Bigfoot Encounters (Skookum Cast) Body Imprint Idaho State University Press Release October 23, 2000 |
Idaho State University Researcher Coordinates Analysis of Body Imprint
That May Belong to a Sasquatch
The investigating team, including Meldrum; Dr. Grover Krantz, retired physical anthropologist from Washington State University; Dr. John Bindernagel, Canadian wildlife biologist; John Green, retired Canadian journalist and author; and Dr. Ron Brown, exotic animal handler and health care administrator, all examined the cast and agreed that it cannot be attributed to any commonly known Northwest animal and may represent an unknown primate. Meldrum, whose research includes comparative primate anatomy and the emergence of human walking supervised the careful cleaning of the cast, and will coordinate its analysis by a scientific team. He first became actively interested in the question of the existence of a North American ape after examining fresh Sasquatch (popularly called Bigfoot) tracks in 1996. "While not definitively proving the existence of a species of North American ape, the cast constitutes significant and compelling new evidence that will hopefully stimulate further serious research and investigation into the presence of these primates in the Northwest mountains and elsewhere," Meldrum said. Dr. LeRoy Fish, a retired wildlife ecologist from Triangles Lake, Oregon, with a doctorate in zoology from Washington State University; Derek Randles, a landscape architect from Belfair, Washington and Richard Noll, a tooling metrologist from Edmonds, Washington discovered and cast the partial body imprint during an expedition. More than 200 pounds of plaster were needed to produce
the 3-1/2 x 5-foot cast of the entire impression, which was
reinforced with researchers' aluminum tent poles. Other Sasquatch
evidence documented by members of the expedition includes voice recordings
and indistinct 17-inch footprints. After the cast was cleaned, extensive impressions of hair on the buttock and thigh surfaces and a fringe of longer hair along the forearm were evident. Meldrum identified what appear to be skin ridge patterns on the heel, comparable to fingerprints, that are characteristic of primates. The ridge characteristics are consistent with other
examples from Sasquatch footprints Meldrum has studied in
collaboration with officer Jimmy Chilcutt, a latent fingerprint
examiner with the Conroe, Texas, Police Department. The anatomy of
the heel, ankle, and Achilles tendon are also distinct and consistent
with models of the Sasquatch foot derived by Meldrum after examining
hundreds of alleged Sasquatch footprints. Back to Bigfoot Encounters Main page Portions of this website are reprinted and sometimes edited to fit the standards of this |