The Nabs’ Role In The Ongoing Sasquatch Dna Study

[GuyInIndiana]

Well I don't think the DNA is the only reason people have their opinion on what bigfoot is. There is the tracks, the videos, the sounds and what they've witnessed that forms the overall picture.

Exactly. At the moment, I'm not concerned with DNA. What I saw, was more "gorilla on steroids" than anything, and based on evidence known and *other personal experience*, I'm convinced they are far more something else rather than human.

[Doc Holliday]

I know, but what if the DNA doesn't match the observed behavior? Will it be a situation similar to what we see in dolphins where they are mammals but look like fish and act like fish? .........Why is everyone so sure that it has to be one way or the other?

good points with the dolphin comparison. as to why some are so sure i suspect the reasons range from observations to emotions depending on the individual.

I ,on the other hand, don't know & will laugh if its eventually determined that BF is actually some sort of mega-groundhog & if it sees its shadow in February it means 6 more years of winter because of size alone.

[BobbyO]

I know, but what if the DNA doesn't match the observed behavior? Will it be a situation similar to what we see in dolphins where they are mammals but look like fish and act like fish? I'm just asking, I don't know, but everyone seems so sure that it is either this or that, and those are your only choices. What if the analysis shows a completely different branch of ape? Does that mean we have convergent evolution going on because bigfoot might be able to speak? Why is everyone so sure that it has to be one way or the other?

Because that's Human Nature Jodie, we have to be believed to be clever & that we know things even though, deep down, we have no clue one way or another currently if we're brutally honest with ourselves..

I think i can excluse DR Ketchum from that though & a few of her Staff i'd guess..

Edited August 21, 2011 by BobbyO

[Guest HairyGreek]

Exactly. At the moment, I'm not concerned with DNA. What I saw, was more "gorilla on steroids" than anything, and based on evidence known and *other personal experience*, I'm convinced they are far more something else rather than human.

I totally agree with that. But they are closer to us than any animal; better in some ways. Just too **** wily to be anything else in my opinion. I won't exclude the possibility that they may have mated with humans sometime in the recent or more distant past though.

Edited August 21, 2011 by HairyGreek

[Guest slimwitless]

I'm pretty sure she doesn't have that big ole Sasquatch head in the back of her freezer (behind the peas) pending the big reveal.....

Probably not...but I wouldn't be surprised if she has more than we realize. I'll leave it at that.

I don't pretend to be a scientist or have any specialist knowledge of DNA sequencing, but I'm guessing that the DNA evidence Ketchum has collected reveals a sub-species of human that is more distinct and removed from ourselves than Native American. I'm speculating here - it's what we do on BFF - but I intuit from the nudges and winks coming from the direction of Derek and the General that they would not be in such a relaxed and ebullient mood if Ketchum had informed them they were, in fact,complicit in the death of a Native American.

I agree. In fact, it's one of the big reasons I'm holding out hope for this whole thing. Not to mention law enforcement would surely be involved if someone sent a sizable chunk of human flesh to her DNA lab.

Edited August 21, 2011 by slimwitless

[southernyahoo]

I know, but what if the DNA doesn't match the observed behavior?

It would be tough to say. Humans are wired to behave in a maner that gains acceptance from the world around them, so if your best freind was a coyote while you were growing up and had no other influence you might act like one. The story of Oxana Malaya gives us some insight on that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxana_Malaya

Will it be a situation similar to what we see in dolphins where they are mammals but look like fish and act like fish? I'm just asking, I don't know, but everyone seems so sure that it is either this or that, and those are your only choices. What if the analysis shows a completely different branch of ape? Does that mean we have convergent evolution going on because bigfoot might be able to speak? Why is everyone so sure that it has to be one way or the other?

I'd have to defer to people who know primates, great apes and hominids better than me, but if there is no precedent for convergence in these families then I wouldn't expect it for bigfoot.

[Guest]

Two related but also kind'a opposite points:

1) Wasn't Dr Ketchum quoted somewhere as saying that Paulides is way off base with his homo claims?

2) Assuming Paulides IS right that they are homo or near to homo, it would only confirm one of the lest accepted claims about BF based on N American accounts: that of woman abduction and possible cross-breeding.

[Guest]

I'd have to defer to people who know primates, great apes and hominids better than me, but if there is no precedent for convergence in these families then I wouldn't expect it for bigfoot.

