Big food and be on with Cliff and Bobo. These guys a favorites,
so let say subscribe and raid it five star Mesh today listening watching, please
keep it splatching and now your hosts, Cliff Berkman and James Bobo Fay.
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Bigfoot at checkout. Be sure to type the promo code Bigfoot with all lowercase
letters. Hey, Bobo, this is a special episode number two hundred Yeah
big two. Oh yeah, that's that's not bad. It's not bad.
Time flies and at the same time it kind of drags on. So um,
it's kind of a little bit of both here. But we have a
really cool program today. But before we start that, Bobs, you have
anything you want to share at the audience, Anything cool going on, anything
squatchy in your environment? Um, possibly, I'm gonna find out here pretty
quick. Either you can talk about or should we wait. I'm just gonna
wait until it's for sure. Probably a wise move. I am going up
on the I think I told him going on that looking for those big foot
graves and Alaska has some natives. Yeah, you did mention it has Has
that ball been moved down court at all? Yeah, we're gonna interview doctor
Meldon. He confirmed for that. Okay, very good. So that's forward
movement. Uh huh, I would say so very good. When is that?
What month? Next month? Next month? March? All right,
we have to schedule some podcasts around that. Oh no, we don't have
seen interview with Jeff. We don't go up there until August. Oh August.
Gosh, yes, from time Alaska's August or Jeff's interviews in March.
I see, well, cool, cool, So your film projects are being
moved forward? Excellent. Yeah, not much happening here. Snow kind of
shut me out of the area, so I haven't been up into the spot.
Although another guy got up there right before the snow happened, and he
pulled another footprint. Really yeah, and it was a smaller of the two
individuals, which is kind of cool. That's way cool. Waiting for the
snow to melt so I can get back up there. We had this big
flurry and it's gonna be a cold week apparently, but when the snow melts,
I will be up there once or twice a week, and I imagine
most of the NABC guys will be as well. It's kind of an interesting
area. Anyway, enough about that, we have something way cooler going on
today. We have brought back doctor Jeff Meldrum for our two hundredth episode.
He was our guest on our one hundredth episode, so we figured every one
hundred episodes we can subject doctor Meldrum to Cliff and Bobo for an hour or
so. So, Jeff, thank you very very much for coming back for
our second hundredth episode, our two hundredth episode. We really appreciate your time.
Oh, I'm honored, privileged. Yeah, thank you very much for
the invitation. Hey, Jeff cool Well, Um, you know, I've
got a whole list of questions and things we can talk about, and if
there's anything you want to talk about, of course we want you to jump
into. But um, you know, you've become the scientific figurehead in a
lot of ways, in the same way that doctor Krantz was for so long,
and you know doctor Krantz, of course, but he was wasn't he
as an osteologist, wasn't his specialty bones. He was a classic physical anthropologist,
and so it that that included a number of disciplines that he published in
regularly. He was a paleoanthropologist, so he worked with the both the discovery
of and identification and analysis of fossil hominin bones, skeletal remains, and so
also as a classical physical anthropologist, I'm sure he did teach the human Osteology
course, which is an in depth treatment of the skeletal system of the human
species and for both evolutionary but also archaeological objectives. He was also very talented
anatomist and applied that talent to forensic reconstructions of crania from partial remains. So
his Gigantopithecis skull as an example of that. He also did, you know,
the only kind of working model of what meganthropists might have looked like based
on its very large and robust mandible remains. So based on the correlation of
form and function, he could take a few bits and estimate what the remainder
of the skull may have looked like um, and I think he, you
know, exhibited some real talent and insight in that respect. So he was
he was kind of a renaissance man in many ways. Yeah, almost like
a generalist in a way. It sounds like the reason I thought he was
an osteologist is because several of the people I've met of my own age group
who took classes from him apparently all took osteology classes. Sure, that's a
pretty standard fair in an in an anthropological curriculum. Yeah yeah, Now,
um, you brought up meganthropists, of course, and I want to touch
base on that in a little while. But now I contrast that with your
own field of study, because you know, doctor Krantz really laid a foundation
for all scientists who are going to come after him. And right now you're
standing on that shoulder, on those set of shoulders. But you've been able
to been able to expand on what doctor Krantz did because of your own specified
study area. So how do you differ exactly? Well, I came at
physical anthropology from a slightly different perspective. At the time I entered into graduate
school, there was rather a glut of anthropologists and or at least, maybe
a better way to say it was a dearth of openings for employment and at
in academic positions, and so one an alternate pathway. Instead of the classical
anthropological degree that included the disciplines the subdisciplines of archaeology, socio cultural, linguistics,
and physical I instead was a cohort at an institution where physical anthropologists had
been recruited into departments of anatomy at medical schools to teach human grows anatomy in
the health professions programs in medical physical therapy school and so forth. And so
my degree was actually in anatomical sciences, so rather than with an emphasis with
an emphasis in physical anthropology, So rather than having the classic four subdiscipline anthropological
training, which would really better suit me for employment in an anthropology department,
I got this degree which then afforded me the opportunity to teach human gross anatomy,
regional gross anatomy at the graduate level in medical schools. And they're,
like I said, there were programs like that that we're popping up in various
places, and Sunny Stoneybrook was one, Duke was one where I did a
post doc, and others Johns Hopkins, UCLA and other schools. But anyway,
so it was a little different. So I basically had the first two
years of medical school elbow to elbow with one hundred and twenty medical students.
