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King Kong, Gigantopithecus & the Missing Link

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Kristin Moore
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« Reply #30 on: May 27, 2011, 03:01:35 am »

 One intriguing question is what contact our remote ancestor, Homo erectus, may have had with the giant ape. That the two coexisted for some time in the same region is supported by direct evidence. In 1965, Vietnamese paleontologists discovered the remains of both creatures at Tham Khuyen, a cave site in Lang Son Province, near the Chinese border. Chinese excavators followed suit, excavating Gigantopithecus and Homo erectus side by side in Hubei Province in 1970 and more recently, in 1987, in Sichuan Province.
        Gigantopithecus was native to southern Asia, while Homo originated in Africa about 1.6 million years ago and migrated eastward, finally arriving in what is now Southeast Asia about one million years ago. The opportunity to explore this nexus attracted archeologist John Olsen and me to Vietnam. One reason we did not choose to go to China was that all the promising sites had been reserved by Chinese paleoanthropologists, and we doubted we would find a new site in a region that had been so thoroughly mined. In contrast, Vietnam had no history of exploiting fossil-rich caves for dragon bones. And so in January 1989 we found ourselves probing four caves at the base of a karst tower near the hamlet of Lang Trang, about 100 miles southwest of Hanoi, as part of a joint American-Vietnamese expedition.
        The caves had seemed promising in our preliminary survey the previous May, and as we began work, even local children brought us fossil mammal teeth (although we tried to discourage them), which they retrieved from an underground stream by squeezing through a crevice in the cave we called Lang Trang I. Meanwhile, we began cutting out blocks of breccia, the sediment typical of caves, which is gradually formed by material washed or otherwise transported into a cave and cemented with limestone dissolved from the cave walls and ceiling.
        The fourth day of our dig, Friday the thirteenth, turned out to be a lucky one: within the main deposit I found a lens-shaped vein of dark, sandy sediment that was unusually rich in fossils. The material had probably washed into the cave from the nearby Ma River, which in ancient times meandered right alongside the karst tower. Perhaps a violent monsoon had caused the river to overflow its banks and flood the cave. After the waters receded, the slow process of breccia formation began again, sealing the sandy lens within Lang Trang I.
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« Reply #31 on: May 27, 2011, 03:01:51 am »

We immediately set to work cutting out hunks of the sandy deposit, revealing a small chamber that we surmised was the source of all the fossils the children had been bringing us. Our finds included barking deer, a musk deer the size of a big dog; sambar, a large deer with three-pointed antlers; wild boar; and giant panda. A huge, ridged molar, weighing several pounds and belonging to Stegodon, an extinct relative of the elephant, assured us that we were dealing with a Pleistocene site that might also contain Homo erectus and Gigantopithecus. One softball-sized sample of this deposit was later analyzed at the University of Iowa, revealing that it also contained some small teeth and fragmentary limb bones of a diverse microfauna, including rodents, reptiles, fishes, and riverine sponges. These fossil fragments were about the same size as the coarse sand particles they were mixed with.
        Then, on January 18, 1989, Nguyen Van Hao made a key discovery: in the floor of the fourth cave he found a premolar of Homo. Since it was an isolated tooth, we found it difficult - impossible, really - to identify the species. Since then, four additional teeth of Homo have been recovered from caves I, II, and IV. Subsequently, a boar tooth from cave I has been dated (by a method called electron-spin resonance) to about 480,000 years ago. Given this preliminary date, the specimens should be assigned to Homo erectus. The discovery helps fill the gap between Zhoukoudian, in northern China, and Java, more than 3.000 miles to the south.
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« Reply #32 on: May 27, 2011, 03:02:25 am »



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« Reply #33 on: May 27, 2011, 03:02:46 am »

We now have a fairly complete picture of the Pleistocene environment of Lang Trang. The jungle vegetation would have been more lush, but not startlingly different. The fauna, however, would have been striking, with huge beasts of all kinds dominating the landscape. Carnivores such as the tiger and leopard were much more common then and competed for food with species, such as the Asiatic black bear, that have entirely disappeared from Vietnam. And they all competed with the wolf and the Asiatic wild dog in preying on the dozens of bovid and cervid species (cowlike and deerlike mammals). Also present were the rhinoceros and elephant (both now rare) and the stegodon, as well as the orangutan and tapir, both now extinct in Vietnam. The giant panda, also now vanished, chomped its way through the bamboo stands. Taken in this context, Gigantopithecus was no freakish monstrosity, but simply the primate example of a Pleistocene phenomenon.
        Primates make up 13 percent of the total fauna in our collection. At least five genera are accounted for: two types of macaque monkey, orangutan, langur monkey, gibbon and Homo. So far we have been disappointed only by the absence of Gigantopithecus.
        Sometime near the end of the middle Pleistocene, perhaps 200,000 years ago, Gigantopithecus became extinct. The animal had flourished for at least six million years, quite a respectable figure, but it went the way of a great many genera of every shape and size. At about the same time, the giant panda disappeared from much of its original territory, notably insular southeast Asia, until it now survives only in the cold upland regions of Sichuan Province. The best guess as to what caused the panda's extinction in Southeast Asia is human hunting: even now the animal is hunted for food and for pelts, despite the best efforts of the Chinese government to discourage the practice. Similarly, human hunting may have led to the demise of Gigantopithecus.
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« Reply #34 on: May 27, 2011, 03:06:40 am »




