What About The Bones? Research Paper Now Available.

[Guest DWA]

 

Part II is up.

 

 

https://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/challenge-accepted-is-there-archaeological-evidence-of-bigfoot-part-ii/

 

Conclusion:

 

"In Lisa’s opinion, the damage to the elk and deer remains has a much more logical explanation than Bigfoot."[/size]

Another case of science making judgments without actually examining the evidence. If Lisa had personally examined the bones, went over the physical processes that the researchers used to make their determinations, then concluded something different I might give some credence to her difference in opinion. Her report was basically dismissive and did not address the evidence. As a PHD candidate she is not only not going to go out on a limb to support a controversial conclusion but actually expects to get points of professional credibility by debunking the bigfoot association [oh count on that, bud]. There is way to much of that sort of thing going on in academia. The fact that she even weighed in on this reveals debunking was her intent from the beginning.

 

Wrong, Lisa ya doof.

 

How do "scientists" get away with this?  No!  It's not that!  It's...I have a more logical....hEY LOOK AT THE TIME....

 

Look, just 'coz you had to do a lot of sums and take awful phys and chem labs that I neatly avoided because college is about booze and wimmen, ya doofs, doesn't mean I don't understand science better than you!

 

What's your explanation, Lisa...ya doof?

Edited October 29, 2015 by DWA

[Guest WesT]

What she's saying is, the only thing she knows for a fact is, it wasn't a bear. Well, that elliminates one possibility.

[dmaker]

No, she is saying that you cannot know for a fact what it was based on tooth impact marks. 

[Guest DWA]

What she's saying is, the only thing she knows for a fact is, it wasn't a bear. Well, that elliminates one possibility.

If that is the only thing one knows for a fact...then one thing that, for a fact, one does *not* know is that the damage has a lot more "logical" - whatever the heck that could conceivably mean - explanation than the one to which, you know, the evidence points.

[dmaker]

Why do you think the evidence points to bigfoot, DWA? Specifically.

[Guest ChasingRabbits]

I wonder what Ms.Bright's thoughts are about the entire field of forensic dentistry/odontology.

[BigTreeWalker]

Rebuttal coming as I have the time.

[BigTreeWalker]

She is basing her conclusions on her experiences, which is fine. That is how we learn. But at least one of her conclusions about dental forensics flies in the face of other works we referenced in that field. I posted a link to the portion of the paper I wrote. The time between that and this review tells me she probably just skimmed the information. Reading a paper for its quality can be done fairly quickly, but reviewing content takes time.

[hiflier]

Hello BigTreeWalker,

What I find quite off here with the article is that you and your own team were already able to rule out most everything via your inspection and careful measurements of arc, radius, and dimension of the tooth marks themselves- because you had the actual physical bones to work with. I say rule out ALMOST everything because IIRC a porcupine's teeth can exhibit the same size incisor as what was seen in the rib bones. That said could you clarify if a porcupine can leave dentition marks that would appear as three teeth in the arc you showed in the photos and diagrams?

Edited October 29, 2015 by hiflier

[BigTreeWalker]

Lisa’s Interpretation of the Evidence

1. Bone stacking technique: Just because the Department of Fish and Game said an animal didn’t pile the bones does not mean that it is otherworldly. Not only do the bones appear to be at the bottom of a slope (and we all know things roll down hill), but it’s also possible that other humans may have picked up and moved the bones, just like the authors did when they encountered them.

Rebuttal: The word otherworldly shows where her mindset is with respect to bigfoot. The biologist merely said that it looked like something humans would do, as opposed to the usual suspects. The thought of rib bones rolling down a hill and ending up in a pile points back to lack of experience. BP#1 was between a couple logs and not rolling anywhere. EK#1 was on a flat beside a stump next to a spring. No hills close by. EK#2, the kill was actually in the bottom of a small gully and the stack was up on a flat beside it. Talk about otherworldly; that defies gravity.

2. Skeletal evidence: Ribs are difficult bones to take tooth impact measurements on because of their complex shape, and their delicate nature. Ribs and vertebrae are prone to easy fracturing and distortion when being chewed on.

Rebuttal: Actually it was very easy to measure the impressions in the ribs. We did note where there might have been some deflection on the bite through. But all that would do is make the impression smaller than the tooth that made it. From what I can tell from this statement, she has never found impressions like this in a bone. Elk vertebrae are large and stout. Not much flexing going on there. What this boils down to is an excuse on her part.

3. Bigfoot’s teeth: Incisors typically don’t leave impressions on bone, aside from small scrapes and furrows. Large pits and punctures are typically created by canine teeth.

Rebuttal: Very true. She hit the nail on the head here. This is the case for the order Carnivora, which I discovered early on in our comparison research. Carnivore incisor teeth are built for nibbling, are very small, and don’t even come close to matching these impressions. Carnivore incisor impressions can be seen in the meat on our control specimen. Their canines tend to get in the way and do leave very distinct impressions if they do contact the bone. This is the point where she shows her lack of knowledge in dental forensics. The impressions that canine teeth leave in bone is distinct and measurable. Research has been done in this field, Murmann, et al. 2006.

