Sunday, January 31, 2010

A few months late, but here is my summary of the Yakima Bigfoot Round-Up...










The event began with Bill Munns giving an excellent treatise on the Patterson/Gimlin Film, describing his work on the film and some of the difficulties he had in working on it. He described his work with photogrammetry and how he applied it to the film, and how his examination of the size of the creature was initially inaccurate because he assumed that Patterson had used a 25-Millimeter lens on his film camera. Through time and error, he found that there was a 15-Millimeter lens available for that camera, and that made all the difference in Munns' examination of the film. He was able to create via computer graphics the landmarks on the film site and found that the new calculations helped him immensely to determine the distance between Patterson and "Patty"-it correlated with Chris Murphy's calculation of 102 feet between the man and the creature.

Website: http://www.themunnsreport.com

Presentation rating: ***** out of *****

Next, Scott Nelson, a crypto-linguist, gave a really good treatise on the work he has done on the Sierra Sounds and his analysis of what may be a language within the strange sounds. He played several samples of the recordings, then told the attendees that he seemed to hear some strange languages, almost Samurai-like. Ron Morehead also spoke of Scott's work and also of his perspective of being there when the recordings were made.

Website: Bigfoot Language

Presentation rating: ***1/2 out of *****

Finally, for the first night, Derek Randles gave a really terrific presentation on something called the Olympic Project which involves putting camouflaged game cams up to attempt to get a photo of a Sasquatch. He showed several photos of Cougars and deer and elk and bears taken with the cams.

Website: http://www.olympicproject.com

Presentation rating: **** out of *****


Beginning the next day, Chris Murphy gave an overall presentation on the history of Sasquatch sightings as seen in his books Meet The Sasquatch and Know The Sasquatch/Bigfoot, basically skimming through the historical reports (Ape Canyon, Ostman, P/G Film, William Roe) and discussing some things found in Native American legends.

Website: Chris Murphy's Sasquatch Awareness Center

Presentation Rating: ****1/2 out of *****


Following Murphy was Dr. John Bindernagel, who presented on his upcoming new book The Discovery of the Sasquatch which carries on the themes in his previous book North America's Great Ape: The Sasquatch as well as addressing scientists who do not seem to be open-minded to the possibility of the existence of these bipeds. His presentation was not designed to bash his fellow colleagues, but instead to present them with the evidence collected and allowing them to make up their own minds. Bindernagel addressed a good deal of scientific resistance and said that when the mystery is solved, we will find that this was all just normal resistance and that we will get validation.

Website: Dr. John Bindernagel

Presentation Rating: ***** out of *****

Dmitry Pirkulov took the podium next and addressed the hominid situation in his home country of Russia, as well as sharing a message for Bob Gimlin from Marie Jeanne-Kaufmann. He mainly showed videos of Igor Bourtsev and other Russian investigators conducting research and interviews. He also showed video and photos of what appeared to be a dead lamb killed by something. The question was asked as to what killed it.

Website: N/A

Presentation Rating: **** out of *****

Kathy Strain was next and presented information found in her excellent book Giants, Cannibals and Monsters: Bigfoot In Native Culture on the Native American legends of the Sasquatch/Bigfoot. She talked of the commonalities with legends, especially the commonality of a basket-carrying hominid. She also spoke of the Hairy Man legend, the pictograph located in California from the Yokut tribe. She also presented a stone head which a man found on eBay which may represent a Bigfoot head or something similar.

Website: Alliance of Independent Bigfoot Researchers

Presentation Rating: ****1/2 out of *****

The final presentation was from Dr. Jeff Meldrum on the Patterson/Gimlin Film as related to the footprints, more particularly the mid-tarsal break which was photographed by Lyle Laverty and cast by Bob Titmus, as well as casts from Patterson which have some dynamic features to them even though they are flat. He also showed some of the early work from M.K. Davis (before his more recent colorful assessments) which showed the foot bending in the middle. Also the flexing of the toes was shown.

Website: Anthropoidipes Ameriborealis, a species named from Footprints

Presentation Rating: ****1/4 out of *****

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

nice post. thanks.