Foot skin patterns "prove existence of Sasquatch"

By Moira Farrow, from unknown newspaper
October 23, 1982

Skin patterns just like fingerprints are the latest evidence that the Sasquatch is real, a U.S. anthropologist claimed at a press conference here Friday. Dr. Grover Krantz, associate professor of anthropology at Washington State University, earlier this year produced plaster casts and photographs of footprints made by a creature believed to be a Sasquatch. The underside of the feet showed skin patterns, known to scientists as dermal ridges, which Krantz said belong to a higher primate but not an ape or a human. "They come from a higher primate that doesn't exist so we have an interesting problem here," he said. "I think these may be the best set of prints of a Sasquatch ever obtained." Krantz was speaking at a press conference organized by the International Society of Cryptozoology (a group of people interested in "hidden animals") at the University of B.C. He said the footprint casts and photographs were made by the staff of the Walla Walla, Wash., office of the U.S. Forest Service and an Oregon search and rescue volunteer. He said some of the prints are believed to have been made by an ape-like creature seen last June 10 by Forest service employee Paul Freeman near the Washington-Oregon border. Other prints were obtained in the same general area on two subsequent occasions a week or so later. The prints averaged 38 centimetres long and represented two individual creatures each weighing 300 to 350 kilograms, according to Krantz. "All of this, including the sighting of the creature, are relatively routine," said Krantz. "We have over 1,000 cases of Sasquatch sightings and footprints." He said the unusual new evidence are the dermal ridges-fine lines about half a millimetre apart in the skin of the feet. "These are the same kind of ridges you have in our fingerprints," he said. "It is beyond the ability of anyone to fake these ridges." Krantz said he called in a police fingerprint expert who concluded that the prints were not human. And he said the toes (mostly equal in size) were not those of an ape. Krantz said further analysis of the footprints is now being done by police and anthropologists. "The police expert told me that whoever made the tracks had walked barefoot for a long time because some of the ridges are worn," said the professor. "Dermal ridges have never before been seen on footprint casts," said Krantz. He speculated that the creature which made these prints had happened to step into mud "that was right on the point of setting" so making particularly clear prints. He said he has plans to return to the area next summer because his society believes the only way of finally proving the existence of the Sasquatch is to "obtain a specimen." Asked whether he planned to kill one, Krantz said his society has no policy "hunting or not hunting."