Munching on bamboo, a giant panda survives on a diet that may resemble that of Gigantopithecus.
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« Reply #35 on: May 27, 2011, 03:07:05 am »

 Environmental change may also have been a contributing factor, just as the bamboo die-off in China in the 1970s nearly wiped out the remaining population of giant pandas, with fewer than a thousand estimated to have survived. Or by eating the tender bamboo shoots and exploiting the plant for other purposes, including toolmaking, humans may have outcompeted the giant ape for this critical resource. The competition from both humans and the giant panda may have been too much.
        Gigantopithecus is gone. Or is it? Following the publicity about our research in Vietnam, I have received several letters from veterans who say that they came face to face with huge, hairy apes in the Southeast Asian jungle when they were posted in Vietnam. And of all the theories advanced to provide a zoological identity for Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, and other elusive creatures, perhaps the most popular is that they are none other than Gigantopithecus, still alive in relict populations (relict populations of Neanderthal man run a close second). While these contemporary reports are probably false, we can contemplate the time when our remote ancestors did encounter the giant of all apes in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia.
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« Reply #36 on: May 27, 2011, 03:07:51 am »



Bamboo leaves frame the scientists excavating the cemented deposits in Lang Trang Cave IV.

http://www.uiowa.edu/~bioanth/giganto.html
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« Reply #37 on: May 27, 2011, 03:08:32 am »

The Ape That Was

http://www.uiowa.edu/~bioanth/giganto.html
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« Reply #38 on: May 27, 2011, 03:09:55 am »

Do enormous prehistoric ape-men share the Earth with humanity today?


If something along the lines of Gigantopithecus has survived however, it's had half a million years to evolve to its present niche. So it would not exactly be the same species for which we have found a handful of fossils so far.

It would be a mutated Gigantopithecus.

To explore what such a mutant ape-man might be like, let us consider its likely past challenges and other relevant matters.

We might use ourselves (a fellow primate) as a form of benchmark in some ways. For instance, how much behavioral change can occur in a primate species with modern human intellectual capacities in 500,000 years?

Well, in our own species, over the last 500,000 years we managed to go from a naked cave dwelling simple Stone Age tool maker/user (of rock chips) who could use fire but not ignite fires from scratch, and perhaps possessed a language of a few dozen words, to today's well dressed internet user, auto and computer builder, and common jet air traveler, who typically possesses a vocabulary of hundreds or thousands of words.

So given suitable capacities to begin with, lots of behavioral change can occur over 500,000 years.

But Gigantopithecus' ultimate fate also depends heavily on what talents and potential it possessed 500,000 years ago.

So let us make some assumptions about Gigantopithecus' starting point, in order to better speculate on where it might be today, in terms of intelligence and capabilities.

500,000 years ago Gigantopithecus was an enormous, super-strong ape-man, perhaps mostly vegetarian and non-aggressive (unless attacked or cornered).

But the climate was changing, or regional food sources were becoming scarce, or local competition for preferred food sources was intensifying between Gigantopithecus and giant pandas (bears). And suddenly Homo erectus (an ancestor of humanity) begins showing up in considerable numbers too, as yet another competitor for the same resources (bamboo and bamboo sprouts).

Homo erectus is at least a bit smarter than Gigantopithecus, and likely outnumbers him by a wide margin. Homo erectus hunts in packs, like wolves, pursuing, killing, and eating individual Gigantopithecus (or family groups), similar to how Polynesian settlers will do the gentle giant Moa of New Zealand millennia later.


-- Illustrated Transcript of The Future Eaters, Illustrated transcript of episode 2, Nomads of the Wind, Presented and Narrated by Dr Tim Flannery, Author of the Future Eaters, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. email: science@your.abc.net.au, http://www2.abc.net.au/, found on or about 9-12-99

Gigantopithecus clans are few and far between due to the required foraging ranges for each group. So there's not much chance of offering substantial organized resistance to the Homo erectus hunting packs. The huge size and fearsome appearance of Gigantopithecus, combined with their usually non-aggressive ways, makes them the perfect victim for generating bragging rights for male Homo erectus among the women and children of their tribes. The rarity and shyness of Gigantopithecus means women and children might never encounter one themselves, and so all they know is what the men tell them of the giants. A Gigantopithecus kill also brings in a considerable amount of meat, making the killers seem like powerful hunters and providers for the tribe. So hunting and killing Gigantopithecus might be a win-win situation for male Homo erectus at this time.

Unfortunately Gigantopithecus are somewhat rare and hard to find even in Homo erectus' time-- so the competition to find and kill one can be fierce.

Those Gigantopithecus clans which manage to evade and flee the packs survive-- those who don't, die. Thus, a propensity to retreat from the packs (and the skill to evade the hunters when they get too close) becomes embedded in the Gigantopithecus bloodline pretty quickly.

