“Most Convincing Evidence of Bigfoot”: Exclusive Photos and Video
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on June 24th, 2011
Bigfoot Press Conference Seeks DNA Test To Answer Bigfoot Mystery
A DNA test could prove the one thing that decades of grainy videos, mysterious footprints and unverified eyewitness accounts haven’t — the existence of Bigfoot.
Bigfoot researchers in California say they’ve obtained startling evidence, and are now trying to raise money for genetic testing on an oil residue purportedly left behind by the elusive hairy beast.
AOL Weird News has obtained exclusive photos taken recently by forensic expert Mickey Burrow, who examined the evidence, and those photos are available here for the first time.Lee Spiegel
AOL Weird News
The Huffington Post
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Bigfoot or bear? Impression left on the driver’s side window of a pickup truck owned by Jeffrey Gonzalez. The bizarre image was left by an alleged Bigfoot in California’s Sierra National Forest over Memorial Day 2011. DNA samples of the impressions will eventually determine the identity of the animal responsible for them.
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Close-up of the “paw” print image. The impression was reportedly left by Bigfoot on the window of a pickup truck in the California Sierra National Forest over Memorial Day weekend 2011.
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Bigfoot or bear? Pictured is a second impression left on the rear side window of the same truck from the previous slides. According to forensic/law enforcement photographer Mickey Burrow, “What you’re seeing is a swipe mark. It looks like a small hand, swiping to the left, leaving another impression, and there’s hair within those areas — you can see where the hair would be.”
At a press conference today in Fresno, Calif., the Sanger Paranormal Society reached out to the public to help come up with the needed funds to pay for a thorough analysis of DNA from an alleged Bigfoot creature.
Sanger founder Jeffrey Gonzalez presented photographs taken of strange impressions left on the windows of his pickup truck that was temporarily abandoned in a snow storm when he and several others were on a Bigfoot expedition over Memorial Day weekend in California’s Sierra National Forest.
When the men returned to retrieve Gonzalez’s truck, they were startled to discover the window markings — including a large paw-like image — and what they first thought was evidence of hair on two of the truck windows.
Gonzalez called in forensic/law enforcement photographer Mickey Burrow, who has spent 14 years as a qualified court photographic expert and crime scene processor.
“I immediately started wondering if there could be some DNA left behind, because if this thing put its face on the window, I thought there was probably DNA on there,” Burrow told AOL.
“I’ve got the know-how. I’ve done it more than 5,000 times on crime scenes. In this case, I treated it like it was a vehicle that got burglarized.
“As I was looking at the windows, I told Jeff it looked like something came up to the truck, rubbed up against it, swiped along the side of it, and then just put its face up on the window and looked in — that’s what it looks like.”
Burrow photographed the images left on the truck windows and collected some DNA swabs. While Gonzalez suggested one of the impressions shows a hand print, Burrow isn’t convinced.
“I’m very iffy on it. To me, it looks like a paw print,” he explained. “I don’t think it was a primate or a biped, because it looks too much like a paw. But then again, we don’t know what Bigfoot is.
“I was just looking at what I could find off the truck. I didn’t find any hair or blood or prints, so we really don’t know what we have that touched it. We don’t know if it’s a bear or a Bigfoot or a mountain lion.”
Bigfoot is a legendary tall, hairy ape-like creature that has somehow defied capture and identification. Also known as Sasquatch, Abominable Snowman and Yeti, it supposedly lives in heavily forested or snow-capped mountainous regions of the world.
While most scientists deny Bigfoot’s existence, decades of huge numbers of eyewitness reports, pictures and films have kept the legend alive.
Previous attempts to analyze potential Bigfoot DNA haven’t resulted in anything that could be considered as the scientific find of the ages. That’s why Gonzalez is being very careful about who he’ll turn over his reported Bigfoot DNA to.
“We need somebody to come forward to take this DNA and get it mapped,” he told AOL. “Since nobody knows what a Bigfoot is, there’s no available DNA for it. But by testing this DNA, by process of elimination we can find out if it was a bear, gorilla, baboon or something else.
“If it’s not any of those, and you’ve eliminated all the possibilities, and it’s not human, then what’s left?”
Burrow is looking for an objective, science-based truth.
“I would like to just find out, because it’s got my interest piqued,” he said. “I believe Bigfoot exists, but I don’t believe it has mystical powers like many people say it does. I think it’s just an unknown species that hasn’t been discovered or hasn’t fully evolved.”Lee Spiegel
AOL Weird News
The Huffington Post
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Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
I hate to say it, but the more I see of the photos, the more I think ‘bear’.
Strange that they don’t seem to mention it on their website.
What the hell is wrong with these people? The fact that they publicized these photos implies that they had a reason for thinking it might have been Bigfoot. For example, that they saw Bigfoot rubbing against the car. When you come back to your car and you see marks like these, you don’t just think, “Oh, it must be Bigfoot.” It’s a freaking bear! Shame on these losers for getting everyone’s hopes up.
I have to agree with flame821 – seeing the other photos in context really makes it seem more likely it was a bear.
