February 24, 2007

Bigfoot’s Monolithic Margins

Part of the exercise here is to understand that in pursuit of good evidence leading to the verification of the reality, scientifically, of Bigfoot, we must build the best collection of Bigfoot footprints under the sun and throw out fake footprints on the way there. There is a point in our quest where it must be realized that nothing is beyond reproach and nothing is above reexamination, by us, by Bigfoot skeptics, by debunkers, by true believers, and by agnostics.

Even though I readily admit my pro-Bigfoot bias, I am not out to sell you on one side or the other. My desire is to truly get to the bottom of this, make certain that what we are looking at is the best evidence, and continue the search. If you do not accept Bigfoot as a possible real animal, you need not go further or farther down the metaphorical and real trails, because you have already made up your mind.

For me, the process is different. During all those years I’ve spent in the woods, searching since 1960, it was a common practice for those few of us out there to merely discard as we went along. In other words, if a track of a bear, a less-than-great imprint, an obvious human fake, or other prints that did not fit into the generally accepted “real Bigfoot” parameters presented itself, you didn’t cast it, photograph it, or share it. It was seen as a bad track.

Remember, as I wrote in an eariler blog, only the “best tracks” were kept when you did find the good Bigfoot tracks. We know now that was a mistake; post-Patterson-Gimlin footage, trackways are cast. However, in general, simpler logic – why cast obvious prints that look like pranks or your cousin’s barefooted track – was used pre-1967 to home in on “what looked like” the most genuine Bigfoot imprints. Resources were limited also, and plaster of Paris seemed expensive when you were doing this on your own.

Lots of stuff was examined and thrown out for years, even before we got home. There was a woodcraft awareness, clarity, and casualness about it. But then, Bigfoot fans from the 1950s-1960s weren’t running back home and posting their latest weekend camping trip as another “expedition,”as you see on the web today. I’m older, who knows if I am wiser, but like many others, I have seen the field evolve, sometimes for the better, sometimes not so much.

In the age of the internet and the explosion of interest in Bigfoot, of course, it seems everything found is being collected – both the good and the bad – the fakes and the other animals – because finding Bigfoot tracks is “so cool.” Anyone can and is a Bigfoot hunter. The upside is that there are more eyes. The downside is that there are less discriminating eyes. The other part of the modern upside is that there are more critical thinkers too.

Additionally, therefore, with the mass interest too, everything is being reexamined and reviewed based on new revelations, as it should be, by more people. Some of this includes the discovery of hoax incidents from the past, which should be expunged from the present database, in spite of personalities and defensiveness. For those of us that consider Bigfoot an undiscovered primate, there should be no fear here, but an open-armed and open-minded welcoming of such new discoveries, so the data is truly “good.”

Grover Krantz use to talk about a “secret list” of indicators he had, so he could tell a real track from a fake one. Well, we know that despite this list, Krantz was human and some hoaxes slipped into his collection. There are no longer secret lists, but a more open and free sharing of trying to throw out the fakes, include the possibles, as it should be.

In line with this more modern approach, I have been given permission to share with you Matt Crowley’s short essay on “Fake Feet and ‘Monolithic Margins.'”

The set of fake feet seen here I made using a rigid two part urethane casting compound. Believe it or not, I didn’t actually set out to duplicate the morphology of the known Wallace prosthetic; it more or less just came out that way.

What becomes interesting is the morphology of the toes. I sculpted a large foot shaped track in potters clay then poured liquid urethane into the track about half way. When that was semi-cured, I embedded an old shoe and filled in more liquid urethane. The toes on my prosthetics on the plantar surface are quite well defined. But on top, on the dorsal surface, the prosthetic is “monolithic”, in the sense that the cleft between the toes does not extend from the plantar surface through to the dorsal surface. This sounds like a trivial detail, but the results may surprise you. Note that I made small cuts at the leading edge of the fake feet; I intended to hog out the cured urethane between the toes, but I lost interest. I took my fake feet to the banks of the Duwamish river mud flats and made some fake tracks.

Note that when the track is shallow, the toes are fairly well defined and the leading (anterior) edges of the toes are rounded. Now notice what happens when the same prosthetic is pressed rather deeply into the mud:

Yes, I know I’m comparing a left and a right, and this is because I didn’t notice the effect until I got home and looked at the photographs. I’ve got a clearer example up ahead. And indeed, both my right and left prosthetics show this effect. Note how when pressed deeply enough, the track exhibits a “monolithic margin” or an unbroken arc at grade which represents where the leading edge of an unbroken object made contact with the soil. The leading edge of each individual toe at grade becomes straighter.