Something else gets added to the genetic line as well; an increased ability to adapt to changing circumstances in general. The hunting Homo erectus packs aren't the only threat to Gigantopithecus. The climate itself has already been changing for some time now, forcing changes in many habits. Now, as refugees from the hunting packs, the Gigantopithecus clans must also cope with increasingly different and often harsher foraging grounds and terrain. This change may be aided by the fact that the clans had throughout their history been forced to at least migrate on occasion due to depleted foraging areas. So the nomadic life they take on now may be more of an expansion or extension in age old habits, rather than a completely abrupt change.

The clans learn the hard way to use the night to their advantage, along with concealment during the day. If not already so, they now become nocturnal, as that's when the hunter packs are least active. Those clans who don't go nocturnal die out or are killed.

Hungry and cunning Homo erectus hunting packs were likely formidable foes. So those Gigantopithecus which survived such trials likely developed very sharp senses of smell, sight, and hearing, as well as some additional intelligence specialized towards eluding and possibly misleading their pursuers.

Gigantopithecus would have been encouraged by events to move into areas less hospitable to Homo erectus and its lineage. Places like rugged high mountains, dense forests and jungles, intractable swamps, etc.-- the very places most purported witness claims of later millennia will report them. Unfortunately, other large beasts (many of them predators) were also being forced into these same areas by the expanding human population. So Gigantopithecus had to find ways to cope with these new predators and competition too, even as it struggled to survive in lands foreign to its predecessors.

Gigantopithecus' primate intelligence advantage over the big cats, bears, crocodiles/alligators and other large animals helped much. Its large size and strength also were beneficial in direct conflicts with same. Wolf packs however would seem to have been a particularly thorny problem for Gigantopithecus-- especially in the harsher winters, when such packs may have become emboldened by hunger. Gigantopithecus' apparent tendency or necessity to travel as solitary individuals (according to most modern witness claims) would also beckon such packs, as canine pack instincts see solitude as a vulnerability. And since Gigantopithecus (by many accounts of modern 'Big Foot' encounters) suffers a uniquely strong odor, it would not be difficult for wolves or dogs to track them.

Gigantopithecus would not only have to be smart, but strong and fast too to successfully cope with the pack danger over millennia. And it seems to be all these things. Living at high altitudes will offer protection from the roving wolf packs of lower elevations. The presence of sheer cliffs nearby and the capacity to rapidly scale them also provides escape routes. Great running speed and long distance endurance (both of which Gigantopithecus may possess) could also help.

(There exist some reports of humans eating Big Foot kills in relatively modern times-- or trying to do so anyway, but put off by an exceedingly foul taste. One neat evolutionary trick for Gigantopithecus over the millennia might be the development of bad taste in its meat, to help discourage predation by both humans and other animals. This could help a lot in dealing with wolf packs too, except in the very harshest of winters. Over many generations sufficiently bad taste and odor, combined with enough bloody losses in contests with the man-apes, might even have caused wolf packs to avoid the giants completely unless they were starving.)

It may be that Gigantopithecus would have to regularly hunt down and kill at least a few wolves in the vicinity periodically to help maintain a healthy fear of its kind in the local population, thereby blunting the threat of the packs overall. Or perhaps during especially bad winters Gigantopithecus would either avoid traveling or try to do so in groups to minimize the danger.

Could Gigantopithecus possibly store food for the winter (or other contingencies) in a hideaway somewhere? It seems very likely, since much less intelligent animals (such as squirrels) do so.

Combined with Gigantopithecus' nomadic nature, this implies that any particular Gigantopithecus clan would possess at least several 'nests' or dens or caches, situated over a wide area, which they might move between in a seasonal fashion, or perhaps once every several years. Such dens would almost certainly involve caves or other natural shelters, since it appears unlikely that Gigantopithecus is capable of constructing much in the way of artificial homes. At most Gigantopithecus may be capable of burrowing into deep snow to create a shelter, or perhaps pile brush against a naturally existing rock overhang to close it in. Abandoned human housings would likely be avoided due to the risk of returning humans, and also because of their cramped size, where Gigantopithecus is concerned. Gigantopithecus' apparent lack of fire-starting skills would seem to make it prefer only the shallowest or widest mouthed of caves, for vision reasons if nothing else. But having evolved into a nocturnal animal over the millennia, Gigantopithecus may be able to delve deeper into tunnels than we might expect. And some witness claims include hints that, unlike most other animals, Gigantopithecus does not overtly fear fire, but at times may even welcome its warmth, when found. This observation would seem to make modern Gigantopithecus somewhat similar to humans of 500,000 years ago-- as the humans could exploit fire for heat and light where it was available-- they just couldn't make it.

If we can assume most of the encounter claim reports with possible Gigantopithecus mutants over past millennia and centuries are reasonable accurate, then we might also place Gigantopithecus into its appropriate category of equivalence with humanity's own ancestors, in terms of intelligence and general capacities.

Gigantopithecus seems to have went its own way on the evolutionary tree around 13 million years ago (during a mini-extinction event on Earth).


http://www.jmooneyham.com/bgft.html


http://forums.atlantisrising.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=000418#000000
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« Reply #39 on: May 27, 2011, 07:01:39 pm »

King Kong FAQ
From the King Kong Homepage
First Published July 18,1996
Updated March 1, 1999
Written by Boyd Campbell
Copyright 1999 All Rights Reserved
Images Copyright 1999 Turner Home Entertainment
E-mail: campbab@netdoor.com


Was there ever an animal like King Kong?
In 1933, when Cooper and O'Brien released King Kong no one knew very much about the gorillas of Africa. Few specimens survived outside their African habitat and stories about them were often prone to exaggeration, both in terms of their size and their desire for human females.

