I'm watching this show on Animal Planet about people searching for Bigfoot! It's kind of interesting! I hope they find one!
I'm very confident there cannot be an organism on that size in North America that has totally alluded us all this time. There's nothing even like it in the fossil record here.
I wish I had all the money that has ever been used to "research" and make television shows about Bigfoot.
The Mountain Gorilla was discovered in the 50s in an area less than the size of the Washington/BC expanse. Oddly, or not oddly enough, these two areas represent the most sightings.
Perhaps they are all Jedi. That would account for why they are so elusive. And when they die, they just sort of disintegrate into pure Force energy.
You've probably all seen this, but it is time-lapse of decomposition of deer in the wild. About 6 days to be reduced to skeleton. Bit longer for the squirrels to drag the bone away for mineral. Starts around 3:20 MonsterQuest Bigfoot/Skunk Ape Deer Carcass Decomposition Time Lapse - YouTube
Not sure if tested, but depending on how "winter-y," it isn't impossible to think the carcass might be covered with snow until first thaw, when the decomposition cycle will then begin. In addition, people aren't typically out wandering around the wilderness in heavy winter. The exception may be your big game hunters, but even then, your Elk and Mule deer have come down into the valley, so why you would be traipsing around in 3' of snow is beyond me. Which means once the Spring hits, and nobody has any real reason to be out and about, the decomposition can begin. I'm not sure how many sightings happen in the desert, but I wouldn't wager very many, and I would be about as sceptical of those as I would finding one in Tennessee, Alabama or even Florida's "skunk ape."
In the same environment as that is taken, I can find Pleistocene fossils of mammals living in Florida (so critters going back into before the end of the last ice age). If they sink into the plethora of swamps and marshes there, the anoxic and acidic properties will act to preserve specimens naturally. Like the bog mummies of Northern Europe. Yet, despite finding giant beavers, giant ground sloths, huge super deer and elk... no big foot or anything of the sort. I study the past for a living. There were all sorts of fantastically bizarre and gigantic creatures all over this continent in the recent geologic past. There is no evidence for anything like a bigfoot anywhere.
Mountain men have been trapping throughout the winter in the West for almost 200 years, and Native Americans longer than that. Despite the occasional kooky claim, no real physical evidence of any sort has ever been produced-- by guys who are essentially taking fur and bone samples for a living.
Gigantopithecus is your model, with some evidence suggesting crossing the land bridge and moving south, into the area where more sightings of "Bigfoot" have occurred than any other. The idea of a ubiquitious "Bigfoot" is unlikely. Meaning you wouldn't be likely to find any East of the Rocky Mountains. But the history you want to discuss is documented, starting with Giganto.
Quick question, and float said something about it, but how many bones are usually gnawed away by mice, squirrels, chipmunks etc for minerals? It doesn't really have anything to do with a bigfoot, but you deal with this stuff every day. Those little bastards are hell on shed antlers from deer, just wondering if that's all bone or if they have something different from other bones. I guess I need to start an "Ask IP" thread.
