The Discovery Channel presents this skeptical view of why Bigfoot might not exist, making some very interesting and challenging points.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/slideshows/bigfoot.html

I wonder if this Benjamin guy is a long lost family member, we got the same last name!

For the most part, those points miss many facts about Bigfoot.
For an aggressive skeptical view, it is the best way to get your message across to people, who are not well informed about the subject.

What is it that they miss?

Point one...how many bones of our ancesters have we found here compared to our population? Not as many as you would think.

As far as finding a dead bigfoot...their behavior strongly suggest a creature that is anything but pure animal...therefore is would be reasonable to assume they bury their dead...also how many times do hunters come across a dead bear, badger, wolverine, wolf carcass?...very rarely.

There maybe tens of thousands of them...but not concentrated in one area. There is over 30 million wilderness acres just in the US alone remember and that does not include private wooded land.

Can't argue about the photographic evidence so far, but this goes hand in hand with the lack of a serious effort to search for them. Efforts so far, are almost laughable.

Again Bigfoot is not a classic dumb animal or insect that would be easily found by walking up on it. it has displayed behavior suggestive of an intelligence greater than a chimp and seems to have heightened senses and be mostly nocturnal.

Yes we should consider the reports, considering that there are about 1000 reports yearly. For something some people believe doesn't exist...that is a lot of reports and remember some of these reports are from experienced hunters, foresters etc. etc..

I have no doubt and would be willing wager that Bigfoot will be found to be a very real creature. It is just a matter of time.

We know of a gigantic ape that existed up until a few tens of thousand years ago from a few pieces of their molars. Nothing else remains in the fossil record of a very large animal.

Porcupines eat bones. The ate everything but the tops of the largest molars.

With such little evidence as a piece of a very large molar they conclude this was a very large primate probobly over ten feet tall.

Posiibly they are seeing bigfoot in the fossil record.

For all the animals found in the fossil record it is actually very little. Most of the species that existed are still unknown. Only a very small amount actually produce fossils.

Consider that we know of early homonids from 3 to 6 million years ago from only a hanfull of fossils, and none are complete. Like Lucy.

Fossils are the exception not the rule. When you find a lot of them, like dinosaurs, it is because they are large animals with dense populations.

Consider as well the great unconformity. A period of 1.2 billion years where there is an absence of fossils or even rocks. For an unknown reason either no rocks were produced or were eroded away and none were preserved. This large gap in the fossil and rock record is a gap representing twenty five percent of the earths fossil record. A great mystery that may never be solved. There are other unconformities in the fossil record as well, this one is just the biggest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Unconformity

Many people think what we know of earths history is fairly complete, but it is not. What we have as fossils are only a very small percent of all the species that ever lived.

Absence of fossil record is not proof of absence. We have more gaps than we do history. We make the most of the fossil records we have, because of the gaps we can say nothing.

bart....it is possible that there could be bigfoot fossils.....but the environment of death is also condusive to wether fossils are formed or not. As it stands the environment in the Pacific northwest does not aid in fossil preservation. However, the environment in the Tibetan plateau would be far better to preserve the yeti.

while you are right that there are gaps in the fossil records......however, the Great Unconformity is not a world-wide 1.2 billion year gap in the fossil record.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/treiman/gr...conf/index.html

Quote from this article. The Great Unconformity differs from smaller unconformities in three aspects.

it represents a long span of time -- 250 to 1200 million years in the Grand Canyon;
it is found nearly everywhere across the globe; and
it divides rocks with familiar fossils from those with no fossils or only fossil bacteria.

It is a global unconformity.

However I just gave this as an exmple that the fossil record is full of gaps. The Great Unconformity is older than the dinosaurs. Far to old to account for the absence of bigfoot in the fossil record.

However, regardless of how prone a region is to the formation of fossils, we can only talk about what is found in the fossil record as evidence. What is not found in the fossil record cannot be taken as proof of non existance.

There are no periods of history where the fossil record can be considered as representing the entire spectrum of species. They actually are a very small percentage representative of evolutionary type. Fossils are the exception and not the rule. Dinosaurs leave us such abundence because they were very large animals with big populations for 160 million years. For all of that, unknown ones are still discovered and some are known by only fragments.

A very large primate is known by only a few pieces of large molars and nothing else. Little else is known of them. Presumed extinct, but so was the coelacanth assumed extinct for six million years because they vanished from the fossil record then. Nothing of them in the fossil record for six million years, then they turn up still living.

Absence from the fossil record is a weak argument. Bacteria, scavengers, porcupines. Something has to interupt the natural disposal process or there are no fossils, and then something has to expose them.

bart....first of all I'd like to tell you I believe in bigfoot and the megu.

As far as the Great Unconformity that is a different story.

The Great Unconformity ranges in length of age from 250 million to 1.2 billion years....(1.2 billion years at frenchman Mountian in Nevada)..otherwise the dinosaurs would be the beginning of the fossil recod and not the Cambrian Explosion.....and since I've seen Cambrian bedrock in quite a few places it exists. Even in the grand Canyon.

http://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/geology/gc_layer.htm

This shows two unconformities in the Grand Canyon.....and the age ranges.

The Great Unconformity is found in the US...in the southwestern US.....though unconformities are found around the world.

http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=306784

Bedrock from between 250 million and 1.2 billion years old do exist.....just not everwhere.

This post has been edited by Castle-Bravo354: Oct 21 2008, 10:28 PM

But the reasons why we rarly find bones of our ancestors is because we are looking for bones of a man that died 100 000 years ago. Bigfoot is said to live today, so it should be easier to find bones of a bigfoot than of our own ancestors.

Hunters might not come across dead bears so often, but that does not matter. Because they come across bear excrement, hair and living breathing bears.

"Dumb" animals are not easy to walk up on. Elusiveness and intelligent is two completely different things. The bigfoot might be smart enough to hide, but according to the descriptions, he certainly is not a stealthy creature.

Humans lie, all of us do. I do not care if he a an experienced hunter or not.
And just think how many of them that was inexperienced, surly they could mistake an animal for being bigfoot. The mind easy to trick after all.

We bury our dead and mark our grave sites. How easy do you think it would be to find an unmarked grave site in a national forest of millions of wilderness acres?


But how many can look at a small tuft of hair or excrement and instantly know it is from a bear? People come across living breathing Bigfoot too.


Fairly so they are.
Bigfoot is both intelligent and elusive.



And surely I do not believe all 1000 reports are genuine bigfoot either. Yes I do not doubt that some are lies, misidentifications or pranks, but the sheer number is more than suggestive that they are really being seen.

I'll have to say, i totally agree with "SD" he has done his research, as have I, I was born and raised in San Diego, but spent alot of time in oregon
throughout my childhood, my stepdad wanted us to move there, thank god my mom would'nt have it.Any way I know i saw a "bigfoot,Sashquash,"or whatever you want to call it.I've seen and identified every animal in the woods.This creature I saw was nothing that i've seen before.very surreal."belive it or not"

SD.....you make alot of good points....well said.