WEBVTT

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Now, when what are your putting? I got a screen going on here,

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something just because my dog. Something
killed your dog? My dog.

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We're flying through the or over the
trade. I don't know how it did

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it, okay, damn, and
I'm really confused. All as I saw

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was my dog coming over the fence, and they did when you hit the

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girl. I didn't see any car
and all I saw was my dog coming

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over the fence. Damn. Why
what are you're putting? We got someone

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or something crawling around out here.
Did you see what it was? It

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was standing up. I'm out here
looking through the window now and I don't

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see anything. I don't want to
go outside. Jesus, point you rey,

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hello, get the body out here? What point on the out there?

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It's thought of a bitch about sick
Foot nine. I don't know he's

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out there yet. The booking right
out o. This next article, written

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by Meg Walter, features doctor Jeff
Meldrom and his ongoing research into the ever

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elusive Sasquatch. I've always been Sasquatch
curious. I try to err on the

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side of believing stories of unexplained sightings
and bumps in the night, and as

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far as Bigfoot is concerned. If
Narls are real and giant squid, why

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not a few big hairy creatures wandering
the woods of the Pacific Northwest. I

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can't prove their existence, but I
like living in a sasquatch positive paradigm.

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So when the opportunity to interview one
of the foremost sasquatch researchers presented itself,

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I hopped in the car and drove
three hours to Pocatello to meet Professor Jeffrey

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Meldrom at Idaho State University. When
I knocked on his office door, I

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expected an eccentric doctor Emmett Brown tie. Instead, I found a soft spoken

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man standing in a nondescript lab,
A bonafide scientist. Belgrim ended up being

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one of the most serious academic people
I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

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He spent two hours using a lot
of words I later had to google to

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explain the scientific research supporting the existence
of Bigfoot, an existence on which I

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am now sold. Meldrum's reluctant fascination
with Bigfoot began in the fifth grade.

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His classmates were buzzing over footage captured
by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in northern

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California. Patterson and Gimlin filmed a
large, fur covered ape like creature standing

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on two legs. Beldrom convinced his
dad to take him to the Spokane Coliseum

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where Patterson was presenting his documentary and
answering questions from the audience. Meldrum left

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the screening with a copy of Patterson's
book, Two Abominable Snowmen of America Really

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Exist. The next year, Meldrom
and his sixth grade peers were studying primates.

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His long suffering teacher asked the class
to list some examples of primates,

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and assassy, eleven year old,
suggested Bigfoot. Instead of dismissing the comment,

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she engaged with the students and suggested
someone right to report on the creature.

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Belgrium's hand shot up immediately, and
he marched to the library to start

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the research that would eventually transform his
career. Today, Mildrium is a professor

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of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State
University. According to his biographical sketch,

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his research encompasses questions of vertebrate evolutionary
morphology, generally primate locomotor adaptations, more

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particularly and the emergence of modern human
bipedalism. Beldrium honed his research skills as

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he received a bachelor's degree in zoology
from Brigham Young University, followed by a

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master's in zoology, then a doctorate
in anatomical sciences from State University of New

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York. He topped it off with
the postdoctoral visiting Assistant professor position at Duke

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University Medical Center, a teaching position
at Northwestern University Medical Center in Chicago,

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and finally he landed at Idaho State
University, just close enough to the Pacific

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northwest to investigate a subject area where
other scholars fear to tread. During Meldrum's

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study of paleoprimatology, he came across
a few obscure references to giant South American

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monkeys. He contacted Richard Greenwall,
the director of the International Cryptozoology Society,

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to find out more. Breenwall invited
him to California to evaluate some video footage

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of a large ape like creature.
I undertook that project as an exercise in

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exposing the zipper. He was convinced
a costume man in an ape suit was

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trapesing through the woods, fooling all
the eager believers. But the more I

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dug into it, the more intriguing
it becan. A friend Meldron made in

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the Sasquatch searching circuit invited him to
southeast Washington. It was there he saw

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Sasquatch footprints for the first time.
His friend led him to a dirt road

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along the side of which were impeccable
footprints, too large to be human,

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too human to be animal. Given
his expertise, he's seen a good number

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of fossilized footprints and written extensive papers
on various footprints from around the globe.