Ughhh… With no evidence to support their claims, they have nothing. It’s called matrixing. It’s where an unorganized, fortunate arrangement of items, images, smudges, odors, etc. look to have the appearance of being something else. In the case of humans, our primal instincts will cause us to see something that appears to have two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Just like when people claim they see an image of Jesus on their potato chip….and so on.
Until some sort of concrete evidence shows up in this case, I’ll just chalk it up to a bear sniffing out the car and their nose/tongue left a smudge that just happens to look like something else.
IMHO, if these people were serious and didn’t fake all of this for publicity, then they would have had the DNA run before calling a press conference claiming to be the “most convincing evidence of bigfoot”. So, until there is concrete proof, it’s just a lot of hot wind.
Wow, the fourth photo (of the entire window area) looks exactly like a bear face.
Looks like the bear’s muzzle hit straight into the glass, then slid off.
I hate to say it too but yeah…Bear
Bear paw and smudges of Bear’s snout. I found a print online of a black Bear and you can see how the 5th toe is not visible in the dirt track nor the window.
The paws definitely look like bear prints. I will say the “face” print is eerie. But what they think is the bigfoot mouth could easily be a bear’s nose. I think these guys are sincere but like the guys on the Finding Bigfoot show, they are letting emotions instead of common sense prevail. I hope they get the DNA testing done. The police forensic employee is really putting his neck out there. If this comes back as a bear it could damage his usefulness.
I am really surprised that these bigfoot hunters spend years to get nothing but prints and fuzzy photos and nothing more. Getting smudges on your truck I guess would get anyone excited after years of very little. Good luck to them. Though as I have stated many times I think Bigfoot is a myth. But it would be very cool if proven real. I just don’t think it will ever happen.
Giving new meaning to blobsquatch…….at least this time it isn’t a grainy video from a hundred yards away, through the trees, for three seconds.
I think they jumped the gun a little too soon. I would have waited until I got the DNA done before declaring it was bigfoot. Too many critters out in the woods to eliminate. And dang, the entire thing does sound like a bear. Yogi bear was looking for some snacks through the camper’s window and drooled.
They said that if the creature was a bear, it would have torn into the ice boxes with food all inside them, yet the animal didn’t do so, therefore they think it was not a Grizzly. However, the bear may not have been hungry at the time, just perhaps curious, though I wonder why it didn’t smash the glass with a paw swipe or ripped the car door off (Grizzlies have been known to do that, and I don’t doubt that a big black bear could also tear a car door off) to get inside at what it was curious about, nor why other bears did not arrive and tear into the ice boxes. However, the marks on the window look too much like a bear that has slid its nose across the glass, and the fact that the hand/paw prints show no dermal ridges (which bears have none) adds more weight to the bear theory (they tried to explain away the lack of dermal ridges by saying that the weather got to the glass. Maybe, maybe not, but the prints look like those of a bear).
And the one pic of footprints shown before looks like bear tracks overlaid with a boot track.
Until proper DNA results are in, I’m going with Bear.
I’m curious as to, if it is a bear, if it was a Grizzly or a Black bear. I’m a bear freak, and they play a major part in Sasquatch research (misidentification).
I think this only proves one thing. It answers the age old question of “Does a bear smear in the woods?”. The answer is Yes!
I’m impressed they convinced me it’s anything!
Smearsquatch.
🙂
What these people obviously don’t realize is that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on DNA tests to figure out what left these marks. If there is hair all you need to do is a microscopic analysis of the cuticular scales. I can do that for free.
I’m surprised the forensic photographer didn’t figure this out.
Cernovog
Thank you for your kind offer, but if I recall the press conference correctly they did not recover any actual hairs, just images of ‘hair swipes’ in the impression.
Truthfully if there were any hairs they more than likely would have been lost in either the weather or the drive home.
I do have a question for you. Is there a noticeable difference between the hairs of black bears and brown bears and grizzly bears? I am assuming yes but I would like to know from someone with experience in this field.
Has anyone ever raised the question of hibernation of Bigfoot? If we think of him as a animal, then why not? Bears and other species hibernate, then why go into these areas in winter looking for Bigfoot?
Also, I have another question, If we have all this technology, why do people think every noise in the woods is automatically a Bigfoot? A lot of animals are nocturnal, why do we assume Bigfoot is awake and roaming the woods at night?
flame821: To be perfectly up front, my experience doing microscopic analysis of hair is limited to prey animals. I study the foraging ecology of predators by examining hair and bones found in their scat. So, I don’t have any hands-on experience looking at bear hair.
That said, I consulted my references and, besides hair color, there is a difference between the scale pattern found in black bear hair and brown bear hair, but it is a very fine difference. It would take someone with a bit of experience to make that distinction quickly and confidently.
Brown bears, grizzly bears and Kodiak bears all refer to the same animal. There may be some regional variation, but they’re all the same species (sometimes different subspecies).
Blair, to answer your question, hibernation is almost unheard of among primates. There is a species of dwarf lemur with a fatty tail that goes into a torpor, but that’s as close as it gets for primates. There are plenty of reports of winter sightings and, of course, the yeti is quite famous as a possible cold-weather version of the same creature. While anything is possible, I see no reason to discourage people from investigating during the winter months.
Bear. Next.