Marysville Track
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 3rd, 2007
Reports of Bigfoot in California have been discussed in the media for over a week, as Craig has noted here.
Above is a photograph taken of the picture of one of the Marysville tracks. What do you think of it?
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
looks fake to me, too perfect. although I don’t believe any track photos are real these days. i need the real thing on video or a body or something to believe it.
Better than a fossil, IF the track is genuine.
Seems like the right proportions, at least. I don’t agree with assessments like “looks too perfect,” because an actual sasquatch track, made by a non-deformed sasquatch foot, and in the right substrate, WOULD look perfect, wouldn’t it?
The big toe is smaller than the little toe, it isn’t shaped like a foot, it’s only about thirteen inches long, and it looks like a Wallace track.
You’ll notice the tape measure isn’t even pulled out all the way.
Why do only the fakes make the headlines?
I still think tracks are far too controversial. Are they real or fake? Who knows? As I said before, a track only tells you which way “something” went. We really need something far more.
The toes are sooooo uniform in width and length. This could from sliding into the step or “digging in ” with the toes, but I would think that a bigfoot would have a different sized toes. I still think a track is suspect without a corresponding sighting.
Real or fake, who can say, but I like the way soil squeezed up through the toes.
Having just left a mess of black footprints in my house, I took a good look at them, especially as Dear Wife was making me scrub them up…
I have a high arch. My friend, who helped me make the tracks, is flatfooted. Either way, theres a strong structural element to the prints. Heavier marks with the ball, some streaking where the heel first struck the carpet…. there’s a depth and texture to a footprint, and it doesn’t look like a flat mash of a template into something soft.
My flatfooted friend still had a curve to his foot, where the outer sole took the weight. We shared similarities, although to look at our feet, we don’t look like we’d leave similar prints.
It seems to me that BF has some structural similarities to our feet: five toes, a heel and dermal patterns. I would also suspect that if these do not display the way weight rolls across the foot, then its fake. It looks like the ball and heel are deeper, but not natural in the way the print has no drag near the heel, or an arch, like other BF prints had. I suspect that if the print was that clear, it would have dermal patterns in the cast.
I think it is odd the way all of the toes are pretty much the same length and thickness. Not saying that means they are fake, but I’m not sure what to make of that.
I would have to go with fake on this. Duskshade was right on the money when he said that real tracks display drag and so forth. It is possible i suppose that a track could be this clear, however, it does indeed look to me like a cutout pressed into the dirt/sand.
Just my 2 cents
Seems to me that if these were an attempt to hoax, the creators would have had to have studied other tracks thinking they could pull it off. They made dozens of tracks. Would they have gone through the process of making a set that might convince people and then not make it with a large big toe…or the diagnostic ball of the foot which even a brief survey of the literature’s widely distributed illustrations produces in abundance? Maybe the BF species in this area, having adapted to moving its great bulk bipedally would no longer need the pronounced structure of the big toe since it no longer functions as a keel for the forward moving body it’s propelling. I guess once we accept that there’s a possibility of a hoax there simply isnt a way to say for sure. I’m wondering what I would have to do to create a working model of the BF foot so a realistic but purely hypothetical foot might impress itself into a dirt covered road bed…and I think that might be critical as to the flatness of the track. Hmmmm…..
They look fake to me.
What do I think?
Find the animal that made it, then I’ll let you know. 😉
Until that happens, the most you can say about a track is “this looks like a human did it,” about a particular track artifact that looks like a human did it.
Squared-off edges tend not to happen in animal prints. A logo in the track tends not to happen in nature. Bootprints paralleling the tracks might be problematical, as would vehicle tracks.
Nothing anyone has said above is indicative of a fake track. It’s indicative of what the individual THINKS a real track should look like.
How do they know?
Well, it doesn’t seem to be a blobprint, at least. 🙂
Well, Loren, no it’s not.
My bottom line on prints:
1. They’ll never provide proof, because you’ll always have some killjoy yelling “fake” who people listen to, and, well, they’re not proof.
2. But. If it isn’t obviously a fake (Nike swoosh in the middle, say), we should be evaluating the likelihood that someone would have faked something like this HERE.
3. If 2. isn’t likely, then now we have a place we might want to search a bit for what might have made this. (I’d suggest contacting local media to canvass for local sightings – of which you may hear more in this area of CA now.)
Within biology, ecology, and wildlife studies, tracks are a good indicator that a possible animal came this way. An analysis, collection of examples known to be from the animals represented, and a good database of enough prints gives one a selected and important source of information on the animal that made the prints.
I am sorry someone is dismayed by every blog on tracks, but the study of tracks, ichnology, has resulted in good insights, overall, in zoology.
Bigfoot tracks tied to reliable witnesses of the actual trackmakers would tend to be the best, thus the importance of the series found in conjunction with the Patterson-Gimlin footage is noted, if you accept the Patterson-Gimlin evidence.
Individual tracks found by known pranksters and hoaxsters, of course, are on the other end of the reliablity scale.
Why comment on track threads if your complaint is the same?
My complaints lie within the lack of advancement in the significant field of track studies of Bigfoot traces.