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His specific experience is matched only by
a dozen or so other academics in the

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entire world. And these Sasquatch footprints
looked as real as any he'd ever seen.

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The prints were what Meldrom calls animated
tracks with pressure ridges, tension cracks,

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and proof of movement and the toes. Beldrom wondered how his friend had

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managed to fake such convincing footprints.
He photographed and cast the prints, and

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then, when he ultimately gave up
trying to find the zipper, decided a

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sasquatch had indeed walked along the road
the night before. Beldrim tells me the

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hair on his arm stands up every
time he tells the story. At that

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moment in his career, Meldrom had
a choice to make. He had watched

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one of his predecessors, Grover Prantz, who had pursued the search for sasquatch,

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received ridicule and harassment. Pranz's promotion
to full professor was delayed by decades.

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As Meldrom explains it, there was
actually this little moment where this angel

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sits on my shoulder and says,
do you really want to go down this

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path? And the devil on the
other shoulder says, how could you not

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Beldron now has over three hundred sasquatch
footprint casts in his Pocatello lab, or

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more specifically, footprint casts from Sasquatch
YETI and other relic cominoids. When I

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looked perplexed by the mention of multiple
species of ape like giants, Mildron reaches

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for an activity book made for children, which unfortunately is probably entirely appropriate from

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my intellectual understanding of the subject matter. He points to a comparative chart with

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corresponding footprints. There's Sasquatch YETI,
Neanderthal, and the orange pendeck, small

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furry creatures said to inhabit the mountains
of Indonesia. Beldron's focuses on the sasquatch

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found in North America. He believes
they could live in areas where there is

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sufficient cover and habitat to support them. These happen to be the areas where

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black bears can be found not only
in the Pacific Northwest, but also in

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the inter Mountain West and down in
Utah, Idaho and the Rocky Mountains.

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But he also believes they could be
in the mountain ranges that surround the Colorado

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Plateau, the Boreal forests in Canada, the Great Lakes region, and down

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through Appalachia. Credible sasquatch sightings have
been reported from all of these areas.

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When he says credible, Mildron means
reports made under good conditions are by credible

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witnesses, often corroborated with footprints,
hair scatter, other signs of a large

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animal. According to Mildron, there
had been a couple thousand credible reports.

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Sightings are rare, he explains because
sasquatches are few in number. He estimates

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there is one sasquatch for every one
hundred black bears. Sasquatches are also solitary

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creatures, and Mildron believes a single
male in habits and defends about one thousand

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square miles. I ask him what
he believes is the most credible sasquatch sighting,

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and he tells me about his friend
Julie Davis. She hiked the entire

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Continental Divide Trail through Colorado, accompanied
only by her pet goats and dogs.

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While she was bushwhacking to reach a
remote lake, her dogs hackles raised,

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eyeing the tree line. She was
prepared to encounter bears, but saw nothing.

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Thinking little of it, Davis set
up camp. Later, the dogs

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began reacting to something, and again
she assumed a bear was nearby. She

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scrambled to grab her bear spray and
get the dogs safely in the tent.

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Crawling out from under the rain fly, Davis found her goats peering over the

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tarp. Following their line of sight, she saw just fifteen feet away and

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ate and a half foot tall sasquatch. She described the sasquatch's appearance to Meldrum

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as a big, hairy linebacker with
bulging muscles. Davis, whose account was

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first published in the Denver Post in
two thousand and three, said, The

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sasquatch looked at her, then at
the goats, and then back at her.

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Then they had a sort of subliminal
connection, and the sasquatches demeanor softened.

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Then a second, smaller sasquatch peeked
out from behind the first. The

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two sasquatches turned and walked away,
the larger in the front and the smaller

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behind. They glided gracefully toward the
tree line, and just before they were

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out of sight, the larger sasquatch
turn cocked his head back and let out

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a high pitch whistle. Meldrum himself
has only had hints of sidings. The

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closest he's come was in Alberta,
Canada, when he was using night vision

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binoculars in very low ambient light.
Something approached the camp, breaking brush and

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making the characteristic whistling vocalizations along the
way. Although it was difficult to see

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exact detail through the grainy night vision
lens, Noldrum could make out large swinging

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arms attack matched to a large body
smoothly stomping through the area. The creature

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walked off into the forest, where
Mildron and his team later found large footprints

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The sasquatch had also taken the bait
the team had set out the day before.