4. Bite marks: The authors are trying to take bite mark analysis and dental arcade reconstructions typically used on flesh or soft material, and translating it to bone. That just does not work.

Rebuttal: Really don’t have too much to say to this statement. It just shows her lack of familiarity with dental forensic research, with respect to predators and archeological research done on bone with respect to primitive cultures.

5. Tooth impact marks: When animal scavenge its possible for a single individual to leave a range of tooth impact marks dependent on the depth, pressure, and angle at which they are chewing. They specifically cite a public presentation Lisa gave during the beginning of her thesis research (Bright 2010), where she did talk about the potential ability to infer scavenger activity based on disarticulation sequence, scavenger behavior, and tried to look at tooth impression marks. However, her research concluded that it wasn’t possible to identify the scavenger to species, or potentially even taxa, based only on the tooth impact marks. She had remains that she watched bears scavenge, that did not match the typical tooth impact marks proposed by the literature. The final results are available in her thesis (2011 – articles forthcoming).

Rebuttal: She mentions disarticulation sequence as being important just as we believe it is in our research. But she doesn’t go into it here. In this case I need to discuss why Mr. Townsend decided to use her research as a reference. Unless it was her lack of dental forensic evidence with respect to bears and was used as a counterpoint in our discussion. Because we did find measurable evidence.

6. Timing: The bones are highly weathered and sun bleached.Taphonomy is more than just scavenging; it’s anything that happens to the remains after death including movement by gravity or water, human intervention, natural decomposition, etc. At the low end, it’s likely that the bones have been there a minimum of six months, probably more.

Rebuttal: Since all she saw were pictures I can understand her conclusion here. However, all the bone sites were in very shaded areas with little sun exposure. We used other means to determine the age of the bones. All mentioned in the paper. One thing for certain was that EK#1 and EK#2 had not over wintered or even been exposed to extended periods of rain. A look at our control specimen and what happens to flesh after much rain reveals this. Again, it may be lack experience but fresh bone is white. Once sun bleaching and weathering occurs the bone becomes pitted and hair line fractured.

Conclusion

In Lisa’s opinion, the damage to the elk and deer remains has a much more logical explanation than Bigfoot. She have not seen the bones, but based on the pictures provided in the reports, she argues that it is most likely bear or coyote scavenging. Although tooth impact analysis may sometimes work to determine the general characteristics of a possible scavenger, her experience with it indicated that method is questionable. There’s a lot of variation that can occur when a tooth impacts bone, especially on ribs. Taphonomy is also more than just animal activity. It involves considering the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of bone, length of outdoor exposure, weather patterns, decomposition timing, and a slew of other variables. All of these things need to be considered together when scavenged bones are analyzed.

Rebuttal to Conclusion: This also goes back to her first comments. Yes we did see evidence of more than one individual at one site. The other sites were miles apart and only showed evidence of one individual. Since in her own work she was not able to identify what the predator or scavenger was, even though she knew it to be bears. Since it was ambiguous by her own admission. Can what she found be compared to our findings? Her research was included in our paper to compare bear scavenging to what we found. There are whole tables showing inter-canine distances for almost all the large predators. We were able to identify two other smaller scavengers in our research by their canine sizes, so yes it can be done. To say or infer that we didn’t try to place the age of each kill is definitely a stretch. That list of what to use is 100% correct and yes we did cover it in the papers.

However, I will say that she hasn’t seen the bones and has admitted to such.

Edited October 29, 2015 by BigTreeWalker

[BigTreeWalker]

Hiflier,

Yes we have done a lot of comparison and continuing to do so as time allows.

Speaking of porcupines. Norseman sent me a elk femur with some porcupine gnaw marks on it. Glad he did. The photos I took came out very interesting because I didn't have any actual gnaw marks to compare to, just porcupine teeth. Will be posting shortly, probably in my other bones thread because that pertains more to my specific work.

[WSA]

So what is her theory as to what did? (Have not had a chance to read it yet)

And oh, love the point by point discussion about this. Truly the highest and best use of this forum.

[Faenor]

It needs to be determined that species or taxa identification can accuratly be done from teeth marks on scavenged bones. The conclusions to brights thesis indicates its not an accurate method. Is there a formal rebuttal to the conclusions within her thesis or recent published work indicating the conclusions are in error?

[Guest DWA]

No surprises there.  Any scientist worth his salt would say to Lisa, insufficient homework there, girlfriend.

[dmaker]

What, exactly, is your objection to her, DWA? She believes that her research has shown that species identification through tooth impact marks is not feasible. 

 

Do you have something specific to challenge her findings, DWA?  Or is your primary objection that she said probably not bigfoot?

Edited October 30, 2015 by dmaker