The real problem is that there is no way to tell from DNA how it developed...if the results are as Paulides claims and bf is 2/3 human and 1/3 chimp, that is simply the end result. We don't know if that would be the result of something human becoming more chimp-like or something chimp becoming more human like.

It's also hard to show the influence of convergence on anything other than a macro-scale. All marine life, for example, has certain similarities (such as streamlining), because it is adapted to a certain environmental niche (water dwelling).

With the primates, we all share similarities based on our common ancestry, BUT given the prevalence of humanity and the homo line, one would expect other apes to have also evolved convergently towards humanity, yet that seems not to be the case.

Why is that? We don't know. Here, at the resulting end of the development, we see the obvious advantages of weak bodies and strong intellects with a rich information exchange ability. How and why that became enough of an advantage that it "bred true" and resulted in our divergence from the common primate line is a mystery. That there aren't MORE still extant lines of homo would seem to indicate that our developmental path was advantageous for ONE particular group, but not generally advantageous enough to primates as a whole to become widespread.

[southernyahoo]

Why is everyone so sure that it has to be one way or the other?

Why so few choices? Well, there is alot of history to go over about bigfoot. I think you could look at patty and say, there is no precedent for an ape to walk like that except in the homo line that we can observe today. We can also look back at the previous attempts to get DNA and make sense of those results. We can assume that we weren't seeing the whole picture with some of those.

[Guest slimwitless]

Why so few choices? Well, there is alot of history to go over about bigfoot. I think you could look at patty and say, there is no precedent for an ape to walk like that except in the homo line that we can observe today. We can also look back at the previous attempts to get DNA and make sense of those results. We can assume that we weren't seeing the whole picture with some of those.

That makes a lot of sense. As for past attempts, I wonder if any labs still in possession of previously tested samples are going back to take another look. Surely they've heard about this unfolding drama. Maybe Disotell is working feverishly in his lab even as I type. Okay, maybe not.

[Guest]

I think we are just thinking too simplistically. This is the conclusion I've come to just reading what everyone thinks or leaked:

Let's take Giganto for an example. If it actually survived, it would have been evolving all this time just as everything on earth does. Would it even match a Giganto DNA profile pulled from an ancient sample, assuming we even have that in the Genbank database?

So with that in mind, it would be necessary to look at different markers on the sequences rather than what is in the catalog, I would think, right? Maybe that is what has taken so long. It took time to verify that the amplifications were true, then it took time to develop another system to match the samples to the new unknown. Maybe that's why the old samples matched human sometimes, there are enough points on the Sasquatch DNA sequence that match those specific for human in the catalog. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will match human, or anything else, if you look at the 3 dimensional structure of the sequence for the millions of base pairs rather than the 16,000 that Stubstad said he compared with his rudimentary analysis.

That would explain why different groups are leaking different things. These groups only have the tentative results and are basing their conclusions on a poor interpretation of what they are looking at or being told because they don't completely understand or know what was done.

I think we need to consider the possibility that we will find that we are looking at something completely new that hasn't been seen before. Just as human's are unique, maybe this species has it's own unique development that to some degree mirrors what happened to us, but I don't think you can assume that the results will be definitively either human or ape.

I may be absolutely, completely wrong in my guess. I know enough about genetics to follow what is being explained, but not enough to make an intuitive leap to understand what it means. I'm just throwing this possibility out there as an option because I think we are looking at this too narrowly. It's a wait and see situation for sure.

[Guest HairyGreek]

I think we are just thinking too simplistically. This is the conclusion I've come to just reading what everyone thinks or leaked:

Let's take Giganto for an example. If it actually survived, it would have been evolving all this time just as everything on earth does. Would it even match a Giganto DNA profile pulled from an ancient sample, assuming we even have that in the Genbank database?

I was under the impression the DNA cannot show evolution. We have to rely on the fossil record; of which, Giganto was shown to have died out as there have been no chain of altering fossils. Am I wrong in this? We haven't even been able to say with any (scientific) certainty that our own evolved fossil record is definitely ours. Everything is conjecture and best guesses. This is at least how I interpret what I have learned.

[southernyahoo]

I think we are just thinking too simplistically. This is the conclusion I've come to just reading what everyone thinks or leaked:

I'm sure that I'll never be able to express in technical terms what bigfoot is, so I have to agree on the simplified versions.

