10 Reasons Why Bigfoot's A Bust

[Guest]

You guys make my tiny brain hurt.

[Guest]

Have you found me a fossil bed in Washington where Pleistocene forest-dwelling fauna is preserved yet? A tar pit would be nice.............

Have you looked for yourself first? That's what I do to avoid egg on my face. This took about 30 seconds to find, for example.

As someone so familiar with the geology of Washington, you seem ignorant of the great many fossils paleontologists have recovered from deposits of volcanic ash, not lava. Just one example is here, and this one took about 10 seconds for me to find.

Finally, if you'd like to remain so hung up on the "acidic soils of the Western Cascades" then are you publicly stating that this is the only place that bigfoots do now and have ever lived? You supported my position with this statement of yours from post 125: "Great Ape fossils are extremely rare because of their habitat." There's nothing about the anatomy of gorillas or chimps that has resulted in a poor fossil record for them. The key is their habitat. The problem is that they evolved in, and to this day occur in, habitats that are not conducive to fossilization. Unless we can make the case that bigfoots evolved in, and to this day occur in, similar habitats that are not conducive to fossilization, then we should expect bigfoots to be represented in the fossil record, just like the other organisms in those habitats.

If bigfoots dispersed from a presumed point of origin in Asia, across Beringia, and throughout North America as the current putative distribution suggests, then they must have in the past and do now occupy habitats that promote fossilization. There is no escaping this fact without promoting a drastically different narrative for the evolutionary origin and current distribution of such creatures. If I was a bigfoot proponent, the only responsible position I would espouse on the topic of bigfoot's absence from the fossil record would be "I don't know why their fossilized remains have not been found, because they should be there."

~Saskeptic

[Guest]

Hey Sask, it appears as though proponents are reluctant to state which regions they believe BFs reside in. I am of the opinion that most think Sasquatch's keep to northwest US and canada, but won't voice that so as to not alienate researchers from florida, texas, oklahoma etc.

So what does everyone believe...All 49 states(minus hawaii)? NW and Can.?...

[Guest HairyGreek]

Sure. Why not denialist? All of it. All of Asia into North America. Would this admittance change anything? Saskeptic is saying the fossil record is a killer for him.

This seems wholly based of off thinking it must be a non-human primate though (please, please don't get technical here. you know what I mean)like the BFRO or Meldrum seem to think. Some spin-off of Giganto or some other ape.

What if sasquatch is some sort of spin-off of a known pre-historic man and there is no fossil record to follow because of the range these guys tend to live and die in and that the change in size is somewhat more recent?

I seem to remember reading some recent articles that stated we shared time with, and even bred with, Neanderthals. Correct? Then Bigfoot cannot be some sort of hybrid we just haven't fossil remains of?

It is possible. Sure. Probable? Hardly.

But what would you and Saskeptic and Parn do if everyone packed it all in and agreed with you? Jump for joy? I highly doubt it.

If bigfoots dispersed from a presumed point of origin in Asia, across Beringia, and throughout North America as the current putative distribution suggests, then they must have in the past and do now occupy habitats that promote fossilization. There is no escaping this fact without promoting a drastically different narrative for the evolutionary origin and current distribution of such creatures. If I was a bigfoot proponent, the only responsible position I would espouse on the topic of bigfoot's absence from the fossil record would be "I don't know why their fossilized remains have not been found, because they should be there."

~Saskeptic

So you are saying they can't be more intelligent then anticipated and their custom is to somehow dispose of their dead in a way unknown to us so that finding a body (fossilized or otherwise) would become very highly unlikely?

Edited October 20, 2011 by HairyGreek

[Guest HairyGreek]

dupe

Edited October 20, 2011 by HairyGreek

[Guest LAL]

Um, is Nebraska in the PNW? I thought we were talking about Washington State. When I said under Mt. St. Helens ash would be a good place to look I wasn't joking.