Having been to Africa himself, Cooper knew that the stories of giant gorillas were exaggerations, but he found the idea of giant gorillas who captured women fascinating and began to have an idea for a movie around it. He was also inspired by the story of W. Douglas Burden who in 1926 traveled to the remote island of Komodo and discovered there a giant breed of lizard now known as the komodo dragon and managed to bring two of the monsters back to New York alive.

Burden's "dragons" inspired Cooper to imagine a story where explorers went to a remote island like Komodo in a similar part of the world and discover not giant lizards but giant gorillas and bring one back to New York alive.

Unlike the komodo dragons no one had yet discovered a breed of gigantic gorillas living in some hidden part of the world. The largest African gorillas are six feet tall and weigh about four hundred pounds. Hardly King Kong material. But in 1935, just two years after the film was released, G.H.R. Von Koenigswald discovered some fossil teeth in a Hong Kong apothecary shop that could very well have belonged to a relative of King Kong. Later, scientists discovered more teeth as well as mandible fossils and they named the creature Gigantopithecus blacki.

Gigantopithecus blacki lived in south east Asia during the Pleistocene era, going extinct by the end of the era. Reconstructing the creature from its jawbone, scientists believe Gigantopithecus was a primate, similar to a gorilla but in the neighborhood of ten feet tall and could weigh upwards of a thousand pounds. That's much closer to King Kong's size. Whether Gigantopithecus lived behind a wall and had a taste for blondes and an aversion to airplanes and flashbulbs remains unknown.

http://www.aboyd.com/kong/kongfaqa14.html
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« Reply #40 on: May 27, 2011, 07:02:58 pm »

In The News
Bigfoot believers
By Theo Stein, Denver Post Environment Writer
Legitimate scientific study of legend gains backing of top primate experts
Sunday, January 05, 2003 — Edmonds, Wash. — After enduring decades of ridicule, Bigfoot researchers are enjoying support from some of the world's most respected scientists in their efforts to prove the hulking creatures of legend are no myth.

Richard Noll of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization photographs a site in the North Cascades, northeast of Seattle, last month. Noll and colleagues discovered an imprint near a mudhole where the Skookum Cast was recorded two years ago. The persistence of reported sightings of Bigfoot-type creatures in North America and elsewhere has convinced leading researchers on primates — including Jane Goodall, made famous by her studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania — to call for something never seriously considered before: a legitimate scientific study to determine whether the greatest apes that ever lived persist in the world's moist mountainous regions.

Skeptics, who include those in the scientific mainstream, scoff at such ideas. They say reported Bigfoot encounters, tracks and other evidence are either hoaxes or mistakes, and that people who believe such nonsense are soft-headed.

But dedicated amateurs and a smattering of professionals are trying to change that attitude. Using accepted scientific methods, they believe they can show at least some of the claimed evidence for Bigfoot — footprints, hair, voice recordings and a 400-pound block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast — are authentic traces of a rare giant primate.

Recently they have received support from a handful of the field's top experts.

Daris Swindler, for example, is not the typical Bigfoot believer.

When he retired in 1991 after more than 30 years at the University of Washington, Swindler was an acclaimed expert in the arcane study of fossilized primate teeth.

His book, An Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy, went through several printings and was among the standard references in the field.

So it comes as a surprise to some of his peers that Swindler believes that the Skookum Cast, discovered by amateur Bigfoot researchers in 2000, is a genuine record of a hairy giant that sat down by a mudhole to eat some fruit.

"Daris said that?" asked Russell Ciochon, a prominent paleoanthropologist and professor at the University of Iowa. "He's an important figure. But I still don't think Bigfoot exists in any form."

Mythical giant apes lurk in the traditions of nearly every Native American linguistic group and in legends handed down through the ages from Europe and Asia. Each year, Bigfoot or similar creatures are reported by hundreds of hunters, hikers, motorists and others from central Asia to the central Rockies. But no one has provided the minimum proof required by science: a type specimen or remains that researchers can pick up, measure and argue over.

Nevertheless, Goodall is intrigued.

"People from very different backgrounds and different parts of the world have described very similar creatures behaving in similar ways and uttering some strikingly similar sounds," she said. "As far as I am concerned, the existence of hominids of this sort is a very real probability."

George Schaller, director of science at the Wildlife Conservation Society, has spent 40 years studying rare animals in remote places, including pioneering studies of Central Africa's mountain gorilla, which Western scientists first discovered in 1903.

Schaller remains troubled by the fact no Bigfoot remains have been produced, nor have any samples of feces whose DNA can be chemically poked and prodded to unlock the identity of their maker. And he is mindful of hoaxing.

But he, too, considers Bigfoot an open question.

"There have been so many sightings over the years," he said. "Even if you throw out 95 percent of them, there ought to be some explanation for the rest. The same goes for some of these tracks."

"I think a hard-eyed look is absolutely essential," he concludes.