You know, I think there were six of us in my cohort of anthropology
students. And when then subsequently, as those medical students would go into more
and more clinical courses, we would go into classes in evolutionary biology, in
osteology, in comparative primate anatomy, and so forth, and so more of
the basic sciences that touched on anthropology and ecology and evolution. And so it
was a great experience. I mean, it was really it was a tough
program though. I mean, of the six, I think only two of
us completed the program. Was it around this time that you became interested in
bipedalism and the anatomy of feet or it sounds at some point or other you
kind of zeroed in on those particular aspects. You're right now, You're absolutely
right, And in fact, that's what what motivated me to go to this
particular program. U. The faculty there had published this seminal work called um
the Locomotor Anatomy of Australopithicus afarensis that was published in the American Journal of Physical
Anthropology, and it was just a quite exhaustive treatment of the skeletal remains attributed
to this early bipedal hominin. And it was that, you know, that
that latent interest in bipedalism, which was probably initially ceded by the interest in
bigfoot, you know, another bipedal primate, that that motivated me to pursue
that. And you knows, as you go along your opportunities across your path
that that afford the chance to kind of branch out a little bit and do
some different things as well. And so I'll mean along the way, for
example, I got interested in locomotor behavior in primates, both living and fossil,
much more broadly than just human bipedalism. Actually, and I would note
that it's a kind of a tight not a closed shop, but it's a
it's a narrow niche because of the rarity of hominin fossils. So really,
unless your professor was actually had access to the to the fossil sites and was
participating in the discovery of new material, you rarely had the chance to do
any of the initial examination analysis and so forth study of those fossils. So
I had to kind of come at bipedalism from from the side door, you
know, through through the mudroom and back to up the hallway. And so
I was actually my doctoral dissertation was on terrestrial adaptations in in monkeys, in
African monkeys and looking at adaptations to terrestrial quadrupedalism, and then I could compare
and contrast that from you know, from a more theoretical practical perspective with bipedalism,
and it was it was actually a very effective way because those features that
were held in common were those that were common to walking on the ground versus
clamoring and climbing in the trees. And then those that were distinctive between bipeds
and quadrupeds were those features that were unique to the adaptations were walking on two
legs. So anyway, so along away I dabbled in. I got interested
in South American evolution because of again the opportunity of working with my mentor in
the field. And then on another occasion, when I was doing a post
docet to Duke, the opportunity to dabble in some DNA sequencing and approaching the
reconstruction of the phylogen your family tree of in this case South American monkeys by
way of looking at the genes in living primates was another. I mean,
that was a very different departure for me, But one I wasn't going to
say no to my mentor, and two it was a great opportunity to learn
a technique that, as it turns out, I didn't end up pursuing that
further, but it placed me in a very good position to, from a
more informed stance, be able to evaluate the publications of the studies that others
were doing in an area that it was still of real interest to me.
That was the evolution of South American primates as an adaptive radiation. So you
know, principles of evolutionary biology that have been applicable to a variety of different
species in different continents and so on. So it's all it's all good.
So since you specialize somewhat in the locomotor adaptations and primates in general, that
would explain why maybe you picked up the idea of the midfoot flexibility and Crants
noticed it but didn't put the terms on it per se, I think right
well, And he didn't characterize the features correctly, and that was you know,
a bit of a misdirection unfortunately. But if you look in his book
Big Footprints are the evidence of Bigfoot's asquats with it the renamed second edition,
you know, there's a diagram in there where he tries to account for that
mid tarsal pressure ridge. Of course, he didn't recognize it as a mid
tarsal pressure ridge. He recognized it as a pressure ridge, but tried to
explain it as you know, a push off from the fore foot of a
very flat a very flat foot. But he did not eliminate the the existence
of an arch entirely. And this is why he had to hypothesize that the
toes were very short. You know, our our toes have shortened remarkably by
comparison to chimpanzees and guerrillas, and even in comparison to the intermediate state,
the intermediate lengths found in some early bipetal hominins like the Australopithesenes, which still
had rather long and somewhat curved petal digits foot digits of their feet toes.
Jeff, excuse me, uh, what about those tribes that have never worn
shoes and those guys are those big and early you know, spread feet and
toes. Yeah, they still have have very healthy arches. Though toe length.
You said that that toe length. Sure, no, no, it's
it's I mean it's they appear to be a bit longer because they are a
little more extended and splayed, perhaps, whereas our toes are so compressed from
shoewear. And you know, typically most modern shoewearing humans, their little toe
is is curled on its side. Now, thankfully, shoewear these days is
is more sensible than it was even fifty years ago. You know, the
point he showed toe dress shoes and so forth, very confining footwear. But
and and even you know, cowboy boots, there's a little bit of accommodation
there because the boot that has a pointed toe is usually a longer toe.
I mean, it was a longer toes so you could keep it in your
stirrup, basically, was the strategy nowadays that you know, these these fancy
fashionable dress shoes have really long toes and the pointed toes of the shoe,
the pointed tips of which are extend out beyond and so they don't you know,
the toes aren't crushed into that little clinical tip. But but nevertheless,
no it You know, it was interesting because when when the Victorian era physical
anthropologists struck out to to study all the various ethnic diversity that was out there,
they thought that they would find these poor, unshod native tribes would display
very poor foot hygiene, foot conditions, that they would have fallen arches,
that they would have all kinds of ailments and of the joints and so forth,
because they didn't have the benefit of Western supportive footwear. And of course
what they found was just the opposite. That the human foot responded very well,
and the arches were healthy, and they were high, the toes were
splayed, the pads pointed down towards the ground like they were supposed to.