Perhaps I'm hung up on Charles Knight's artwork but I think of mammoths and mastodons as creatures of the open grasslands while our unidentified NA hominoid prefers deep forests. On the other forum I mentioned I spent days if not weeks doing online searches for fossil beds of the right era with the right habitat. The result was zero but I did learn a lot about mountain sheep in the process and found there were bears preserved in Alaskan caves. I hope you didn't mean to sound condescending; I do my best.

If they migrated from Asia to North America through Berengia the area might well have promoted fossilization, but with it now under ice and water how do we find the fossils?

I think sasquatches are inhabitants of forests and woodlands and possibly swamps. If reports from more arid regions have validity I think you'll find rivers, streams and tree cover nearby. I don't think sasquatches live there now or in the past but they could be passing through en route to new territory. What are the chances they'd get fossilized even if conditions were right?

ETA: Saskeptic, this link doesn't include the Pleistocene.

Edited October 20, 2011 by LAL

[Guest]

So Benjamin Radford blabs his mouth off again, demonstrating his ignorance about a great many scientific fields and the scientific method in general. You would think that an editor of the Skeptical Inquirer would at least keep himself reasonably up-to-date on the topics he dismisses, but low, he brings up the same 10 tired bits of defective reasoning, yet again. Of course, Radford is not a scientist; he is a film critic and writer.

The lack of scientific credentials and experienced researchers among its writers has been Skeptical Inquirer's greatest problem. Even on some of the topics I think are utter bunk, I have found sufficient deficiencies and fallacies among the Skeptical Inquirer's arguments, that I have long since dismissed the publication. It may be skeptical, but it is certainly not inquiring.

I shall pick the article apart, point-by-point.

1. The empty fossil record: Fossils are bones, and bones do not provide the entire morphology of an animal. We cannot tell from bones, when humans lost their coat of body hair, for example. Fossils are bones that are preserved, and then unearthed, both of which take a mix of environment and time. Given that we do not even know what a bigfoot is, or where and when it existed, we cannot state that it does not appear in the fossil record. Bigfoots could be G. blacki, in which case they do exist in the fossil record, spanning several million years, up to a few hundred thousand years ago, but there might still be fresh bones of this animal, waiting for erosion to wash them out of sediments in another million years. Bigfoots could be gigantic, hairy humans, with a bunch of inbred defects (like double rows of teeth), and for those, there certainly are bones, but not fossils (maybe bigfoots are too recent for fossils). Gigantism itself might be recent. The Maine **** breed of cat doubled its mass in only a hundred years, and morphological defects can spread like wildfire through a small, closed population. That IS how evolution happens, BTW, rapidly.
   
2. Where are the bodies: Rotting away in the woods, where else would they be? Assuming 5000 adult bigfoot in CONUS, and an adult lifespan of about 20 years, that's 250 dying every year. Given the length of time it takes a naked body to vanish (about a month), you would only need to thoroughly search about 15,200 square miles of deep woods in a month, to have a 1:12 chance of finding the rotting flesh or bones. Considering the very, very small number of people who are thoroughly searching any woods, well, tough chance. This assumes that bigfoots don't dispose of their dead in some way, in which case, I think you would have better chances going to Vegas, plopping your card counting device on top of the blackjack table, winning $100,000, and NOT being escorted into the back room, let alone being allowed to play.
   
3. Where do bigfoot babies come from: Yes, Radford asked it. Need I say more? Oh wait, he was trying to say that a breeding population would need to be large, and there is no way that a bigfoot family could hide in 1,000 square miles... well, that really isn't any better.
   
4. Your lying eyes: Obviously, people confuse bears and deer all the time, so when they see a giant, hairy, human-shaped animal with an ape-man face, staring in the living room window, it was clearly a gazelle. Mistaken scale is a rather common event, but only when the observer lacks a point of reference. The fact that a bigfoot has to duck under the eve of a house is a rather difficult thing to misjudge. Mistaken identity is even rarer, as it relies on only catching a brief glimpse, or an obscured view, with the mind filling in the missing info. A bigfoot standing 50 feet away, in the open, for 30 seconds, is neither brief or obscured. The only explanations are a very clear sighting, or an outright lie.
   