The most common evidence allegedly left by these animals are the footprints: big prints in remote locations, some deeply pressed in sand or gravel firm enough for a grown man to pass without leaving a trace. Some footprints, like those Ray Wallace's family claim he left near Bluff Creek, Calif., in the late 1950s, are hoaxed. Many more are too vague to be conclusive. But a few are so detailed and anatomically accurate that they baffle the experts.

"Either the forgers are spending an awful lot of time on this, or there is reason to give this evidence another look," said primate researcher Esteban Sarmiento of the American Museum of Natural History. "I think a serious scientific inquiry is definitely warranted."

Skeptics argue that large mammals, particularly great apes, simply aren't discovered anymore. Not true, says Russell Mittermeier, vice president of Conservation International, who has co-authored scientific papers describing five new primates.

Since the 1990s there have been several spectacular finds, he said, including the antelope-like spindlehorn from Vietnam and a South American peccary thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago.

"I'm not one to pooh-pooh the potential that these large apes may exist," Mittermeier said. "I guess you could say I'm mildly skeptical but guardedly optimistic. Whoever does find it will have the discovery of the century."

Words of encouragement like these are music to Bigfoot researchers' ears.

"My whole motivation has not been to convince anybody of the existence of the animal, but to convince them that there's a body of evidence begging for further consideration," said Idaho State University professor Jeff Meldrum, whose expertise in primate locomotion led him to become one of the few academics openly researching Bigfoot tracks.

"This is immense," said author John Green, who has tracked Bigfoot reports for almost half a century from British Columbia and investigated some of the most famous sightings and track finds. "The possibility that there could be a real animal behind it just didn't occur to scientists 20 years ago."

The flap over recent claims of Bigfoot hoaxing has not deterred Swindler. But the lack of a body plus the acknowledgment of at least some hoaxing adds up to too many questions for Ciochon.

Like that of Swindler, Ciochon's work focuses on fossilized primate teeth, but of a very special species: Gigantopithecus blacki, the giant Asian ape of the Miocene epoch, which lasted from about 24 million to 5 million years ago.

Most Bigfoot supporters advance Gigantopithecus, or Giganto for short, as the likely ancestor of Bigfoot, if not the hairy beast itself. It's a tantalizing but entirely unproven link that drives Ciochon to distraction.

Ciochon thinks his study subject, which co-existed with the human ancestor Homo erectus for hundreds of thousands of years, may well be the archetypal inspiration for the "boogeyman" and other nocturnal monsters that populate the traditions of aboriginal cultures from Nepal to North America.

But he vigorously rejects any suggestion that Giganto, which he thinks was a specialized, bamboo-eating vegetarian, could persist today.

And he worries that the hotly contested grants that fund his work overseas may go elsewhere if the stigma of the shambling sasquatch of Native American lore attaches to his study subject.

"My biggest problem is there's no evidence, other than conjectural hair and these footprints, some of which we know are faked," Ciochon said.

"If someone finds a skeleton, I'll be there in a nanosecond," he said. "But that's what it's going to take to get me to change my mind."

"There are so many problems," agrees Swindler, who six years ago told a USA Today reporter to count him among the skeptics.

But as he examines the Skookum Cast on a rainy December afternoon in this Seattle suburb, Swindler points out landmarks in the lumpy landscape: a hairy forearm the size of a small ham, an enormous hairy thigh, an outsized buttock, and a striking impression he feels confident was made by the Achilles tendon and heel of a creature that is not supposed to exist.

"Whatever made this was very well adapted to walking on two feet," he said. "It's not conclusive, but it's consistent with what you'd expect to see if a giant biped sat down in the mud."

Swindler hopes that his assessment of the Skookum Cast, and a Discovery Channel documentary set to air Thursday, will generate support for further research.

The key, Schaller said, will be finding dedicated amateurs willing to spend months or years in the field with cameras. "So far, no one has done that," he said.


It was a group of dedicated amateurs that discovered the Skookum Cast. A team of volunteers from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization had spent two days in Washington state's Gifford Pinchot National Forest, putting out pheromone-basted plastic chips during the day and blasting sasquatch calls at night in an attempt to attract an animal.

On the second night, researchers heard a powerful reply to their broadcasts, said Richard Noll, an aerospace toolmaker who has spent 30 years researching the mystery. The next morning, Noll was stunned to realize that an unusual impression of a large animal on the edge of a mudhole near their camp could have been left by their elusive quarry.

"An elk will gather their feet under them when they get up," he said. "But there are no elk hoofprints in the center of the cast."

Meldrum and Swindler concur there are only two logical explanations for the cast: Bigfoot and elk. And they have also ruled out elk.

John Mionczynski, a wildlife researcher who has spent 30 summers studying bighorn herds in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, has his own reasons for believing in Bigfoot.

On a moonlit summer night in 1972, he backhanded an animal he thought was a bear as it sniffed at a bacon stain in his tent, then watched as the silhouette of a giant, shaggy arm with a broad hand at the end swept toward his tent, collapsing it on him.

"That hand was three times as wide as mine and had an opposed thumb that stuck out as plain as day," Mionczynski said.

He spent the rest of the night huddled by the fire with a revolver in his hand as the creature lobbed pine cones at him from the dark woods behind his tent.

"That pretty much eliminated bears," Mionczynski said.

