Meldrum Does Not Pull His Siberian Snowman Punches
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 27th, 2011
Jeff Meldrum
Just in case you missed it, Lee Speigel wrote an article this week, detailing more remarks from Jeff Meldrum about the Siberian Snowman conference and excursion. We had spotlighted Meldrum’s concern first in October (here and here).
In “Yeti Evidence Falls Flat: Scientist Says Local Officials Staged Siberian Snowman Hunt For Publicity,” Meldrum did not hold back in his critique of what occurred.
Meldrum felt that…
…local Siberian officials staged the entire Snowman scenario — all for publicity.
“It was a very awkward feeling because here I was a guest and this was clearly orchestrated,” said Idaho State University anthropologist and anatomist Jeffrey Meldrum.
Meldrum told the reporter that his…
…suspicions began when trip organizer Igor Burtsev, head of the Yeti Institute at Kemerovo State University, told the group that it might find some remains of Yeti footprints in the cave.
“Somebody found a right footprint,” Meldrum said. “But I thought it was a little vague and not real distinct. It was a pretty expansive cave and there could’ve been footprints all over the place, if there was something tromping around in there in the sand.”
When Meldrum decided to go farther into the cave on his own, followed by a cameraman, “one of the regional government people saw us and rather harshly called us back, stopping us from going any farther back.”
“I thought that was kind of odd, and then someone picked up a little tuft of hair that was apparently pressed into the footprint. At that point, I wasn’t comfortable with the situation and had an inkling of what might be happening,” Meldrum said.
Once again, read the article, here.
It is obvious Meldrum understands where his statements leave him in the eyes of the Russians:
….now that he’s voiced his dubious opinion on the events of the Siberian Yeti hunt, Meldrum said he doubts he’ll be included in any future Russian field trips.
“They were talking about having this conference become an annual event,” he said, “and I’m quite confident I will not be invited back.”
This Siberian Snowman (illustrated above), which was individually named Mecheny by the eyewitnesses, is the Harry Trumbore drawing from Loren Coleman’s and Patrick Huyghe’s The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates.
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.
I’ve always had a great deal of respect for Jeff, he stands up for the science, and insists on being professional even if it doesn’t endure him to the more hopeful researchers in the field.
I’ve never been much of a full-fledged fan of Dr. Meldrum but a few more reports like this might have me asking the man to run for president. If I’m correct Loren, weren’t you also invited to this same event? For whatever reason’s you didn’t attend, koodles to you.
This is just a finer point as to why I admire Jeff Meldrum as I admire Loren Coleman.
Igor Burstev is the culprit and I was amazed when the squatchers of the United States treated him with so much respect on his trip here this past spring/summer.
When I read of his “work” at the Carter farm, red flags were raised. I am so glad the Jeff had the balls to speak out.
So often we try to be nice to everyone and not say “hoax” or “crazy”. It’s like the old parable of The Emperor’s New Clothes.
We all are so “AFRAID” of the public lashing we will receive if we are the first one to call foul.
Lately, I am seeing more and more unbelievable things in the name of Bigfoot. I am shaking my head in amazement.
I feel the lack of credible physical evidence makes certain people fabricate events and situations so as to remain in the limelight. Good Lord. There are only at most 500 people in the world who give a flying fig if you wrote a book about Bigfoot.
All we want is hard, solid proof.
Like Dr. Jeff doesn’t have better things to do than get involved with a bunch of crazy Russians and their Siberian Snowjob.
I am very pleased to see Jeff speaking out about this. It is good to see how critical thinking in Bigfooting has a home with serious researchers, and that they have the strength to stand up and speak against individuals they disagree with and suspect of too much wishful thinking and fabricating evidence to stay in the limelight.
Bigfooting needs it’s dreamers, but it won’t get far without serious scientists fighting for facts. Thank you Jeff for standing up for the scientific method and looking beyond the need to “convince” the masses by fabricating evidence to gain support for your research!
Could you imagine how hokey that expedition must have been for Meldrum of all people to say it was all BS? Paul, from The Bigfoot Show podcast said it best when he was talking about the Russians. They believe every story that they hear as 100% truth (same as FB/FBF group). And they will find or use anything around them as evidence. I hope Igor wasn’t fueling this Soviet Snipe hunt, but he sure buys into a lot of BS stories. As soon as he heard that lady say that Fox asked her for garlic in English, he should have been on the first plane to Moscow.
SIBERIAN TAIGA RESPONSE TO SKEPTICS
As Kemerovo region officials reported, a scientific conference featuring a boxing legend, Nikolai Valuev, and U.S. Bigfoot believers held in beginning of October, 2011 in that region of Russia, has claimed that it found “95 percent evidence” for the existence of a Yeti-like hominoid in southern Siberia.
But the opposition politicians ridiculed the findings as pure pre-election publicity for United Russia. On another hand, all this might attract so far is tourism, said the scientific opponents.
And just in less than a month after the Conference the Siberian taiga answered to both the politicians’ and other suspicious scientific skeptics’ accusations. See following.
On November 6 a resident of the Tashtagol city Yuri Koungoushev with his wife Svetlana and two daughters arrived for the weekend to their summer cabin in the forest not far from the city. They noticed big footprints in the snow which crossed the yard and went up a steep slope through the bushes. The family were surprised and scared by the size of the strides that were close to 4,5 – 5 feet. In some footprints they could see imprints of toes. The footprints crossed also a 14 feet wide creek, not having broken the thin ice on its surface, i.e. the creature just jumped over that fairly wide creek.
The stride up the slope became shorter, about three feet, but still too long for a human walking up that slope.