They were very much fewer foot ailments amongst these these barefoot tribal peoples than there
were amongst the Western Europeans. So in any case, so Grober was his
argument was that Sasquatch had even shorter toes, which kind of fed into this
image that was the result of the Patterson Gimblin film site footprint casts that where
the toes look kind of like peas in the pod. This is why not
to digress too far, but this is why Renee to Hindon had such trouble
with the tracks from these is because these individuals had sometimes less soul pad extending
up under the toes, as is a variable trait in human populations as well,
and so the toes, in Renee's words, looked like sausages, and
he used that as a very disparaging description, these fake sausage toes. Nobody
likes a sausage party, that's right, I guess a bunch of Vienna sausages.
When Grover modeled the human or the sasquatched foot, then he envisioned with
even greater mass, there would be more bending stresses on these toes as they
walked and pushed off, and so the toes would naturally be even shorter than
in the human foot relative to foot length. And that's because he was using
the human foot model of pushing off at the heads of the metatarsals and the
toes as opposed to the entire four part of the foot exactly exactly. And
so when this first, you know, first, it kind of came to
mind as I was looking at some of these blue mountain tracks which had fairly
long toes and the footprints that I examined at five points. I have drawn
attention to that one example where the toes have curled remarkably as they flexed,
gripping the mud as it slid, with mud extruding up between the toes.
But you get the profile of the first and second toe, and that little
toe on that fourteen and a half inch ish foot is as long as my
pinky finger. And that's pretty you know, So imagine toes on that foot
that are as long as my fingers on my hand, and combine that with
you know, the musculature of the lower extremity and something as big as as
this creature probably was, and that's a that's a powerful, grasping, prehensile
foot. So so then the other thing that that kind of got it going.
There were two other things. One was looking at the Bosborg cripple foot,
because you know, Grover had actually attempted to do a skeletal reconstruction or
inferential reconstructure outlining on that diagram and actually etching on the physical cast his interpretation
of the of the foot, and he had the toes very short. And
but as I looked at more details of the flexion creases and so forth,
and where the joints would be based on the contours of the outline of the
foot. It didn't work. It didn't work. You had to have a
toe that was much much longer. And then that combined with those individuals,
particularly some of the examples on the Blue Creek Mountain track way that had a
very decided flexion crease across the ball of the foot, this split ball that
has gotten various. I've actually got this old diagram that was drawn by Ivan
Sanderson where he tried to interpret the and I should publish it as just a
short article because it's of such interesting historical significance. I think as these investigators
tried to grapple with this, this otherwise inexplicable anatomical characteristic. But I mean,
if you look at your own at the palm of your hand you have,
and you flex your fingers just a little bit at the knuckle, you
see it throws up a crease across the palm of your hand where the tissue
of the palm extends beyond that joint up under the proximal philangies the first bones
in your fingers. Well. In the Sasquatch tracks as well, as in
human footprints as well human feet. There's evidence of that of an extension of
that soul pad to varying degrees up underneath that first bone. In some individuals
it goes almost up to that first interphalangeal joint. Well, when those toes
flex, then they create a crease right across the soul at the mid ball
at the heads of the metatarsals as they join the digits where your knuckles the
corresponding position of where your knuckles are in your hand. So when the toes
flex, it throws up a crease just like that. And in fact,
if you go and look at your birth certificate, if you have an inked
footprint, you'll find that you, like almost every human baby has that flexion
crease on its foot when they're born. But as the arch develops, as
the infant starts to walk, that soul pad fills out some more with more
connective tissue and less baby fat, and you get an elaboration of the connective
tissue under the ball of the foot at that metatarsal philangeal joint, and it
fills out, and so in most people it pretty much disappears. Stay tuned
for more bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right back after these
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with all lowercase letters. God, I was in a store or something.
I remember, I was standing next to the sky or whatever, and I
think we exchanged a few words or whatever, and I noticed that he had
a tattoo of these two feet on his arms, and I looked at him,
go, well, those aren't human. Those are clearly said. I
said, so you're into sasquatches, and he goes, no, those are
my infants. Those are my baby's feet, and he wasn't. He wasn't
super happy with me, and he didn't exchange many more words after that either.
So but to your point, though, and actually doctor Krantz made that
same point in this book now that i'm thinking of it, about the split
ball. No, No, about specifically how infant human feet probably more strongly
resemble sasquatch feet. Yes, yes, I think there. He was talking
about the proportions to particularly I'll have to go back and look in a long
time since I've read that, And every time I go back and reread,
I discover something else he said that I've since forgotten. But David Ellis's baby
footprint. You authenticated that, right, Jeff Well, I would never claim
to authenticate, but I mean it. I'm impressed foremost by the huge heel.
It's got an enormous heel and well developed heel pad already, which is
not typical of most human babies, and so that seems quite interesting in itself.
So I think it's a really good possibility. Yeah, that's a good
example. We have others in the collection. I have some of the little
feet that Paul Freeman investigated that were well. Now the provenience is a little
unclear to me because I originally thought that it was at the at De Duck
Springs and was found just just prior to the shooting of that footage there.
But now I'm told to know it was a different it was an earlier segment.
That's a different one. Yeah. In fact, that that footage right
before the most common version of the Freeman footage is out now that shows those
footprints in the ground that you're referring to. Um, I've I believe I've
successfully identified those as those same juvenile prints that you're speaking of that were cast
on Gifford Peak. I believe it's called m. Gifford Peak and there this
April. If I remember correctly, by the shape of the casts in the
ground drawing, you know, with the red I look at looking at the
copies that I have, you can identify them as Oh, those are the
same individuals. Those are the actually not that those are the same casts.