Let's take Giganto for an example. If it actually survived, it would have been evolving all this time just as everything on earth does. Would it even match a Giganto DNA profile pulled from an ancient sample, assuming we even have that in the Genbank database?

I agree that it would have kept evolving, I just think it would had to have undergone more rapid changes to account for what is reported as bigfoot, but thats just my laymen view based on the reconstructed skull of giganto. If we had the sequences from giganto I think we'd be done with that hypothesis.

So with that in mind, it would be necessary to look at different markers on the sequences rather than what is in the catalog, I would think, right? Maybe that is what has taken so long. It took time to verify that the amplifications were true, then it took time to develop another system to match the samples to the new unknown. Maybe that's why the old samples matched human sometimes, there are enough points on the Sasquatch DNA sequence that match those specific for human in the catalog. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will match human, or anything else, if you look at the 3 dimensional structure of the sequence for the millions of base pairs rather than the 16,000 that Stubstad said he compared with his rudimentary analysis.

I think we have no choice in that we have to compare it to knowns. We know that certain regions of nuDNA are noncoding and thus accumulate mutations at a slow constant rate. These can be useful to use in calculating back in time to a common ancestor based on comparison to knowns. The CO1 gene is used in barcode analysis to help ID knowns quickly, but is frowned upon in identification of new species because it uses relatively short DNA sequences and doesn't provide full resolution on the phylogentic tree. I'll link below on that. I expect that when sas is fully accepted the entire genome will be sequenced and we'll see where all the differences are but we'll still be a long way from understanding how all the differences combine to create the morphological differences.

http://www.bolinfonet.org/pdf/Hajibabaei_et_al_2006_Benchmarking_DNA_barcodes.pdf

That would explain why different groups are leaking different things. These groups only have the tentative results and are basing their conclusions on a poor interpretation of what they are looking at or being told because they don't completely understand or know what was done.

I think there might be hidden motives there as well, but can't speculate on it much.

I think we need to consider the possibility that we will find that we are looking at something completely new that hasn't been seen before. Just as human's are unique, maybe this species has it's own unique development that to some degree mirrors what happened to us, but I don't think you can assume that the results will be definitively either human or ape.

I think that is a good expectation.

It's a wait and see situation for sure.

Yep

[Guest Strick]

I think we need to consider the possibility that we will find that we are looking at something completely new that hasn't been seen before. Just as human's are unique, maybe this species has it's own unique development that to some degree mirrors what happened to us, but I don't think you can assume that the results will be definitively either human or ape.

That's very intriguing, Jodie, and the possibilities are endless if you follow this train of thought.

I assume you are still speculating within the general confines of 'primate' and are not suggesting that a form of convergent evolution has produced a highly evolved biped of a completely different category, such as a canid? Dogman anyone? I know that some Australian researchers, like Neil Frost, have seriously suggested that the Yowie might be a type of marsupial human.

Of course, there are biological reasons why Australia has produced animals that fill specific ecological niches that are represented by different animals in other parts of the world: a bilby does what rabbits do elsewhere; kangaroos are like deer; thylacines like big cats or wolves. Obviously, the complete absence of placental mammals has forced marsupials to take on a diversity of roles in the Australian model. This is not the case in N. America, where humans have been represented for a long time, though much less time in an evolutionary sense, than in Africa or Asia.

You may be on to something with your highly-evolved Gigantopithecus hypothesis (try saying that after a few beers!) It's possible that after crossing the land bridge from Asia the huge ape did find itself alone and without competition from any other category of primate, human or ape in the N. American landscape. In such a brave new world it may have evolved the very specific set of characteristic that we now associate with Sasquatch.

However, I have no idea if the evolutionary time we are talking about is long enough to produce such a profound change from the original animal.

[Guest]

Thanks for the link SouthernYahoo, for some reason I thought we were further along than that with mapping. I dug a little deeper and depending on what source you look at, we don't have the human genome completely mapped, only approximately 92% of it. We have some basic ideas of how some of those genes affect morphology but the vast majority is still a mystery. No mention of Giganto was made at all so I assume nothing has been done there regarding sequencing.

Thanks Slick- I had Australia in the back of my mind but hadn't heard about Yowie being some kind of dog, that's a new one on me. At any rate, I'm keeping an open mind about all of this, and am very dubious about trying to put bigfoot in one specific category just yet. It's just way too different from anything else we have found, including other primates, and I certainly don't think that they are that similar to humans.