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Apples impaled on a tree branch that
were now missing, with giant footprints

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leading up to and away from the
tree. So is sasquatch human or animal?

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I ask, hoping to hear some
weird, maybe slightly upsetting stories.

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In response, Mildron doesn't disappoint He
tells me about the almost, a creature

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that's said to inhabit the Altai Mountains
of western Mongolia. They are rumored to

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wear clothing and trade with townspeople,
in other words, more human than ape.

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Reports of the Sasquatchignetti, however,
feel more akin to early sightings of

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the Lowland guerrilla, he says,
a creature not officially discovered until the nineteen

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hundreds. But then there are some
strange anecdotes that don't quite align with either

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classification, like a story from World
War Two about a Russian surgeon called in

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to examine a prison or captured during
the war. The soldiers assumed their prisoner

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had been surgically altered. He was
covered in hair, had a heavy brow

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and low slung head with a barrel
chest. When the surgeon saw him,

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he proclaimed he was in fact not
human and should be released into the wild.

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Belgium reminds me that some of our
oldest Western literary traditions feature half man

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half creatures, perhaps suggesting the idea
of some kind of missing link think Beowulf

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or spider Man. Finally, because
I just can't wait any longer, I

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asked the obvious question. This came
from the Bible a Bigfoot. If anyone

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is qualified to verify or debunk this
lore, it's this Latter day Saint expert,

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an academic who has spent the last
thirty years researching sasquatch. Meldrum laughs

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the myth as he explains, it
tells a tale of the Latter day Saint

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apostle David W. Patton walking alongside
big Foot for forty five minutes. Given

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the rate of human walks, he
says, and the rate sasquatch walks and

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reported sightings, the chances of Patton
keeping up with the creature for so long

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as very unlikely. Plus the published
story was a second hand account told fifty

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years after the alleged inciment. Bigfoot
is probably not Kane curse to walk the

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earth for eternity. The king question
is not the only quandary Meldrum gets from

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his fellow Latter day Saints and other
Christians. He says, he gets pushed

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back from some who think the existence
of sasquatch undermines their faith, to which

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Mildron asks, do you feel threatened
by a gorilla? He adds, it's

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a biological species, not some paranormal
phenomenon, which is bad news for me,

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a weirdo who roots for confirmation of
paranormal phenomena, but perhaps good news

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for the more serious sasquatch believers among
us. He also gets pushback from fellow

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academics. As the Angel on his
shoulder so many years ago predicted he would

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skeptics say the science starts when you
have a body. Meldrom wholly disagrees the

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science starts when you have a question. The science is the process of discovery,

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not the result of discovery. Show
me an adam, show me a

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string, show me a black hole. Explaining that so much of science is

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the study of phenomena for which there
is no body. It's an ongoing process

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and we're at a going in that
path to discovery that has been followed by

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many others before us. Meldrum leads
me to his adjacent lab, littered with

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sasquatch pairphernalia. There's a cutout of
Patty on the far wall, looking menacingly

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over her shoulder. He shows me
a few footprint casts, pointing out the

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ridges and pressure points and the varying
toe positions. Then he pulls out a

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giant circular cast with a raised center
and two craters on either side. Meldrom

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giggles and says, sasquatch posterior.
It's exactly the kind of thing I had

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hoped to see when I made the
cross state journey to his office. It

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was also the first time in our
two hours together when I felt I could

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meet Meldrum on his intellectual level,
or perhaps he was willing to stoop to

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mine. In the end, this
very serious and very academic man made me

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more of a believer than any eccentric
ever could This article, written by Victoria

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gil science correspondent for BBC News,
made me ask the question, could this

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chest beating behavior explain some of the
noises that often accompany sasquatch encounters. Email

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Brian at pair normal World Productions dot
com and share your opinion on this or

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any of the articles I've shared in
this episode. Wild chimpanzees have their own