5. Blobsquatches: suck. Wish I could say more, but at least they do exist. That is, I would fully expect a bunch of bad photographs, taken in haste, of an animal that typically flees as soon as it is seen. I can recall at least 5 separate incidents where I totally missed photographing something very neat, with the camera on my hip, and a few times with it in my hand (focus took too long). Blobsquatches are quite normal and expected, until bigfoots decide to not care enough, to let us get a good photo, or get taken completely by surprise.
   
6. No published, peer-reviewed articles: Contrary to what Bradford might think, not everything gets to go through the process of peer review. This is usually reserved for when a scientist decides that he has something conclusive enough to publish, which is worth publishing, and he wants to publish. Contrary to what Bradford has said, there are some peer reviewed articles concerning bigfoot, although they are not in particularly renowned publications. There are books and such, but most evidence has been reserved in private collections and presented at conferences. There have been expeditions, of scientists, that have searched for bigfoot evidence, and most of those expeditions have turned up enough to justify additional expeditions. The biggest problem is that there is no one piece of evidence which is absolutely conclusive. For some strange reason, almost every piece of bigfoot evidence out there could have come from a giant, hairy human, which makes things difficult in calling it definitive.
   
7. The ivory billed woodpecker: The coelacanth! There, I countered an animal which someone thought they saw, and then people couldn't find again, with an animal science was sure didn't exist, until it was fished up.
   
8. The katydid (and other new animals): Actually, the last large mammal to have been discovered was probably the Bili Ape. Before that, it was the bonobo. Oh wait, the pygmy three-toed sloth is rather large and noticeable. The snub finned dolphin and Perrin's beaked whale are pretty large, but they live in the sea. There is the giant peccary, which is noisy, not shy, and weighs a good 100 lbs. Except for the bonobo, all of these were discovered since 2000. The cat-fox has not yet been officially discovered, but it appears to be a cross between a cat and a fox, then again, the photo might be of something which is known, but from a weird angle. Darn it, why do blobsquatches keep appearing, even when they aren't of bigfoots!? Then there is the Roosevelt's Muntjac, of which a single specimen exists, and scientists have been unable to track down the population from which it came. There are more, BTW, including some large African animals discovered in the 1990's, some of them being kept as livestock.
   
9. If it walks like a hoax: Well, more like, pieces of possible physical evidence people collected, but in the end turned out to be nothing. Plenty of that happens even with the best scientists in the most controlled laboratories. You think you have something great, you look at it with another technique, and it turns into a bust. There are also plenty of hair samples, blood samples, feces, and other pieces of physical evidence which are either bigfoot, or a giant, hairy human. Too bad bigfoots aren't giant, hairy humans (or close to humans), because that would make all of that evidence pretty definitive.
   
10. Physical evidence is meaningless: Umm.... if Radford says so, I guess it must be true. I just can't believe that scientists have been wrong all of this time. I was taught that analyzing physical evidence and comparing it to theories or developing theories to explain it was what science was all about. Guess I was lied to for all those years by the so-called "real" scientists. I guess we need to throw all of our computers and cell phones away because they are based on meaningless physical evidence. Oh, and forget about ever convicting anyone of anything, because the only "evidence" the prosecution will have is meaningless physical evidence, and a bunch of lying eyes.
    

Plussed and quoted because it cannot be said often enough!

Well done, sir!

[Guest Primate]

This would actually seem to be the case..the mitochondrial DNA indicates a split from humans 60 and then 15 thousand years ago..