So that was actually from Difford Peak the previous ninety two I think in April,
I remember correctly. Oh okay, all right, Well that's good to
know because with all the you know, with all the discussion about the subject
of the Freeman video scooping up an infant and in the parting shots there,
I had often wondered if those were the tracks of the infant that he had
just taken note of prior to going around to the other side of the of
the pond there, but definitely could be. But the videos from a few
months earlier, so right, And you're absolutely right. I mean that's when
I saw that video, unrealized that they were that he had taken casts.
That was the first thing idea as it got the cast out in compared to
the video, And you're absolutely right, they are in fact from that sequence,
which is always nice to to establish, you know, to have documentation
of the footprints in the ground and swell as the casts resulting casts. So
well, speaking of anatomy, thought, I thought we could go down a
couple other rabbit holes here. Let's talk about handprints for a minute and sasquatch
handprints. Of course, you're different than human. Sasquatch hands are different than
humans in a lot of ways. Shorter, stubbier looking fingers, because the
webbing is extended, the thumb is in a different position. It doesn't flex
across the palm like ours. It goes more directly into the ground. Because
of these differences, what behavioral differences can we infer? That's a great point
because you know this often comes up when people are suggesting that the sasquatcher extre
intelligent. You know, they must be in order to avoid us. And
then of course there are others who appeal to other types of experiences to suggest
that there's something else going on that would indicate a higher level of mental ability,
if not human. But they're not quote just ads. Well, you
know, let's since you open the intelligence thing and we're gonna be talking about
the hands, let's also throw in the cranium size and shape into this discussion
so we can have a more well rounded discussion about this, please, okay,
Well, in that regard not being privy to firsthand visual observations of sasquatch
cranial proportions, you know, I can't say a lot but I've come to
a point where I'm absolutely convinced about the credibility of the Patterson Gimblin film,
and as such, that is admittedly a sample of one, but nevertheless it
is a sasquatch. And what can we learn from looking at it? And
one of the things that's just blows me away is when you take a robust
australopithesine like paranthropists paranthropist Boisei, which existed in East Africa, oh, about
one point eight million to about eight hundred thousand years ago in the known fossil
record anyway, and it stood about five to five and a half feet tall.
It was robust. When we say robust australopithesianes, we're talking about their
facial cranial adaptations, these heavy jaws, extremely enlarged molars and premolars and reduced
canines for a more side freeing up a side to side what they call the
phase two of the chewing cycle, the grinding aspect, with very very thick
enamel and very puffy rounded cusps and crests on the teeth, so indicating indicative
of a diet of very tough and very hard items. Okay, so Anyway,
if you take the we have remarkably complete examples of crania of this species,
and you take one of those and just scale it to the same absolute
size as Patty and put it up next to her bust, and sure enough,
every single bony landmark from the top of the head to the receding chin
on the jaw blinds up. Now, you know, that's that's no small
point because the you know, the facial proportions on this thing, this robust
australopithecine, are really remarkable. They are an extreme specialization and for this what
we call a dural fagius diet, dural meaning as you might expect, like
from durable, a very tough, unyielding diet. And so you know,
some some have compared these robust Australopithesianes to quizzin arts. They can, you
know, really grind up and handle all kinds of food items. And so
it's it's an extreme um adaptation with very deep jaws with very flaring angles to
the to the mandible, a very prominent cheekbones that that flare forward and wide
to provide attachment for the chewing muscles on the side. The massiter muscles,
that it even has a bit of a crest on its skulled for increased attachment
of the anterior fibers of the temporalis muscle, which is the second of the
two large, very large principal chewing muscles, the temporalis and the master.
Anyway, so point for point, I mean it's not just a queer coincidence.
I mean that correlation suggests that the sasquatch has a similar type of diet
and has those same extreme craniofacial adaptations. Because the anatomy reflects behavior in some
way, I mean, yeah, it has to, of course, Yeah,
of course it does. I mean sometimes there are lags, sometimes there
are things that aren't really tightly correlated with the current behavior, but it's pretty
lockstep. I mean, this is how paleoanthropologists go about reconstructing the anatomy and
behavior infer behavior for these extinct species is by drawing analogy to the same correlations
that exist in other living species. And so one of the interesting correlations to
this, as I mentioned, the reduced canines that allows that side to side
grinding. And is it an interesting that the most credible sightings of sasquatch where
the observer has been privileged to see the teeth from a gaping smile or an
open mouth. There's usually an absence of projecting canines like you would see in
a bear or in a gorilla or an orangutan, you know, And so
that correlates with the you know, the fact that that that most witnesses who
do see the teeth comment on the squared off human like appearance of the teeth
without fang like canines projecting. That is exactly the anatomy that would be correlated
with the facial skeletal adaptations and proportions that that are seemed to be present.
So that's the interesting So in the same way we go from that then say
to the tools. Oh, well, I guess we were we were talking
about to get off on a different branch. We were talking about the intelligence.
And so if you if you do that same correlation, that same alignment
of the skull, it is the correlation is valid not only for the facial
skeleton, but for the cranium as well that houses the brain. And rather
than having a massive globular, spherical cranium to accommodate a human proportioned brain,
it looks just like the robust australopithesian in that regard as well. And these
robust australopithesians were barely you know, bipedal guerrillas or tims in that regard.
Their brain was maybe fifty cubic centimeters ccs bigger than that chimpanzee. So you
know, sasquatch would have an absolutely larger cranium because of its more gigantic size.