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signature drumming style, according to scientists. Researchers who followed and studied chimps in

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the yugend And rainforest found that the
animals drum out messages to one another entree

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roots. The scientists say that the
signature rhythms allow them to send information over

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long distances, revealing who is where
and what they are doing. The findings

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are published in the journal Animal Behavior. Doctor Katherine Hobatter from the University of

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Saint Andrew's explained that the wild apes
use huge tree roots as a large wooden

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surface to drum on with their hands
and feet. If you hit the roots

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really hard, it resonates and makes
this big, deep, booming sound that

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travels through the forest. She told
BBC Radio fours Inside Science program. We

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could often recognize who was drumming when
we heard them. It was a fantastic

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way to find the different chimpanzees we
were looking for. Each male chimpanzee,

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the scientists found uses a distinct pattern
of beats. They combine it with with

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long distance vocalizations call panhoots, and
different animals drum at different points in their

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call leave researcher on this study,
PhD student Vesta Alutery from the University of

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Vienna, described how some individuals have
a more regular rhythm like rock and blues

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drummers, while some have more variable
rhythms like jazz. I was surprised that

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I was able to recognize who was
drumming after just a few weeks in the

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forest. But their drumming rhythms are
so distinctive that it's easy to pick up

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on them. Vizaluterie described one young
male chimp that researchers have named Tristan as

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the John Bonham of the forest.
He makes these very long drumming bouts with

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lots of beats, and you can
tell them from far away, so you

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can just tell it's Tristan drumming.
The animals also appeared only to use their

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signature rhythm when they were traveling.
The researchers speculate that a chimp chooses whether

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or not to give his identity away
if you're showing off to a group around

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you. If you're displaying, you
might not necessarily want the big alpha male

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who's around the corner to know who
you are, said doctor Hobader. She

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added that Understanding chimp's drum in this
way could solve a long standing communication puzzle.

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Wild chimpanzees greet each other when they
meet, but they don't seem to

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say goodbye when they split off in
the forest. But chimps might not need

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to say goodbye because they are effectively
able to keep in touch while they're away.

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These long distance signals give the chimps
away to check in with one another.

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It might help us to understand one
of these things that we thought was

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a real difference between chimps and humans, and help us to understand why that

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difference might have come about. Researchers
have sequenced and analyzed the genome of a

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hominin from Red Deer Cave, located
in southwest China, which was previously reported

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possessing mosaic features of modern and archaic
common ends. The results indicate that the

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individual from Red Deer Cave is an
anatomically modern human who exhibits genetic continuity to

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current populations and is linked deeply to
the East Asian ancestry that contributed to first

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Americans. In nineteen eighty nine,
a team of Chinese archaeologists unearthed the remains

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of at least three individuals and Red
Deer Cave or Malodong in China's jung And

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province. Carbon dating showed that the
fossils were from about fourteen thousand years ago,

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a period of time when modern humans
had migrated to many parts of the

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world. Among the fossils was a
hominin skull cap with mosaic features of modern

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and archaic common ends. The shape
of the skull resembled that of Neanderthals,

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and its brain appeared to be smaller
than that of modern humans. As a

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result, some anthropologists had thought the
skull probably belonged to an unknown archaic human

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species that lived until fairly recently,
or to a hybrid population of archaic and

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modern humans. Ancient DNA technique is
a really powerful tool, said doctor BEng

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Sue, a researcher at the Cunnaming
Institute of Zoology. It tells us quite

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definitively that the Red Deer Cave people
were modern humans instead of an archaic species

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such as Neanderthals or denisov Ends,
despite their unusual morphological features. In the

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new study, doctor Sue and colleagues
successfully extracted and sequenced ancient DNA from the

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Red Deer cave skull and compared it
to that of people from around the world.

