Читать книгу Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 46

In his book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (2007), Jeff Meldrum, who works in the Department of Biological Science at Idaho State University, states that it is not simply a matter of believing in Bigfoot, but it is using scientific evidence to prove his existence. No history is without myth. No myth is without history. Unfortunately, a large number of his fellow faculty members are not enthusiastic about Meldrum’s quest for Bigfoot and feel that his research is an embarrassment to the college.

Meldrum forges onward. On September 22, 2000, he was among a team of fourteen researchers who had tracked the elusive Bigfoot for a week deep in the mountains of the Gifford Pinchot national forest in Washington state. There, in a muddy wallow near Mt. Adams, the team found an extraordinary piece of evidence that could end all arguments about whether or not the mysterious creature exists. It was here that they located an imprint in the mud of Bigfoot’s hair-covered lower body as it lay on its side, apparently reaching over to get some fruit. Thermal imaging equipment confirmed that the impression made by the massive body was only a few hours old.

The team of Bigfoot hunters who discovered the imprint—Dr. LeRoy Fish, a retired wildlife ecologist with a doctorate in zoology; Derek Randles, a landscape architect; and Richard Noll, a tooling metrologist—next made a plaster cast of what appeared to be impressions of the creature’s left forearm, hip, thigh, and heel. More than 200 pounds of plaster were needed to acquire a complete 3.5 X 5 foot cast of the imprint. Dr. Meldrum stated that the imprint had definitely not been made by a human who had improbably crawled into the mud wallow.

On October 23, Idaho State University issued a press release stating that a team of investigators, including Dr. Meldrum; Dr. Grover Krantz, retired physical anthropologist from Washington State University; Dr. John Bindernagel, Canadian wildlife biologist; John Green, retired Canadian author and long-time Bigfoot hunter; and Dr. Ron Brown, exotic animal handler and health care administrator, had examined the plaster cast obtained from the mud wallow and agreed that it could not be “attributed to any commonly known Northwest animal and may present an unknown primate.”

According to the university press release, after the cast had been cleaned, “extensive impressions of hair on the buttock and thigh surfaces and a fringe of longer hair along the forearm were evident.” In addition, Dr. Meldrum, associate professor of anatomy and anthropology, identified what appeared to be “skin ridge patterns on the heel, comparable to fingerprints, that are characteristic of primates.”

While the cast may not prove without question the existence of a species of North American ape, Dr. Meldrum speculated that it “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.”