But nevertheless, the proportion of brain to body mass would be the same
the encephalization quotient you know, where you when you take a ratio of brain
size to body mass, would be on par with that of the known grade
apes or early hominins like the robust australopitheses, which were just you know,
a half step half notch greater. So then go back to the hand question
again, and you pointed out some of the distinctions. I mean, the
limited record we have of handprints and casts there seemed to consistently indicate a hand
that lacks the adaptations associated with apposability, with that potential for fine precision grip
like you use when you hold a pin or pick up a needle. You
know that requires the action of opposition, bringing the pads of the thumb in
direct opposition to the pads of the other digits, particularly the index finger.
Obviously, now those movements, those fine, finally controlled movements, have selected
four specializations of the muscles at the base of the thumb which give that thumb
kind of a drumstick looking appearance. Those that's called the thin ar pad or
the theenar muscles. And that feature seems to be uniformly absent from the sasquatch
and in fact, instead of the thumb being being set at a ninety degree
rotation to the other digits. So if you look at your hand right now,
you flex your fingers, they cross your balm, but your thumb is
facing ninety degrees across your palm. So when you flex your fingers, it
doesn't flex your thumb. It does not move in the same orientation that your
other fingers does. It crosses over the palm at a right angle. And
so that that set sort of predisposes the thumb for this opposition positioning. Well,
the sasquatch thumb much more like an ape, gorilla, or chim The
thumb isn't rotated nearly so much, and so when the thumb flex is it
really moves in parallel to the other digits, and since it doesn't have the
adaptations for that precision grip, you notice a flattening of the palm and a
lack of the enlargement of that drumstick appearance those thein r muscles. Now,
isn't it interesting because the hand lacks the very features that we associate with precision
grip, with fine grip, which we infer as essential to the evolution of
tool use, of the manufacture of stone tools, for example, or other
manual activities associated with other sorts of tool use, with the use of needle
and thread, or you know alls or scrapers, well, scrapers are more
power grip. And the correlation being is witnesses don't see Sasquatch doing or doing
those types of behaviors or utilizing those tools. Nor do we find an archeological
record in North America that is attributed to Sasquatch. I mean, they're certainly
not making the arrowhead points that we find in Native American as a result of
Native American activities. So it's just it's really it's it's it's hard to convey
in a brief you know, expose the debt of correlation and consistency that is
present here when when you ask the right questions and look for the right evidence,
the things are remarkably coherent and and have you know, provide examples that
span at least a half a century and many from a time when a lot
of these types of things were only in their early stages of understanding or development
in the thinking of anthropologists of the time. And yet someone allegedly hoaxed all
these things, you know, left this trail of breadcrumbs that is so remarkably
coherent but actually has anticipated what we now understand. Yeah, well, then
I guess we're underestimating the hoaxers, having such foresighted anthropological models of the future.
Exactly. It's just I mean that this is what really this way of
thinking, in addition to so much other aspects of the evidence, but this
way of thinking is what absolutely converted me, convinced me, if you will
convinced me a better word. I guess of the Patterson Gimblin film, when
you look at it and break it down, some of the odd combinations of
traits that actually anticipated current conventional wisdom, but which at the time in nineteen
sixty seven were counterintuitive to what was considered conventional wisdom and at the risk of
being redundant. But it's such a prime example that bears repetition the writings of
John Napier, who was a bona fide primatologist and anatomist. He was a
physician and a trained anatomist. And it's interesting that it's those since we started
off talking about anatomy, that tend to have a more open mind to some
of that anatomical evidence. I guess it comes through the appreciation of the significance
of that evidence due to the training and experience. But Napier was very focused
on the footprints, and in his book, which you had a lot of
negative tones or observations, he still the final bottom line was he was convinced
there was something out there that sasquatch, Something was leaving footprints, and therefore
sasquatch must exist. What exactly it was he was unable to conclusively state.
But when it came to the Patterson Himlan film, he was quite negative,
not quite negative. He had a negative opinion. He did not he could
not endorse it, and yet he was forthright enough to acknowledge he really couldn't
offer a good rationale for that rejection, but he said, when he saw
that figure on the film, from the waist up, it looked essentially like
an ape, and yet from the waist down it had long legs like a
human or a hominin and a late homonum. And he said he just could
not conceive of such a mosaic, such a hybrid of structure occurring in nature,
because so many anthropologists at that time it was kind of a all or
nun that the human condition just emerged in its complete, perfected form, if
you will. And so isn't it interesting? Though, because shortly after that,
the publication of that book, which was in the early seventies seventy two,
I think in the mid to later seventies, was kind of considered by
some to be the golden age of anthropology, with the discovery of Australopithecus afarensis
and lucy and sort of the first real glimpse beyond going back to the very
beginnings of the emergence of hominin bipedalism, it was thought at that time.
And so for the first time we had much more complete hip bones, the
pelvis, we had, the thigh bones, the femera that we had knees
and so forth, and associated with the crania of these australopithesienes. And the
statements to the popular press were, isn't this interesting? From the waist up
they look essentially like chimpanzees, but from the waist down they look like little
hairy humans. Well wait a minute, that was the very lynchpin that Napier
proposed to negate or to reject the Patterson Giblin film. And yet it anticipated
um that those subsequent discoveries that bore out that otherwise inconceivable combination of trades that
interesting. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be
right back after these messages. Well, let let's talk about some of the
other anatomy like the pelvis for example, and and mid the bent knee gate
and that sort of thing of the PG film. UM, and now the
narrowing of the hips. Um. It has to have something to do with
um center of gravity I would imagine for such a massive biped kind of otherwise
it'd be teeter tottering back and forth and whatnot. And does that also probably
is where the more inlined um inline track ways, the lack of straddle in
the track ways probably comes from I'm guessing is the center of gravity issue.