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They found that the fossil belonged to
an individual that was linked deeply to

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the East Asian ancestry of Native Americans. Combined with previous research data, this

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finding led the team to propose that
some of the Southern East Asia people had

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traveled north along the coastline of present
day eastern China through Japan and reached Siberia

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tens of thousands of years ago.
They then crossed the Bearing Straight between the

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continents of Asia and North America and
became the first people to arrive in the

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New World. Genomic sequencing shows that
the hominin belonged to an extinct maternal lineage

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of a group of modern humans whose
surviving are now found in East Asia,

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the Indochina Peninsula, and Southeast Asia
Islands. The finding also shows that during

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that time, hominin's living in southern
East Asia had rich genetic and morphologic diversity,

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the degree of which is greater than
that in Northern East Asia during the

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same period. It suggests that early
humans who first arrived in Eastern Asia had

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initially settled in the south before some
of them moved to the north. The

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Trecula's footprints, potentially left by tetrapods, exhibit hominin like features and date back

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to the Late Miocene. They were
discovered near the village of Trekilos in Western

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Crete, specifically in the chaine of
Prefecture west of Kissimo's. The footprints are

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believed to have been made by a
bipedal hominin or an unidentified primate. The

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layer of rock in which the footprints
were found as approximately five point seven million

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years old, making these footprints around
two million years older than the earliest known

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hominin footprints. Subsequent research suggests that
the footprints could be over six million years

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old. This discovery has led researchers
to consider the possibility of hominin evolution occurring

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outside of Africa, challenging the prevailing
theory. Gerard Jurlinski of the Polish Research

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Institute in Warsaw, first discovered the
tracks in two thousand two during a visit

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to Trekilos. He documented the footprints
for future investigation as he had no plans

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to stay in the area. In
twenty twelve, Gjerlinski obtained permission from the

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Greek government to conduct research in the
area and returned to Trekilos with a team

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of researchers to examine the footprints in
detail. The team used techniques such as

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laser scanning and three imaging to study
the footprints, comparing them to those of

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apes, bears, and humans.
The age of the footprints was determined by

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examining the underlying sedimentary rock bed and
fourmenipra. The study notes that the coastal

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rocks at Trichillos are part of the
Platano's basin and consist of a series of

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shallow marine Late Miocene carbonates and silos
eclastics. The sedimentary rocks were formed around

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five point six million years ago during
the Messenian salinity crisis. The researchers also

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found fourmen and for a dating back
to eight point five million years ago.

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Based on these findings, the researchers
estimated the footprints to be around five point

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seven million years old. In twenty
twenty one, a study use cyclostratigraphic data

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based on magnetic susceptibility to suggest that
the Trichillos footprints are approximately six million years

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old, three hundred and fifty thousand
years older than previously estimated. This places

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the Trecillo's footprints in the same time
frame as the oroorin two genensus fossils found

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in Kenya. The measurements of the
footprints range from three point seven to eight

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point eight inches in length and indicated
a southwest direction. These footprints displayed clear

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pressure indexes that resembled the plantigrade structure
of modern Homo sapiens. The researchers also

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observed five digits in the imprints,
classifying the track maker as pentadactyle and lacking

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claws. Since there was no evidence
of four limbs, it was determined that

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the track maker was bipedal. Further
examination through three D printing and laser scanning

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revealed additional impressions, including a ball
region, a pulling up motion of the

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foot, a HALLOCKX, and potential
gaps between the first and other digit impressions.

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However, poorly preserved prints did not
exhibit these gaps. The lateral digit

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impressions gradually decreased in size, resulting
in a strongly asymmetrical digital region. The

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HALLOCKX impression had a narrow neck and
a bulbous asymmetrical distal path, indicating indexonic

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tracks. Worphometric analysis demonstrated that these
footprints had distinct outlines, differentiating them from

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modern non hominin primates and resembling those
of hominins. Although these foot were younger

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than fossil records of hominins found in
Chad dating back around seven million years,

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their discovery challenges the prevailing theory that
early hominins were exclusively present in Africa.

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The morphology of the prints suggests that
the track maker could be a basal member

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of the Homanini clade. However,
as creedies geographically distant from the known range

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of prehominans, there is a possibility
that these footprints represent a previously unknown Late

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Miocene primate that independently evolved human like
foot anatomy. When attempting to publish their

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study, Julinski and his team faced
harsh criticism due to their findings contradicting the

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widely accepted theory of early hominins evolving
solely in Africa. The triculous footprints potentially

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represent an early hominin or primate species
that developed hominin like feet outside of Africa.