Mionczynski is working on a contraption of tiny hooks and barbed wire that he intends to place near seasonal foods he thinks sasquatch depend on. He hopes the snare will let him get a DNA sample.

North of Seattle, Noll is collaborating with Owen Caddy, a former Ugandan park ranger who studied chimpanzees in the mid-1990s.

For the last 18 months, they've scoured certain sandbars on a north Cascades river, documenting more than 30 suspected sasquatch footprints they believe were made by a mother and two young. They hope to identify the animals' food sources and travel corridors, then set out a picket line of infrared camera traps.

"I feel the animal is out there, and I don't hedge on that," Caddy said. "I've found physical evidence myself, and I'm confident in my analysis of it.

"Something is making these tracks, and it's not people."

The Scientists
Jane Goodall
A world-famous primate researcher and author, she revealed, in studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe National Park, surprising behaviors in humanity's closest living relative. Goodall has won numerous international awards for her contributions to conservation, anthropology and animal welfare. Currently affiliated with Cornell University, she serves as the National Geographic Society's explorer-in-residence.

George Schaller
International science director for the Wildlife Conservation Society. His pioneering field studies of mountain gorillas set the research standard later adopted by Goodall and gorilla researcher Dian Fosse. Schaller's 1963 book, The Year of the Gorilla, debunked popular perceptions of the great ape and reintroduced "King Kong" as a shy, social vegetarian.

Schaller's studies of tigers, lions, snow leopards and pandas also advanced the knowledge of those endangered mammals.

In 1973, he won the National Book Award for The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations, and in 1980 was awarded the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal for his contributions to the understanding and conservation of endangered species. During the past decade, he has focused on the little-known wildlife of Mongolia, Laos and the Tibetan Plateau.

Russell Mittermeier
A trained primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist, he has discovered five new species of monkey, including two last year. Mittermeier has conducted fieldwork in more than 20 countries around the tropical world, with special emphasis on Brazil, Guyana and Madagascar.

Since 1989, Mittermeier has served as president of Conservation International, which has become one of the most aggressive and effective conservation organizations in the world during the last decade. His publications include 10 books and more than 300 scientific papers and popular articles.

Daris Swindler
Emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Swindler is a leading expert on living and fossil primate teeth and one of the top primate anatomists in general. His book, An Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy, has become a standard reference in the field. A forensic anthropologist, Swindler worked on the Ted Bundy and Green River murder cases along with hundreds of others.

Esteban Sarmiento
A functional anatomist affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History, Sarmiento focuses on the skeletons of hominids. In 2001, he participated with George Schaller in a search for Congo's Bili ape, a possible species super-chimp reported by natives but unknown to Western science. Sarmiento has also studied the Cross River gorilla, a critically endangered subspecies on the Nigeria-Cameroon border whose population is thought to be numbered in the hundreds. He has taught in the U.S., South Africa and Uganda.

From: The Denver Post, 5 January 2003.

http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/news/bfbelievers.html
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« Reply #41 on: May 27, 2011, 07:03:39 pm »

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4    Icon 1 posted 09-07-2005 11:59 PM      Profile for ParaNormalIAm     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote  http://www.mt.net/~watcher/enoch5.html