Here is a close up of what the toes look like when I press my prosthetic deeply into fine, dry powder:

But lets get back to the business at hand: look closely at the wood prosthetic that Dale Wallace is holding in his right hand, the one with the dorsal surface facing the camera. Notice how the toe clefts seen on the plantar surface do not extend through to the dorsal surface? Now look again at the famous “page 77” track photo: we see a “monolithic margin” in the track!

Some months back, I put out a challenge on Bigfoot Forums to anyone who could find a photograph of a track from a known primate that exhibits the same morphology. My suggestion seemed to befall the same fate as David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature in that it “fell dead-born from the press”. No one took me up on the challenge. I’ve never seen a human track that exhibits anything but scalloped margins, as real humans with real toes produce real tracks, and all the real tracks I’ve ever seen have scalloped margins. I cannot prove that a track with a “monolithic margin” is always fake, but I can demonstrate that such a track morphology is consistent with what a Wallace style foot prosthetic produces.

The “page 77” track is not an isolated event. On Page 76 of Apes Among Us, Green posts a photograph with the caption “A 13” track driven into a sand and gravel bar on Bluff Creek” Note that 13” is the length of the “Onion Mountain” cast in question, the one Jimmy Chilcutt claims exhibits Bigfoot’s dermal ridges. But we need to be careful here, as this track may not have come from the August 1967 Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain trackway. From all the photos and written accounts, that trackway was in fine dust on a roadway. The “Page 76” track looks like a different substrate. But again, specificity in these matters is maddening, so I leave it at this; the following track is 13” long and resembles in gross morphology the cast in question that has been claimed to exhibit “dermals.”

Photo from page 76 Apes Among Us with caption “A 13″ track driven deep into a sand and gravel bar on Bluff Creek.”

A characteristic also seen in this photo from page 76 is the deep impression that the toes make and not the ball of the foot. Since toes are hinged, most tracks made with feet that have toes show the deepest impression at the ball of the foot, and not the toes. But what we see here in the “sand and gravel bar” photo is entirely consistent with what rigid fake feet often do, and that is digging in at the toe area. Compare the page 76 photo with what we see my Wallace style fake foot doing here:

And a close-up of the toe area:

In both my own fake track and Green’s track we see an unusual amount of “digging in” of the toes and very little indentation of the ball of the foot.

Note that Green himself observes the track was “driven deep” into the substrate. Indeed, this seems to be a necessary condition for the “monolithic margin” to appear. What can I say, just look at the toes! The anterior toe margin is monolithic in the same way that my own fake foot is. This feature alone is a huge red flag that the track is fake.

So before we look at the minutea of the dermal ridge business, we need to assess if the tracks from which the cast was made were made by Bigfoot at all.

When Ray Wallace died, a certain “circling of the wagons” occurred, led by John Green himself. Jeff Meldrum devotes a whole chapter in his new book in an attempt to counter the Wallace family claims. One of the favored tactics to discredit Wallace is to say that he was a crackpot, or even flat out nuts. Indeed, Green has posted letters he received from Wallace over the years that show this. Even skeptics like Mike Dennett will concede that Wallace was more or less delusional. But none of this invalidates his ability as a woodworker! Indeed, my own meager efforts at woodworking fall far short of the known prosthetic. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me!

The Advocates are let into an uncomfortable position in attempting to “explain away” the obvious morphological similarity with the known Wallace prosthetic and the “Page 77” track. They have to claim that Wallace fabricated his prosthetic as a copy of the track photo! If so, how did Wallace come to understand the subtleties involved in emulating the “monolithic margin”, especially if he was mental? Sorry guys, I don’t buy it.

I think the answer is dead simple; Wallace was a good woodworker and sculptor, but not a great anatomist. Some of his prosthetics contained the anatomically questionable “double ball” feature, and he failed to cut his toe clefts all the way from the plantar surface to the dorsal surface, thus leaving a subtle “tell” in the form of a “monolithic margin” in his tracks. His carved feet do not appear to be bilaterally symmetrical, and neither do the clearest of the tracks photographed by Green and Hooker. It seems strange to me than nearly 40 years have gone by, but no one seems to have noticed that the tracks did not exhibit bilateral symmetry! This alone should cast strong doubts on the trackway as having been made by the feet of a living animal.

What is the bottom line here? I cannot prove the tracks are fake, yet the Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain trackways exhibit multiple signatures of Ray Wallace hoaxing.  With these enormous “red flags” why do the advocates persist in claiming that “Wallace didn’t do it”. Well, ego is a big reason. If the tracks are fake, then Green and Dahinden were fooled, and fooled badly. Fooled by a known crackpot, and that’s gotta hurt.

So back to condition three; By no means have the advocates proven that Bigfoot made the Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain trackways, a necessary condition for the cast in question to exhibit Bigfoot’s dermal ridges.Matt Crowley, Fake Feet and “Monolithic Margins”

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