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This raises the possibility of convergent evolution, where unrelated species adapt similar traits.

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However, substantial evidence is required to
support this interpretation. Some doubts were

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even raised regarding whether these tracks were
footprints at all, leading rejections from numerous

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scientific journals when the studies findings were
submitted for publication. During their attempts to

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publish their research on the footprints,
the researchers faced aggressive responses, criticism,

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and rejection from reviewers and editors.
They felt that the peer review process was

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not genuine and that there was an
effort to silence them. After facing multiple

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rejections, the study was eventually published
in the journal Proceedings of the Geologists Association.

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Shortly after the publication, eight prints
were stolen from the rock. It

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was later discovered that a high school
teacher was responsible for the theft, and

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he was arrested by the authorities in
Crete. The stolen prints were eventually found

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in his house. Some experts,
like David Begun and Robin Crompton, have

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expressed skepticism about the footprints belonging to
a human ancestor. They believed that while

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the footprints indicate a bipetal organism,
they may not necessarily be human ancestors,

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but could be made by a member
of the grade eighth clade. They argue

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that multiple fossilized footprints need to be
found and analyzed to accurately determine the species.

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Beldrum and Sarmiento, who studied the
Trachillo's prints, disagreed with Jurlinski's claim

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that the prints were made by a
primate or even a vertebrate. They argued

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that Jurlinski did not provide objective criteria
for identifying the prince as primate prints and

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that the prints lacked consistent and repetitive
details. They also criticized the lack of

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exploration of alternative agents that could have
produced the prints and the failure to address

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missing data and comparisons of non homologous
print outlines. Beldrum and Sarmiento concluded that

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there was insufficient evidence to support the
claim that the prints were made by an

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animal, with bilateral symmetry suggesting that
they could have been made by non vertebrate

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life forms are non organic agents.
William jan Zacharas and Lucas Learns have conducted

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a new analysis of the footprints,
suggesting that they originated approximately three million years

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ago. However, they raise an
intriguing question regarding the nature of these footprints.

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Were they created by hominids or are
they simply natural formations resembling footprints.

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The researchers argued that the shallow marine
environment in which these footprints were found would

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have posed significant challenges for hominins or
bipedal primates to traverse. They proposed that

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if these creatures did indeed cross this
terrain, the wave action would likely have

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erased any evidence of their presence.
The only possibility for the preservation of these

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00:24:15.079 --> 00:24:18.240
footprints would be if they were made
at the high tide line during a period

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of low sea level coinciding with one
of the glacial periods that occurred every forty

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one thousand years during that time.
Furthermore, the researchers highlight the geological history

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of Crete. They explained that Crete
has been an island since the Late Tortonian.

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To the south lies the deep Levantine
Basin, while the marine South Aegean

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Basin is situated to the north.
The basin formed due to the extension of

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the Aegean lethosphere, reaching a depth
of approximately a thousand meters north of Crete.

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Based on reconstructions of the Aegean lithosphere
by Van Hens, Virgin and Schmidt,

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it is evident that at one point
Crete was separated from mainland Greece and

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Turkey by vast stretches of deep water
spanning at least one hundred kilometers. This

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finding is supported by the discovery of
deep marine set months on the islands of

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Cather located between Crete and the Peloponnese, as well as Carpathos, situated between

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00:25:04.960 --> 00:25:10.200
Crete and Turkey. These findings strongly
suggest that these islands could not have served

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as stepping stones for bipedal dispersal,
nor could they have been part of any

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00:25:12.799 --> 00:25:18.079
land bridges connecting Crete to the mainland. In conclusion, Zacharas and learns reevaluation

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of the footprint's age and their analysis
of the geological context surrounding Crete raise intriguing

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00:25:23.759 --> 00:25:29.440
questions about their origin. The researchers
proposed that if these footprints were indeed created

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by hominants, they must have been
made under specific conditions during a low sea

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00:25:33.359 --> 00:25:37.000
level stand at the climax of a
glacial period. Additionally, the geological evidence

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supports the notion that Crete has been
an isolated island for a significant period,

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making it unlikely that it played a
role in the dispersal of bipedal creatures. Hi remember