Bigfoot's Existence Proven?

[seawasp]

On Friday, history may well be made. A press conference to discuss the alleged discovery of a 500 pound hominid, or humanoid but not human, body, including DNA samples, will be held at noon on Friday the 15th.

I've believed in the existence of the Sasquatch for a long time; it's not something easily faked, despite the naysayers, and the weight of evidence has in my opinion been quite strong. But belief and evidence are very different things. While the discoverers and announcers are not of impeccable pedigree, they've called in others to verify their results including Loren Coleman of Cryptomundo who has posted the first released photo of the frozen body.

If this thing is real, it's one of the biggest finds in history -- a very large mammal living unproven among highly settled areas for decades. If it turns out the creature is in fact close to human, it's an even MORE important discovery, possibly the most important biological discovery ever in some ways.

Stay Tuned.

EDIT: If it DOES turn out to be a hoax, the crash should be spectacular. You can fake some things like psychic powers and make it fuzzy enough to take a while for someone to disprove, but if you're supposed to have a 500 pound body, you can't hide it for long without people catching on. Moreover, while people like Coleman have signed NDAs, etc., those won't bind them if they become aware that the NDA is in essence leading them into being an accomplice for a huge scam.

Comments

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

North freaking Georgia? (Not South Ossetia? sorry ... couldn't help it.) 8)
If Walt Kelly were still alive, he and Pogo could have such fun with this ... they're migrating between Northern Alberta and the Okefenokee, and Howland owl runs screaming to Churchy laFemme, "Gadzooks! I is jest foun' Bigfoots!" Promptly stumbling over Albert's big ol' feet.

[seawasp]

Many people don't realize it, but Bigfoot/Sasquatch type sightings aren't confined to the Pacific Northwest. They're seen across the country. There's some fairly high activity areas not all that far from where I am.

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

Do you by any chance read Scandal Sheet? http://scandalsheet.comicgenesis.com/
Phil is a Bigfoot who works as an advice columnist for a National Enquirer-type rag in Boca Raton.

Not terribly likely...

[pythor.livejournal.com]

http://s2.excoboard.com/exco/thread.php?forumid=124725&threadid=1900226&page=3#3103448

Looks like a hoax.

Re: Not terribly likely...

[seawasp]

If it's a hoax, I look forward to the fireworks. A hoax like that simply CAN'T work for long; it's not even like "cold fusion" where you could hand over 99% of what you had and still leave people puzzling for a while. All you need is one trained person to get near to the phony corpse, and you can't KEEP them away for very long without it becoming obvious you're hiding something. The people you signed NDAs with do not have to follow them if it becomes obvious that what their NDA is doing is forcing them to be apparent collaborators in a scam.

Re: Not terribly likely...

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The people you signed NDAs with do not have to follow them if it becomes obvious that what their NDA is doing is forcing them to be apparent collaborators in a scam.

And I can't see why scientists would be willing to destroy their reputations by not revealing a hoax if they found one.

Re: Not terribly likely...

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

How does the existence of a Bigfoot costume logically imply that Bigfoots can't be real?

Re: Not terribly likely...

[pythor.livejournal.com]

Supposedly from the comments, the face of the costume was a good match for the face of the 'body.' Since I couldn't get the Cryptomundo page to load, I couldn't confirm that. Now that I've seen a picture of the body, I can't tell if it matches the costume. If there are better pictures that match closely, I haven't seen them, so I guess we'll still have to wait and see.
Still, I consider the US to be too well populated for a large species to be living in without our knowledge. A single creature might last for a while, but not a breeding population.

Possibility of Survivals

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Supposedly from the comments, the face of the costume was a good match for the face of the 'body.' Since I couldn't get the Cryptomundo page to load, I couldn't confirm that.

I've seen the picture of the costume but not the body, so I can't tell either. A "good match" as in "vaguely similar" wouldn't be enough to call it into question, since of course the costume's face was modeled after Bigfoot sightings and in particular the Patterson footage. The costume doesn't look all that realistic compared to the Patterson footage, mostly because the costume's articulation had to match the human skeleton. Of course, that would be less obvious compared to a corpse.

If it is a hoax the hoaxers have gone out of their depth -- a costume in a box with some butcher's shambles strewn over it would not fool any scientist (or even intelligent lay person) who was in a position to physically examine the specimen. Even less would they be able to fool DNA testing. So if it's a hoax, its nature as a hoax is likely to be soon revealed.

Still, I consider the US to be too well populated for a large species to be living in without our knowledge. A single creature might last for a while, but not a breeding population.

Well, yes, that is a good argument against the reality of the body in the photo.

OTOH, if Bigfoots are hominids (the likely scenario for that would be a descendent of homo erectus, which we know to have radiated out of Africa before our species did and to have spawned many descendent forms, some anatomically extreme like florensis) then they are probably sapient. What's more, they would not be naive to human contact, since they would have shared the continent with the American Indians for at least 10-12 thousand years. So they might be very good at hiding.

In particular, a sapient creature might have the custom of cryptic disposition of its own corpses (We do). This would mean that we would very rarely have physical remains of a Bigfoot to examine. And being manlike in outline, and very woods-crafty, it would only rarely fall victim to hunters. Finally, being extremely humanoid, most people stumbling across skeletal remains would assume that they had found those of a large man rather than of another species: this would be especially true if the head were missing (and the head would be the likeliest part of a corpse for ritual collection and storage elsewhere).

While parts of the US are very well populated indeed, many parts are not. There are areas in the mountain ranges which rarely saw even American Indians, and which have almost never seen Old Worlders. These areas are often inaccessible save by foot or air, and accessible only with great difficulty even by those means. There might very well be a relict population of another hominid species living there, if these hominids were very shy of human contact.

Which is why I think that Bigfoots are possible. Though hardly necessary, based on the evidence.

Re: Not terribly likely...

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

A single creature might last for a while, but not a breeding population.

It's quite possible that there are Sasquatches but not a viable breeding population. The species may well be dying out, due to human usurpation and destruction of its habitat. If so, it's vitally important that we locate and protect them, since the survival of either another hominid species or a North American great ape would be of tremendous importance to a number of scientific fields.