Um, let's address that and talk about that a little bit and and how
that ties into like the bent knee gate as a shock absorber sort of thing,
and the high leg lift in the swing phase of the gates and things.
Sure, okay, so let's start with the pelvis then, Yeah,
there's a lot there. I'm sorry I throw so much at you once want.
Fine, we'll just work our way down the limb. And the pelvis
has gotten a lot of a lot of sort of misdirections, misinformation. The
tendency has always been to compare us to our closest neighbors and assume then that
the intermediate taxa were somehow also intermediate in in anatomy. And so the chimp
has this very modified pelvis with these high blades of the ilium, the you
know, the hip bones essentially the up on the ridges of the hips,
not the hip joint. But in a chimph, they are elongated, tall
and still very narrow, but they're very tall, and they face front to
back so that the muscles, the gluteal muscles that attach on the back of
those blades are acting simply as retractors of the hip. They extends extenders of
the hip. So when you're climbing up a tree, or when you're walking
on all fours, you know, worried about balance, then they work to
draw the hip back, draw the thigh back as the hip is extended and
you're walking forward, all right, So the thought was then that that had
to be modified in order to become bipedal. Well, as it turns out
now, which it should have been self evident, it really was, but
sometimes it just got lost. Gymps have been evolving over the same period of
time since the divergence from a last shared common ancestor maybe in different ways that
they have been involving, and they have evolved these remarkable specializations for arm hanging.
They've experienced a shortening of the lower back, the lumbar spine, and
this elongation of these of these hip bones, and obviously the greater emphasis on
the forelimbs, so their forelimbs are actually longer than their hind limbs. And
so but now as we as the fossil record, you have to remember that
chips and gorillas are themselves relic populations that do not reflect the totality of ape
evolution. We have over well over one hundred different species of extinct ape that
have been discovered in the past half century, and they don't often get as
much press as the human ancestors. But what one thing that has come out
of that is that some of these also sort of dabbled in bipedalism, maybe
not a fully committed bipedalism on the ground, but because they spent time climbing
and standing and reaching overhead for resources, their bodies with that tail less torso
and had a modified, more generalized pelvis that was less like a chim than
it was similar to our own. And so the emergence of the bipedal hominints
that then committed to walking on the ground really probably really didn't have to change
their pelvis all that much. Now, as far as narrowing, the only,
the only really hasn't been a trajectory of narrowing so much as it's it's
the lack of sexual dimorphism, the lack of differences between the genders that we
see in humans, which is entirely the result of our big brains. A
female pelvis has to have a broader outlet in order to accommodate a human infant
with a relatively large brain by comparison to an ape like a chamber of gorilla.
This is why some of the statements that were made about the PG film
by the experts of the time are so inane and so silly in the hindsight.
They should have been recognized as such at the time. But one of
the commentators made the remark, isn't it silly, you know, the hoaxer's
it's clearly a man in a first suit. It walks like a man,
but they've added breasts, so you've got this ridiculous combination of female and male
features. Well, now wait a minute again. The only reason a human
female walks like a human female is because of the wider breadth of the hips
to accommodate the large brained infant. Sasquatch, as we've just discussed earlier,
have a small brain. They have a brain that's not much bigger than a
chimps or gorillas, and so females wouldn't have wide hips. Females would have
a pelvis that essentially looks just like a male sasquatch pelvis, and so a
female sasquatch like Patty even though she sports breasts to nurse her offspring has a
pelvis that doesn't look much different than her male counterpart with and she would walk
like a man. And this comes into the next point you made. When
the commitment to terrestrial bipedalism was made, in order to help balance the torso
over not three limbs or two limbs, but one at a time, there
were changes that pelvis. That shorter pelvis, not necessarily narrower, but shorter.
The blades instead of facing just front to back, curled around to the
sides. So now the smaller what we call the lesser glue teals the gluteus
minimus and medius, especially the medias, are on the sides, and so
instead of pulling the leg back the lower limb the thigh back retracting it,
they balance the torso over the support limb. You can test this out just
next time you stand up and take a step or two, put your hand
down right on the side of your hip, and as you lift one leg,
you'll feel the muscles on the opposite side on the support limb flex keeping
that pelvis and torso from dropping to the unsupported side, you know, like
a drunken soldier or well, just think about the way a chimpanzee walks on
two legs that chact Ristigan and actors try to emulate that whenever they done an
eighth suit, and it's that characteristic kind of arms out like a tight rope
walker and swinging the torso back and forth in a swaying motion over the alternating
limbs in order to balance the or the torso over the support limb anyway.