Yuri took shots with his film camera and made video-clip of the event. The family didn’t stay at the house for the night for fear of the creature, they returned to the city and informed the local newspaper about their findings.
On the next day the photo-reporter Kirill Sazanov with other collegues came to the spot and was convinced that those were real tracks of a huge biped. He also took several photos of the footprints, but fresh fallen snow made them not so visible. Anyway, the newsmen were very excited with what they saw and published an article about it which the local people sent over to me.
I connected later with Kirill, and he has sent me the video and photos of the findings.
Thus it looks that the Snowman decided to show to the skeptics that he really exists in Highland Shoria, and was not made up by the authorities for their electoral purposes, and not deceiving the international public. Of course, the authorities showed their wisdom and flexibility and attracted this phenomenon for the good of their population, which is worthy of praise.
And at the same time their attitude objectively contributes to progress in the study of these mysterious bipeds. For this the researchers-hominologists are very grateful to them.
Dr. Igor Burtsev,
Director,
International Center of Hominology
I could attached photos by Yuri Koungoushev< but am not aware how to do this
Let’s not follow those politicians who starting new cold war between the USA and Russia re European PRO system.
Don’t split the Bigfoot researchers of two countries!
United we shall win!
There seems to me to be an inference that Dr Jeff was admired in his critique of the Kemerova evidence for stating, that what he had observed, wasn’t valid evidence for the Siberian version of bigfoot. My appreciation of Dr Jeff is based on his recorded objectivity in weighing up evidence and being able to assess its value rationaly. Resulted in him either supporting evidence or not supporting it. He did state however, that he thought there was otherwise real evidence for a Russian bigfoot.
He is not alone and bigfoot research is full of individuals who ‘criticaly think’ their way through what is on offer in the way of evidence and reject and accept accordingly. It is thus they come to believe in the reality of bigfoot.
It is nice to hear from Dr Burtsev again he’s a great advocate for relic hominids and has been for nearly 50 years. I am sure he doesn’t always get it right and has a particular political matrix to contend with. Even so he has and is making a welcome contribution to Russian research and good that he can share it with us and reach out to us in the way he has done. One hopes that with the improvements in being made in DNA analysis he will consider in due course having Kwit and Zana’s DNA tested again.
As for a lack of credible evidence I doubt this is so. There is defiantly a multi-faceted bigfoot phenomen with hugh amounts of evidence the best explanation or hypothesis for which is that a real creature is at the heart of it. Like much of science absolute proof is elusive and difficult but there is enough evidence for a rational person with knowledge to say with some confidence, bigfoot is real.
Credit to Jeff for calling BS. It sounds like they didnt give him much of a choice with the flimsy evidence. If a 10 ft tall 800 lb primate had just been in the cave for a few days, evidence would likely be all over the place. Can you imagine how much a BF must eat? The scat would probably be big enough to trip over.
By the way, Jeff was the only one who was doubtful from 6 foreign and several Russian participants of the conference. And nobody else reflected that they had an awkward feeling that all was orchestrated.
As to the findings in the cave, I myself was astonished of seeing them. Before that day I didn’t believe that the creatures visited that cave. And even the dermal ridges were seen on one footprint!
As to Khwit’s and a woman’s skulls, I’ve given them up to geneticists to make their analysis… Now it is not in my responsibility, the results depend of them. And they work in cooperation, Russian and American specialists in that field…
Igor,
Than you for your reply. However, I think you will have difficulty in convincing interested parties that the Kemerova site was not compromised in a significant way. Be that as it may, I feel that other evidence should arise which will make up for it and interesting and valuable knowledge gained. Be nice if you can make it happen with clear cut cases and evidence and also not be put of further work by doubts that some might about Kemerova.
It is pleasing to know that Kwit and Zana are being looked at again and it would be interesting to learn who is doing the additional work and their eventual findings. Are you able to state who it is at this point? I wonder how certain you are that the skulls you have are those of Kwit and Zana because from Zana’s description she was quite a lot different to the average human female and this ought to show up in her DNA. There was another report recently from Manitoba Canada of a female who may have been similar to Zana and appeared to be seeking human company. I do not have a link at present.
About Khwit we are sure 100%, because he was buried in 1954, and those men who did it showed his grave to me. As to Zana’s skull I cannot be so sure, though the women’s skull was exhumed from the neighbored grave. We need more attentive analysis of her DNA and compare it with Khwit’s one to say, if she was his mother.
There is also another difficulty: the last DNA analyses of Bigfoot’s DNA lead us to conclusion, that their DNA does not differ of the human’s…
And Khwit’s skull’s shape VERY MUCH differs of local peoples’ and is similar to Australoides, and woman’s one also much differs of locals and is more close to African type, but has very protruding lower (teeth-lips) part of the face…
Thank you Igor, I think you will get there in the end!
To be significant kwit and zana’s dna must differ from homo sapien if their reported history is true and it would be interesting to see what more enlightened analysis, which I hope you now have access to, might reveal in due course.
Things are now at an interesting stage awaiting the outcome of Dr ketchums work on potential bigfoot samples and there seems to me to be a bit of a lull before a storm scenario. I do not think it will be easy but rather expect some exciting new facts to be revealed. This could have some bearing on Kwit and Zana, I hope it does.
It seems a bit odd that there is very little evidence for denesovan man as compared to say neandertal man and I would anticipate revelations maybe concerning many more examples being identified or turning up. Looks like pealeoanthropology is going through a pardigm shift which all started with homo floriensis. Shame Dr Grover krantz isn’t here to see it all- but maybe he is!