[Guest Primate]

referring to the fossil record

[Guest]

Then it is incumbent on proponents to be clear about where bigfoot does live. Without any physical evidence, are we not forced to assume that bigfoots occur in places that produce anecdotal evidence? Please enlighten me on which of these states lack bigfoots:

Florida

Ohio

Oklahoma

Texas

Pennsylvania

California

All have markedly different habitats from which bigfoots are reported. Moreover, bigfoots are reported from Australia, Sumatra, Nepal, China, and Russia, and again, in markedly different habitats. Assuming bigfoots dispersed across Beringia from the Old World into the New, they must have occurred for generations in varied habitats ranging from temperate and coniferous forests to grassland and tundra. This is why the "no fossils because they live in forests with acidic soils" excuse is not supported. If bigfoots were only reported from such places, it would be a perfectly viable explanation for the lack of a fossil record, but they're not, so it isn't.

Care to explain then, oh Sagaicous One, why those non-acidic soil states are not literally CARPETED in animal bones? Animals die all the time, uncounted thousands a year. We would be burried alive in animal bones were nature not an extremely efficient recycler of organic debris. Fossilization is a one in billions (or more) chance for any individual dead animal.

I once again refer you to Dr Meldrum's writings on the paucity of fossils for even relatively large ape populations such as chimpanzees.

[Guest]

Parnassus - I think you're being a bit disingenuous with your dismissal of ajciani. You know what he meant by his statement that fossils are bones. It's not that hard to figure out. Bones are the original state of fossils. I'm not that bright and I figured it out. No offense, but it feels like you're using obfuscation to avoid a point by point rebuttal of his well-reasoned post. One wonders why you commented at all if your not going to use your own powers of intellect to counter his post.

Because, according to Skeptics, they don't NEED to demonstrate anything or offer proof or argumentation. They're right by default until proponents prove them wrong.

[Guest]

Not exactly true. DNA can be fabricated to some extent. This is why proponents need to careful about calling DNA a new species with no body or other supporting evidence. You need flesh or bones, a body. DNA alone simply should not and will not suffice in this case IMHO.

A very recent development requiring access to expensive and scarce laboratory resources.

JimmyJoeBubbaBob the Yokel is not going to whip up a bunch of dna in the back of his pickup truck. Only a well-financed, technologically sophisticated effort could produce "fake dna".

Who is paying for your alleged fake dna? Why are they doing so? What do they hope to accomplish? What lab is doing the work? What do THEY hope to accomplish?

I await your answers. I would await them with held breath, but I would die of anoxia before you could ever explain such a thing.

[Guest Primate]

Absolutely Mulder , I'm struck again and again with how exceptionally conservative skeptics are in their inquiry and how much they depend on established popular assumptions..

[Guest]

Not exactly true. DNA can be fabricated to some extent. This is why proponents need to careful about calling DNA a new species with no body or other supporting evidence. You need flesh or bones, a body. DNA alone simply should not and will not suffice in this case IMHO.

That requires expensive and sophisticated labwork and technicians to accomplish. JimmyJoeBubbaBob is not going to be whipping up some simulated bf dna in the bed of his pickup truck.

Who is the funder behind your alleged plot to fake BF dna? What lab is doing the work? What do they hope to gain from it? What documentary evidence do you have connecting ANY bf dna sample to such an effort?

I await your answers to these questions. I'd wait with held breath, but I'd die of anoxia waiting.

[Guest]

Yes it makes sense, but it would mean that wood bison are not a good analogy for bigfoot. This is because wood bison avoided detection by living someplace really difficult for humans to access. Bigfoots would have escaped detection all these years not by living places no one has ever explored, but by engaging their brains to an uncanny degree so as to avoid detection in many places where humans occur rather frequently. Thus, there is no analogy for bigfoot.

The problem with super-stealth being the mechanism by which bigfoots have avoided collection is that it's the sort of skill that declines markedly after death . . .

And exactly which of the millions of square acres of wilderness holds the bf bones, Sas? Assuming a population of 10000 BF if they all died at ONCE, and were distributed 1 per sq acre, that would be only 10000 square acres out of over 750 MILLION square acres. And within a month, barring the 1 in however many billions chance of being properly burreied for fossilization to occur, they would all be gone.