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In 1998 there were two excellent movies on the subject of comets or asteroids striking the earth, "Deep Impact " and " Armageddon". In "Deep Impact", a comet is headed for the earth, and a spaceship is built to intercept it and blow it up, before an E. L. E. ( Extinction Level Event ) can occur, in other words, doomsday on earth from the huge blast of this impact. So, could a comet hit the earth? Or an asteroid or giant meteor strike planet earth? How realistic is this idea, is it possible or likely that a comet or asteroid could hit the earth in our lifetime, causing global destruction? The scientific answer is that it is possible that an asteroid or comet could belt earth, this explosive impact with our world causing global destruction, a nuclear worldwide firestorm, and later cutting off the sunlight similar to a nuclear winter, but the odds are so small that it is not worth worrying about. But there could be another factor, that I will discuss next: prophecies, in particular in Revelation and Nostradamus, that seem to describe an asteroid or comet hitting the earth, exploding against earth with tremendous destruction, resulting in worldwide floods and fire. And there have been close calls where earth was nearly hit by small asteroids, in recent years, where these asteroids could have struck earth with global effects.
On May 19,1996, a small Asteroid (between 100 and 300 meters wide) passed 280,000 miles from earth, which is a bit farther out than the moon. If it had hit the earth, it could have destroyed an entire state of the U.S., with an explosion larger than that of any hydogen bomb ever tested. And this asteroid was discovered only four days before it passed by earth. In January 2002, an asteroid about 1000 feet wide passed by earth missing it by less than 400,000 miles. In March 2002, asteroid 2002 EM7 came within 300,000 miles of earth, a bit farther out than the moon, and it was about 200 feet wide. This one really gave the astronomers a scare because it was detected 4 days after it passed by earth, because it had come from the sun's direction, and therefore was coming from a direction where they cannot be seen because of the sun's brightness. And in July 2002, it was announced that asteroid 2002 NT7, detected on July 9 in New Mexico, could strike earth on Feb. 1, 2019. Although once there is more data on its orbit, it could turn out that it will not hit earth. This asteroid has an orbital period around the sun of 837 days and 1.2 miles wide, giving it enough kinetic energy to be a doomsday asteroid. This asteroid is large enough do wipe out most of mankind. And a very dangerous asteroid about a half-mile wide (2002 NY40) passes by earth at 330,000 miles out on August 18, 2002. So it passes by earth at a bit farther out than the distance to the moon. If it did strike earth it would not be an ELE Extinction Level Event (ELE), but the impact and explosion could cause a major decrease in the human population and giant tidal waves that would swamp the coasts of the earth's continents.
And there are probably a lot of similar small asteroids that will pass close to earth, but they are unknown now and will likely only be noticed as they get close to earth. It could be that our solar system is now entering a region of space that is full of a lot of comets and meteors, so an earth collision soon could be more likely. What is needed is a major international effort to determine the orbits of small asteroids that could come close to earth, by using a network of telescopes around the earth. The more telescopes you use, and the larger they are, the faster this would be accomplished-- identifying and determining the orbits of these asteroids. The other thing that is needed is to develop a space intercept system, to intercept and deflect asteroids or comets headed for the earth, so they cannot impact and explode on earth. Unfortunately, there is no major effort to detect the asteroids, or to develop the interceptor system. However, NASA has developed the Deep Impact spacecraft, which arrived at and hit Comet Tempel 1 on July 4 2005; and when it hit it blasted a crater in it with explosive power equal to 4.5 tons of TNT. Deep Impact is a scientific mission to study comets, but it also developed and demonstrated some of the technology to blast off course a comet or asteroid headed for earth. But what should be done, is to fund NASA to develop a larger spacecraft on a faster schedule, to intercept and deflect a comet or asteroid headed for earth with a nuclear H-bomb blast. A spacecraft that moves really fast is need, to get there as soon as possible, to blast it off course before it gets near earth. The Deep Impact Mission was funded at about $300 million. So it seems that for a few billion $ NASA could develop an asteroid defense spacecraft with a nuclear weapon. You want to have several of the interceptor spacecraft, not just one, since the survival of earth is at stake. So I encourage everyone to contact their elected representatives on building an asteroid defense for earth; NASA could develop this spacecraft if they were funded to do it. What is also needed is a worldwide network of telescopes searching for and catalogueing the NEO (Near Earth Objects) asteroids and comets. Larger telescopes are needed than are presently used, and you need to have telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere as well as the Northern Hemisphere. NASA would also be the best organization to run this program. We need to detect, track, and predict the orbits of these NEO objects before they get near earth. A major worldwide effort is needed, with larger telescopes around the world, to find these large and small comets and asteroids. The present effort needs more funding, needs larger telescopes, and is mainly in the Northern Hemisphere.
Back at the ranch.........

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« Reply #42 on: May 27, 2011, 07:04:38 pm »

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4    Icon 1 posted 09-11-2005 07:04 PM      Profile for ParaNormalIAm     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote  You don't find the Book of Enoch in the Bible anymore, but it used to be there. Thanks to the efforts of Scottish explorer James Bruce, three copies of the Book of Enoch were secured, in Ethiopia, in 1773. Many centuries earlier, the Book of Enoch had fallen into disrepute because it dealt with the physicality of angels. "Once cherished by Jews and Christians alike, this book [Enoch] later fell into disfavor with powerful theologians -- precisely because of its controversial statements on the nature and deeds of the fallen angels." [2]


You may have been intrigued by the following sudden, incongruous, brief statements in the Bible: "That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose."; "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them..." (Genesis 6:2 and 6:4. No wonder God tells Eve, "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children"! Giving birth to giant offspring must have been especially difficult.) The distinctive and odd-seeming passages from Genesis 6:2 and 6:4 are all that remains of an entire book, the Book of Enoch, which was excised from the Bible. And what is more, this suppressed Book of Enoch, according to Catholic scholar J.T. Milik, is older than Genesis 6 and "Genesis 6 is in fact a direct summary of the earlier Enoch account." [2]


The ancient writings are tantalizing, yet obscure. The sense is, that there is some crucial, definite history glimmering therein. However what exactly is meant is hazy. In the now recovered Book of Enoch, elaboration of provocative hints in Genesis 6:2 and 6:4 is furnished. What is to be made of the further elaboration is still debatable. The "Watchers" saw the daughters of men and mated with them. The Watchers disclosed "secret things" to their sons. (Enoch 10:7). Enoch has the giant offspring of the Watchers consuming "all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beast, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood." (Enoch 7: 3-5) Eventually, Enoch has a vision ("walks with God," see Genesis 5:22), and is told by the Lord that "now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men, and from the holy watchers is their beginning and primal origin; they shall be evil spirits upon the earth..." (Enoch 15: 8-9) There is "slaughter and destruction and death of the giants" but then from the souls of the giants' flesh the spirits go forth and apparently remain on earth as demons. (Enoch 16:1)


How, though, is this reconciled with the recurring presence of giant humans (detailed below)? Perhaps the "slaughter and destruction and death of the giants" was not total, and/or there was a further interbreeding and occasional atavistic throwbacks are still born.


