HUNDRED. Not that I don't believe it. I do. But, it is anecdotal, even if we see it happen hundreds of times.

 

 

Really, truly, as a species we are way too stupid to survive much longer (in a geologic time reference sense, you understand).

I see. So, the universe is large, therefore bigfoot.

 

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