I was expecting something like a catalogue of the most credible prints to the most unreliable tracks in Murphy’s book and Meldrum’s opus. I’m disappointed that the (Krantz) identification coding system for track casts in Krantz’s collection now held by Meldrum, revealed by Matt Crowley, for example, has not been used by Meldrum so we could begin to have standards of identification for our discussions. The id keying would reflect how paleontologists have lettered-numbered keys to their presentations and debates on hominoid skulls, usually based on location and sequence of finds.
I am in shock sometimes that there is not yet a standardized and accepted reality for what a Sasquatch track is. There is a reason that you can be from Australia, come to America, pick up a North American animal tracks guide book, then go out and track snowshoe rabbits or get a different guide book and go to a quarry and identify what species of dinosaur a fossilized track is. Years and years of finding such tracks, and relating them to such and such a species allows us to know what these tracks are, because tracks look alike.
Sasquatch tracks do not look alike and there are only two broad-based reasons for this, accepting that Bigfoot are real: (1) Several fake footprints are in the database. (2) Different species are being identified as one.
Now, almost fifty years into the modern search for Bigfoot, we should all at least be able to agree on what a “good Bigfoot track” is. It need not wait for the discovery of the animal. As ichnologists, we stink.
I, for one, question the reality of all hourglass Bigfoot tracks. I have yet to see any good counter-arguments to convince me otherwise.
If this:
“Why comment on track threads if your complaint is the same?”
were directed at me, Loren, you gave the answer.
As ichnologists, we stink.
I’m betting that no one who thinks a track “looks fake” can say why in a way that doesn’t relate to that person’s personal view of what a real track should look like.
I personally would think that with all this wrangling over tracks, someone would know by now, if there were a way to know prior to discovery of the animal.
If there is…I’m all ears. Maybe that’s it. I keep hearing fake/not fake, but apparently no agreement on what’s fake and what’s not.
So let me rephrase the question:
Why comment on track threads if your explanation (whatever it is) is always the same? Particularly if it’s not based in any accepted standard for what the animal’s tracks SHOULD look like?
What you’ve said in your post, Loren, is precisely what’s so frustrating about track threads. Some of us would definitely love to be enlightened as how tracks can be verified as evidence of an animal not accepted by science to exist.
Which came first, the bigfoot or the track?
I’m with DWA, tracks are not in of themselves useful except to follow the beastie to its lair. Sure, I can follow a snowshoe rabbit track, but there’s a known critter I can bag at the end of the trail.
So we create a database of “tracks”, discard what we know is fake and we still have a bunch of mystery prints, from which I can fashion a better fake.
Joppa brings up a very good point. Where do these tracks lead? Where do they come from? Where do they start and end? Is it only a few tracks or many? What were the ground conditions like where they were found? Can we follow the beastie to its lair?
I know I’ve tracked animals to the point that the tracks disappear into a woods. Sometimes there is damage to the brush where they entered, sometimes not. Sometimes the tracks disappear but with some dilligent searching another set of tracks can be found. Rather than just take pictures of the tracks how about trying to follow them? I’m sure some people have but I seldom read about it. It seems more that those who find them are so focused on the footprint that little searching is done beyond that.
Something the size and weight of Bigfoot should leave more than just a few footprints in one spot I would think.
Good point about following tracks, Rillo777. I’ve found myself following tracks in the woods for different reasons. To see drama unfold in a chase between rabbit tracks and Fox tracks, or to find the mystery animal that made the funny looking print. Only a few times have I specifically NOT followed tracks. There were the little deer tracks followed by the big bear tracks that I had no interest in seeing the end of.
In the case of bigfoot, do people not follow the tracks because they aren’t there, or because they don’t want to meet a bigfoot? In the former, it would seem illogical that there would not be further sign, but I’m just an amateur so what would I know.
Anyway, this track is not high on my list of believable tracks. Number one reason, the toes are all small and uniform in size. Name one other animal with toes the same length and then we’ll talk.
I think it is either a fake or it belongs to a bear. Look at the toes, they are almost square. The only thing that doesn’t say bear is the lack of claw marks. Besides, why wouldn’t someone using a measure tape in the photo not open to the full length of the footprint? All that is saying is that the footprint is longer than 9″. Doen’t look right to me at all. Besides, living just south of there I really don’t see enough wooded areas to support something of that size. At least the supposed reports coming from West Point (I think it has been a couple years now) makes more sense. I know West Point. It lies at the base of mountains, most owned by BLM and Southern Pacific Industries. There is lots of land mostly undesturbed. Marysville is rather large and encroaching into some beautiful habitat of animals that can survive near town.
Shumway 10973: I think we can rule out bear.
Claw marks show in bear tracks (at least they’d show in these), the print isn’t that long compared to wide, and the toes show nothing like that. It would much more likely be an anomalous sas print than an anomalous bear print, I’d think.
I’ve heard it said that private timberlands might be more sas country than old-growth or unitformly mature reserves. There’s much supporting that view.
