Editorial: The Onion Mountain Tracks: Real Dermal Ridges or Casting Artifacts?

There has been quite a bit written about the Onion Mountain tracks found in August of 1967 by a group of researchers which included John Green and Rene Dahinden in Northern California, in the Bluff Creek area, also the scene of the Blue Mountain track finds and of course, the Patterson/Gimlin Movie. The casts that were made didn't have a whole lot of significance other than being possible Bigfoot tracks till about the mid-1990's, when Dr. Jeff Meldrum obtained his own copy of the cast (or possibly the original cast) and noticed something interesting-dermal ridges. When he had retired Conroe, Texas Forensics Fingerprint expert from the Conroe Police Department Jimmy Chilcutt visiting his lab at Idaho State University, Chilcutt examined the Onion Mountain casts, but not only those, but also the Elkins Creek Casts found in Georgia in 1987, and he noticed a startling anomaly-the dermal ridge flow pattern was basically the same in both sets of casts, which were cast thousands of miles and 20 years apart!!! He determined based on those casts that there is most likely a real animal making these tracks. In recent years, however, an individual who is interested in paranormal subjects and sideshow gaffes named Matt Crowley (who is also a sideshow worker himself) has been doing experiments on footprint casts based from the Onion Mountain casts, and has determined in his opinion that the dermal ridges could have been caused by casting artifacts and by pouring extra plaster in the cast. Based from this work, Melissa Hovey did some experiments of her own to attempt to make casting artifacts similar to what Crowley was claiming, and she could not replicate them. Now, the experiments by Crowley did cause a good bit of controversy within the Bigfoot Community, but is he right? I do not know. My experience with Bigfoot researchers has been just because someone says something doesn't make it true, so who knows? But this is a rather interesting conundrum and mystery, and will be fodder for discussion for years to come until a body is brought in.