So one of the ways to address that, in addition to the reorganization of
the pelvis, is to angle the thigh in towards the midline, so your
base of support is already closer to the center of mass than otherwise. So
when we walk, instead of a wide splayed gait with our feet apart,
we place. You know, it's not as as extreme as a as a
model walking down a catwalk, you know, where they literally almost cross their
feet over in front of the others. But it's closer to that. And
you find too when you take on a heavy load. Next time you're backpacking
with a heavy backpack, notice the way you modify your gate a little bit,
And if you're at all experienced, you do this intentionally, whereas you
do tend to walk a little more tight rope because you're bringing the center or
bringing your line or a point of support more directly under the center of mass,
and you don't have to utilize the muscular effort quite as much to balance
your pelvis and torso over that in any case, So then you talked about
the compliant gait. Humans have adapted are adopted of a manner of walking that
maximizes the step length and takes advantage of that rigid longitudinal relatively rigid longitudinal large
And so together with the elongation of our of our legs, our lower extremities,
we reach out with a very extended limb and come down with a heel
strike and then transfer onto that that supporting foot. But that that extends our
our step length. And you know, over a long period of walking that
even if you've only gained a couple of inches, you multiply that by hundreds
of thousands of steps and you've reduced significantly the number of individual steps you've had
to take to cover that that ground. But as a result of that extended
limb, we have a bit of a jar when we when you know,
jolt, when when our heel strikes the ground, when it's called the heel
strike versus the toa and and because of our arts, we have two points
of peak pressure beneath the foot wanted the heel strike, and then as you
know, the full foot is in contact, the heel comes up, and
now the point of contact has shifted to the ball of the foot, to
the metatarsal heads because of that arch, and there's another peak pressure point concentrated
in that small surface area. As we push off ultimately with our big toe,
well you increase body mass considerably, and those peak planet pressures are something
to be avoided. And so one way is to not have an arch which
differentially concentrates pressure under those limited points of contact, and don't have a heel
strike where you where you're in you know, you're actively limiting the surface area
to absorb all of that weight, that and that force. You know,
that accelerate force through a small area of tissue. Walk in such a way
that the whole foot comes in contact. Okay, that's interesting because that's what
I was going to be my next question, but you've already addressed it.
Based on the footprint cast evidence, I'm not seeing a lot of really deep
toe. I mean, our heel impressions which indicate to me along with witness
sighting reports of this sort of flapping sound that sometimes they hear with sasquatches running
through the area or across cement or something like that. Yeah, I've often
thought that perhaps they come down rather flat footed as opposed to a heel strike,
because you know, five hundred pounds of weight coming down on a heel
every single time would do a real number to their heelbones, I would imagine.
Interesting. Okay, I was just gonna say this is something that Krantz
kind of explores in his book where he's talking about the noticeable breadth to length
ratios that are distinct for sasquatch, much greater than human and he points out
that when you allow for that greater breadth and the increased surface contact by having
a flat foot, the surface area, you know, placing the foot more
flatly on the ground, you your pressure per unit area of the foot isn't
much different than the theoretical isn't much different than what is observed for the human
foot, which is, you know, right there at the tolerance levels of
the of the tissue of the skin and connective tissue, fatty tissue, and
bone so you can address the increased forces anatomically, but you can also address
them behaviorally. And that's that's what you were talking about with placing the foot
more flatly initially instead of a decided heel strike, which you, as you
correctly point out, seems to be the evidence of that seems to be completely
absent, largely absent from the fossil record, or excuse me, the footprint
track record. In addition, you can soak up some of that impact force
with the tendons and ligaments in the joints of the ankle and the knee and
the hip. And this is where the compliant or flexed jointed gait comes into
play. In the biomechanical literature, it's referred to, kind of in an
informal sense as a groucho walk. Now, most of the younger generation don't
even know who Groucho Marx is, let alone having seen him on the movie
screen, which is a travesty, by the way, a huge it's a
sign of the downfall of our civilization in my opinion, to not know who
Groucho Marx is. That's right. But Groucho Marx had this funny walk,
and you know, he had this big bristly mustache and round glasses and a
big cigar that you twiddle there, and he would lean way forward and walk
with a bent at the waist and non flexed hips and knees and so anyway,
this is what's called a compliant gait. And there have been various systematic
studies done using force plate to collect data of ground reaction forces to show that
you can reduce the impact forces which are called ground reaction forces, the forces
the ground is pushing back against the force that you're imposing on it. Just
the way that that description works by upwards of eighteen twenty percent. That's that's
pretty significant when you start talking about, you know, the magnitude of forces
of a big seven hundred pound Patty walking across the sandbar. You know,
so um so walking with a compliant gait combined with the broader foot and actually
probably larger foot for the overall size. I mean, some people have looked
at Patty and say that our feet looked kind of oversize. Well, they'd
probably well, some of that is optical illusion due to the overexposure of the
film, but there is something to be said for the length to stature ratio
Instead, I say that same they say that same thing about homoplurisiensis about had
much larger feet than its stature, indicating that's right. Yeah. So see,
I think all of that the unique human condition really didn't emerge until our
skeletons remarkably lightened in weight and mass, and we went from an elongated heel
that gave greater leverage to a very short heel length projecting behind ankle joint for
a speed lever. So a little bit of displacement of that proximal or that
yeah, that proximal part of the ankle or the heel bone would translate into
a very rapid movement of the distal end, which is an adaptation for running.
We are our skeleton, our long legs are you know, a lot
of the discussion about the changes in in the cranial base and in our proportions
of upper extremity to lower extremity, and you know, just the more light,
the lightning, the grasslization of the skeleton. These are adaptations for endurance
walking and running, and we're quite different sasquatch has evolved in a very different
way. I mean it muscles its way up and down those mountain sides and
you know, it's probably capable of bursts of speed, just a gorilla or
a chimp, a gorilla. I was just looking up the other day because
someone was asking the silverback gorilla can attain bursts of speed up to twenty five
miles per hour, which is that's a world class sprint or speed. But
it can't sustain it obviously for a lot. And neither can a world class
sprint or sustain that for more than you know, one hundred yard dash.
But the long distance runners, marathon runners don't run at that pace. And
I don't think a sasquatch would be capable either it doesn't have those adaptations or
a gorilla, but but sasquatch would be much more capable than would a gorilla.
And so you know, feats of distance, an overnight trek across a
gap between forest fragments would be something that you know, sasquatch could undertake.