Another story I was very interested in and excited about when I first watched the news video. The “finders” did seem pretty honest about the tracks. After reading all the comments here, though, my bubble kind of bursted again. Can anyone guess what the ratio might be between all of the hoaxed prints and the few we consider to be “genuine”? When I stop to think about the last 20 years or so of my interest in the Bigfoot phenomenon, the little bit of evidence we have collected isn’t enough to fill a small bucket, compared to the barrels and barrels of known hoaxes and bogus pictures and prints. I don’t know, but I am beginning to wonder…
arbigfoothunter: I think you have this precisely backwards.
I have the score: proponents, tons and tons and tons. Skeptics, like two or three. Don’t know if it’s halftime or not, but the skeptics better be nothin’ but net from now on to have a ghost of a shot of catching up. And that simply isn’t gonna happen.
I can guess the ratio of hoaxes to tracks that may be the real thing. It’s (and this is a rough guess) like 0.02%.
You wouldn’t want all the buckets in your backyard that would be necessary to hold all the good – or inconclusive, which is really the same thing – evidence. (Actually you might. You’d never need to – or be able to – mow the lawn again.) The clearly hoaxed stuff? You could fit that comfortably in a corner of your basement where you’d never have to look at it again.
THIS IS WHY WE’RE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS! How often does Nessie show up, even on this site? Perzackly. I’m not putting too many shekels on Nessie. But I think of the sas the same way I think of a real animal.
Why? The evidence makes it look real to me.
If you’re really a bigfoot hunter you need to do some stuff, pal:
1. Keep hunting.
2. Do you read sighting reports? Somebody has to come up with a good, rational scenario for what all those people are seeing. The only rational one I have heard? Real animal, unclassified by science. (If you think “man in ape suit” is rational, you haven’t read sighting reports. If you think “lying” is rational, you haven’t read sighting reports. If you think “known animal, misidentified” I can say, with confidence: not a chance.)
3. Have you really done a mental tote-up of how many trackways there are, then compared it to the list of known, probable or quite-likely fakes? (That’s where my 0.02% comes from. Eyeball guess. But hey.)
4. The Patterson film shows a real animal. I become more and more convinced of this by the day. In 40 years, no one has either (a) debunked it or (b) come up with a rational scenario for how it could have been done. Until I see this, there’s yer ape, right there, on film.
5. KEEP YOUR CHIN UP! You’re doing God’s (or the universe’s ;-)) work here, man! He’s out there. FIND him!
First two rounds will be on me.
Hey, I need to step in here now and then to buck you guys up. Ben and Biscardi are NOT where the chips sit in this game.
Thanks DWA for your words of confidence. I guess that is what I need from time to time, because I DO get frustrated about this subject often. I spend 80% of my free time reading sightings from two of the top Bigfoot websites, and actually I can’t wait for a new month to pop up to read the latest. But it just seems to me that when an exciting report comes up, the majority of people are there to debunk it. I guess I may be exaggerating a bit though, eh? Once again, DWA, thanks for addressing this and I am very open to suggestions and new ideas or revamped old ones.
In closing, I work in a small supermarket with about 15 employees. Whenever I mention anything about Bigfoot, sightings in Arkansas, my personal research, etc., I get sneered at, laughed at, and criticized pretty badly. It seems strange though how these so called friends at work laugh at this subject, but when I ask them to go out with me some evening to ride around in some known “hot spots”, they simply refuse–like they are afraid they really may see something.
arbigfoothunter: some people get so frustrated about this that they start faking evidence.
Don’t get THAT frustrated. 😀
“I can’t wait for a new month to pop up to read the latest.” YOU TOO? I might need to start a support group! But no kidding: somebody needs to tell me what these folks are seeing. (I would LOVE to hear some of these “debunkings” people give you.) Too many of these accounts can’t be anything BUT what they say they saw. So they’re lying…or there are some really good drugs out there….or….
I think your “friends” really ARE afraid they might see something.
Too many folks think the “skeptics” (I prefer to call them “denialists”) just need to sit there waiting for the sas to be found. I disagree. They need to explain the (apparently) preposterous thesis that all of this is lie, hoax or misinterpretation.
ALL OF IT?
You have something bigger than Bigfoot if so.
arbigfoot hunter, please don’t let the debunking or sneering get you down. On this site, it is usually due to people not wanting to get sucked into a hoax, or they are trying to approach things with skepticism in order to make this a more legitimate, scientific field of study. It may get carried away sometimes, but remember even mainstream scientists will debunk each others theories. This is not always a bad thing, it merely requires that your evidence be of good quality and it sets a standard to be followed. I personally have nothing against skepticism at all, in fact I am a skeptic myself albeit an open minded one. From that viewpoint, I don’t think you should let it burst your bubble at all. If something is debunked or proven to be a hoax, that is good for everyone involved and keeps the pool of evidence clean. Comments here that try to look at the skeptical side of things here should not be causing you frustration, but making you think about what constitutes acceptable evidence. I think of these sorts of posts as a learning experience. As far as the people laughing at you at work, they are just close minded scoffers and you should not let those people interfere in your will to find the truth at all. As DWA said, keep your chin up and keep on doing what you do with the search. There is nothing out there that I see yet that says Bigfoot cannot exist.