In Those Days; And Also After That


"Most Christians and Jews are unaware of the biblical accounts that giants were found far and wide in the Promised Land." [1]


In Greek mythology, the Titans were "creatures created through the interbreeding of the Greek gods and human beings." Reportedly, the ancient historian Josephus mentions these "Titans" as "the forebears of the Celtae or Gallic giants in Europe." [1]



Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain is a controversial book. Yet by no means is it established that its contents are necessarily entirely fabulous. Richard Harvey, Cambridge classmate of Edmund Spenser, published a defense of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History. [3] Like the Bible, Geoffrey's History offers tantalizing glimpses of an underlying reality. We find therein that "Britain was called Albion. It was uninhabited except for a few giants." Pioneer leader Brutus and his followers "drove the giants whom they had discovered into the caves in the mountains." [4]


In his encyclopedic compendium on giants, Stephen Quayle offers much further evidence and photographs proving beyond reasonable doubt that not only were there giants in those days, but also after that, right on up to the present era. Photos of, the "Fossilized Irish Giant" (12 feet 2 inches tall); Machnof (9 feet 4 inches tall); Antoine Hugo (see photo at beginning of this report by Conspiracy Nation, 8 feet 4 inches tall); Johann Petursson (8 feet 8 inches tall). Other photos are currently viewable at Quayle's web site, http://www.stevequayle.com


Forbidden Legacy Of A Fallen Race

In From The Ashes Of Angels, author Andrew Collins echoes sentiments expressed by Conspiracy Nation above. Referring to the puzzling passage in Genesis 6:4, Collins writes, "In the hundreds of times I have read these isolated words out aloud I have wondered to myself: what could they possibly mean?" Collins develops a theory that the Watchers (a.k.a. the Grigori, the Nephilim) were an evolved human culture dwelling in the Caucasus mountains. They were known as the Watchers, suggests the author, not because they watched the humans below but because they watched and studied the heavens above. In Collins' theory, this advanced culture interbred with more primitive cultures. Not explained though is the continued presence of truly massive giants throughout history, not just tall but enormous.


In Zoroastrianism, two types of supernatural beings are recognized: the ahuras and the daevas. The daevas somehow adopted human form, in this belief system, and had "amatory dealings with earthly women." The alleged shape-shifting ability is also seen in the djinn who, according to Kurdish folklore, mated with 500 earthly virgins. [5] Collins


supplements material cited above, tending to show an interbreeding between a mysterious group of superhuman Watchers and human women which led to the birth of giants.

Beyond the fact that a race of giants once inhabited the earth, that they were prevalent as recently as 2000-or-so years ago, and that atavistic throwbacks of these giants still occasionally occur, little beyond informed speculation is possible. Author David Icke theorizes an ages-old group of shape-shifting reptilians who are the source of great evil on this planet. But Icke is stuck in a reptilian framework: the Djinn, the Daevas, offspring of the Watchers, who mated with the daughters of men and produced giant offspring who "shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling" (Enoch 15:Cool, are essentially spiritual, not material, and hence not "reptilian." The Djinn "can appear as snakes. They can appear as scorpions, and they can even appear as human beings." [5] So there is some foundation for the belief that members of the most powerful, elite groups are "shape shifters" and not human as they seem.


Because, for some reason, the scientific establishment is closing their eyes on the historical reality of giants, a speculation vacuum occurs into which rushes just about anyone. A group called the Sons of Jared reportedly vows "implacable war against the descendants of the Watchers" who "as notorious Pharoahs, Kings and Dictators, have throughout history dominated mankind." [5] More credible is Elizabeth Clare Prophet, who warns: There are indeed fallen angels, they have embodied on earth and corrupted the souls of her people and they will be judged by the Elect One in the day of the coming of his elect servants. These fallen angels are with us today in positions of power in church and state as prime movers in matters of war and finance, sitting in the banking houses and on policy-making councils that determine the actual fate of mankind by population control and genetic engineering, the control of energy and commodities, education and the media, and by ideological and psychopolitical strategies of divide and conquer on all fronts. [2]


------- Notes -------
[1] Quayle, Stephen. Genesis 6 Giants. ISBN: 0-9721347-0-0. See http://www.stevequayle.com/[2] Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil. Summit University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0-922729-43-3[3] Snyder, Christopher. The World Of King Arthur. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000. ISBN: 0-500-05104-6[4] Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain. London: Penguin Books, 1966. ISBN: 0-14-044170-0[5] Collins, Andrew. From The Ashes Of Angels. Bear & Company, 2001. ISBN: 187918172-X-------Conspiracy Nationhttp://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html

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« Reply #43 on: May 27, 2011, 07:05:20 pm »

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5    Icon 1 posted 09-11-2005 10:49 PM      Profile for Stacy Dohm     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote  Thank your for all the rich material, Harry! I saw Deep Impact, had a great ending where Tea Leoni got killed by a giant tsunami (I hate her ever since she dragged David Duchovny away from the X Files [Frown] ). In my opinion, "the Day After Tomorrow" was still better, though!

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« Reply #44 on: May 27, 2011, 07:05:58 pm »

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5    Icon 1 posted 09-12-2005 12:34 AM      Profile for Jennifer O'Dell     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post   Reply With Quote  I saw that, too, I thought that could never happen until the tsunamis killed all those people in Asia and then this thing in New Orleans. Looks like life is imitating art. Posts: 946 | Registered: Nov 2004  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
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