I think that's probably why sometimes we get sign or sightings in otherwise odd ices,
is because there could be like crants used to refer to rogue males who
are striking out from their natal territory. They've been forced out by the resident
male, dominant male, and they have to find their own turf and their
own females attract their own females, and so sometimes they strike out through less
desirable habitat in order to find a place of their own. Yeah, I
just kind of cook over that terrain during the night when there are fewer eides
out there to see them, and they feel safer into the cover of darkness.
You know. One of the things that that has given me a greater
appreciation of just the muscle mass that sasquatches must have is doing exactly what you
mentioned, which is experimenting about experimenting with my own gait while backpacking. You
know, if I have like a forty pound pack you on my back,
that's a significant addition to my own weight. And I do find myself leaning
forward slightly. Um and and just for you know, just for laughs,
I kind of adopt the compliant gait um. And it sure makes a big
difference on the impact, especially going downhill and to some degree up but mostly
downhill. But I'll tell you, I am sore in the morning, um
all that it's it's just an incredible burden on my feeble little muscles. So
sure, exactly, Well, that's and that's it. Because you can no
longer simply rely on the joint locking mechanisms or the passive tension in the ligaments
and joint capsules. The tendons can store some elastic energy, especially we see
we one of the very human like characteristics is this very well developed Achilles tendon,
the calcaneal tendon, and it's kind of like it's not exactly like that.
We compare it to a bungee cord, that connective tissue. Within the
way it's arranged within the tendon, it allows for a little bit of stretch
and there's some elastic tissue in there as well that helps it to rebound to
its original shape. But they have found, you know, that that these
um these tendons can return a significant fraction of the kinetic energy once they're loaded
back into the system in propulsion. You know, the extreme example of this
mechanism is the big giant red kangaroos in Australia, which once they get up
to speed, you know, they're basically springing on these relying on these on
these tendons and the counter balance the cantilever rather cantilever mechanism of their torso and
tail that stiff tail sticking back there over the hip. Each time they hit
the ground, the tail tends to come down, and the torso tends to
come down, which loads all of the ligaments and tendons in the back,
in the spine and the you know, big tendons of the muscles for the
tail, and then that tends to upon recoil, lift the kangaroo up again,
you know. And so the force necessary to generate the lift for that
next step, that next spring rather is in part contributed by the recoil of
these ligamented structures. So the point is that it's interesting. You look at
Patty when you look at a chimpanzee, and they have almost no real significant
tendon, and what is there is a broad much more what we call apple
neurotic, a broad tendon spanning between the calf musculature in the heel. But
if you look at Patty, she's kind of intermediate between a chimpanzee and a
human. She has a massive broad tendon in the area. The heads of
the gas strock memius are discernible, and they're long, but they're shorter than
they aren't a chimpanzee. They're a bit longer than they are in the human
and the length. When we say the length, I'm talking about the length
of the fibers that constitute the two gas strock heads. So if you're relying
on those muscles to kind of load the tendon, they don't need to be
very long. The chimps are long because they move their ankle through such a
huge range of motion compared to ours when they're climbing up and down trees,
and so the muscle fiber has to shorten through that range of motion. But
if the range of motion is greatly restricted, and the adaptation is to load
the tendon so that when the four foot hits the ground, see, it
would otherwise stretch that tendon. I almost ruptured my tendon, just to show
you the kind of the principle, you know. I was out we were
collecting firewood, and rather than using acts as we were and saw as we
were just gathering up the dead fall, and we're breaking it on rocks or
leaning across something and stomping on it. Well, when you do that,
you need to stomp so that your ankle is right over the top, so
that the force coming down through your leg goes straight through the well like a
dummy. I wasn't was being a little careless, and when I stomped,
I caught the branch with the tip the end of my boot out at my
toes and it flexed my foot up really forcefully, and oh man, it
pulled my achilles tendon and I had a Charlie horse like you wouldn't believe.
And I thought I had a volts. I mean, that's how you can
avoults tear tear the tendon. Either it either it fails internally in the fibers
slip and then you get this big swollen contusion and potential hematoma. Or it
literally tears. It can pull it right free from the heel bone, and
sometimes even tears some of the bone that those fibers are embedded within, away
from the heel bone. So I was limping for several days. I immediately
put some ice on it. Thankfully we had some ice in one of the
ice tests and I could put some ice on of it. No martial arts
classes in your background, is not. Yeah, it just took at one
moment of a of a misdirected the stump, not aimed quite placed, quite
properly, and man, well you know what, we have a lot We
have a lot more questions down at least I have a lot more questions to
ask. Um. I think Bob has been more of a student today,
and just like I said, back listening as as have I. But why
don't why don't we go ahead and close down the main session. We can
go to the members section and then I can ask you some of the other
questions that I have. Are you okay with that, Bobo? Yeah,
I want to hear what the latest stuff's going on? Well yeah, well
yeah, why don't we go ahead and do that. We'll save that for
the members section. So everybody else out there listening, I really appreciate you
listening. If you do want to hear us, continue this conversation with doctor
Meldrum, or continue a conversation with any of our guests. Every single week,
you can become a member. Just go to Big Fan Beyond podcast dot
com and click the membership link and I'll bring you right there and you get
an extra baby half hour or forty five minutes of conversation every single week.
And I don't know, reviews are in. It seems to be a big
hit. People are enjoying it, so maybe you're missing out on something.
So Jeff, go ahead and stick around with us for a moment, and
Bobo, why don't you close down this episode here? All right, folks,
Well, thanks for joining us for episode two hundred and our special guest
today, doctor Jeff Meldrum. We appreciate him showing up. We'll see I
guess next time at the three episode. Okay, until then, everyone,
thanks for joining us and keep it squatchy. Thanks for listening to this week's
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