Today in BF History: JAN 05

On this day in 2003 Theo Stein of the Denver Post writes an article entitled BigFoot Believers. This in turn caused Bayanov of the Darwin Museum, Moscow, Russia to write two letters. The first is to Theo Stien, the reporter who wrote the story, and the second is to Dr. Russell Mittermeier, President of Conservation International.

Bigfoot believers
By Theo Stein, Denver Post Environment Writer

Legitimate scientific study of legend gains backing of top primate experts

Sunday, January 05, 2003 — Edmonds, Wash. — After enduring decades of ridicule, Bigfoot researchers are enjoying support from some of the world's most respected scientists in their efforts to prove the hulking creatures of legend are no myth.
Richard Noll Richard Noll of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization photographs a site in the North Cascades, northeast of Seattle, last month. Noll and colleagues discovered an imprint near a mudhole where the Skookum Cast was recorded two years ago.

The persistence of reported sightings of Bigfoot-type creatures in North America and elsewhere has convinced leading researchers on primates — including Jane Goodall, made famous by her studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania — to call for something never seriously considered before: a legitimate scientific study to determine whether the greatest apes that ever lived persist in the world's moist mountainous regions.

Skeptics, who include those in the scientific mainstream, scoff at such ideas. They say reported Bigfoot encounters, tracks and other evidence are either hoaxes or mistakes, and that people who believe such nonsense are soft-headed.

But dedicated amateurs and a smattering of professionals are trying to change that attitude. Using accepted scientific methods, they believe they can show at least some of the claimed evidence for Bigfoot — footprints, hair, voice recordings and a 400-pound block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast — are authentic traces of a rare giant primate.

Recently they have received support from a handful of the field's top experts...

...Daris Swindler, for example, is not the typical Bigfoot believer.The flap over recent claims of Bigfoot hoaxing has not deterred Swindler. Most Bigfoot supporters advance Gigantopithecus, or Giganto for short, as the likely ancestor of Bigfoot, if not the hairy beast itself. It was a group of dedicated amateurs that discovered the Skookum Cast. Meldrum and Swindler concur there are only two logical explanations for the cast: Bigfoot and elk. John Mionczynski, a wildlife researcher who has spent 30 summers studying bighorn herds in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, has his own reasons for believing in Bigfoot.

The article goes on to list leading scientist who support the possibility of Bigfoot
Jane Goodall, George Schaller, Russell Mittermeier, Daris Swindler, and Esteban Sarmiento.

The best part of the article is actually the two letters written by Dmitri Bayanov of the Darwin Museum of Moscow, as a response. Reprinted at The Bigfoot Information Project.



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