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www.bigfootdiscoveryproject.com January 21, 2007 Volume 2 Number 9

Message from the Curator

Now that El Nio has chosen to deliver us a

dry-but-cold Winter, we can breathe a sigh of

relief cause the river isnt showing any signs of

rising. And even better than that is the fact the

skies are clear, and visibility is at its best. No

time like the present for some squatchin (justbe sure to wear your Long Johns. ) As Tom

points out in this issue, were very excited about

the prospects of finding some signs of BF in

Nisene Marks Park, and have plans to investi-

gate other nearby areas, such as the Portola

Redwoods and possibly Henry Coe Park in the

San Jose area as well.

A couple of issues ago I mentioned that I

had interviewed for a job, and expected that

I wouldnt get it because I lack expertise in

HTML and Dreamweaver (web site creation

software.) Well, I was right I did not get the

job. However I did get a contract freelance

design job, which is actually even better as I canstill pay attention to developing the museum,

but also earn some bucks to pay the bills. I have

opted however to close the museum during the

week as attendance has been sketchy Monday -

Friday. So for the months of January and

February the museum will be open only on the

weekends (10-6) or by appointment. So if you

are planning to be in the area and want to visit

the museum, just give us a call and well be

happy to open for your visit, even if its

midweek. So thanks to some creative refinanc-

ing and the freelance work, we can continue

with the Discovery Project and our search for

tangible proof for at least another year.

The stories continue to come in... a lady who

now lives in Boulder Creek said that back in

1985, while she was in an area known as the

Brickyard, close to Raytown, near Kansas City,

she was watched by an 8-9 brown BF. It had a

human-like nose but the face was covered with

hair. She said the area is hilly and heavily forest-

ed, and that there are underground caverns

nearby. She was of the opinion the BF get

around underground.

It has come to my attention (via Cryptomundo)

that Stanford University recently offered a

course concerning cryptozoology. The course

was within the Program in History and

Philosophy of Science and Technology.

The following is taken from Stanfords

website, introducing the one-time course...

Dinosaurs, Sea Serpents, andAbominable Snowmen: UnknownAnimals in Modern History

HIST 40S

Instructor: Peder Roberts

Course Description:

Why does the Loch Ness Monster have a

scientific name despite generally being

considered not to exist? How did Native

Americans think about fossils, and how didthis knowledge relate to European paleontol-

ogy? Why do living fossils attract so much

attention? Who exactly determines the right

way to study or even just represent the

sasquatch or the yeti?

The central goal of this course is to examine

how the way people think about these and

other animals is related to their historical

context. Our case studies include dinosaurs,

mastodons, the Gloucester Sea Serpent, the

yeti, the mountain gorilla, lake monsters, and

the Flores hobbit people. We will use a

variety of sources including media reports,

photographs, movies, personal recollections,

historical analyses, scientific papers and

documents, novels, and comic books.

Course Aims

Students will:

Consider how scientific evidence can inform

historical research, and vice versa.

Learn to work with a range of primary

sources, not limited to written texts.

Explore the relationship between popular

culture and scientific knowledge.

Analyze how and why individuals claim

expertise or privileged knowledge.

Examine the relationship between knowled

claims and the intellectual and cultural conte

within which they are made.

Well, at least theyre making some progress;my experience at Stanford 40 years ago was

that they wouldnt even talkabout such thing

Recent acquisitions for the Reference Library:

Little People and a Lost World, Linda Golden-

berg, Twenty-First Century Books, 2007

Searching the Abyss: A Beginners Guide to

Cryptozoological Investigation, Mark A.

Mihalko, Publish America, 2005

Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoo

ogy, 2 Volume Set, George Eberhart, ABC-

CLIO, 2002On the Trail of the Saucer Spies: Ufos and

Government Surveillance, Nick Redfern,

Anomalist Books, 2006

Scream of the Sasquatch DVD, 2006

UFOs and the National Security State:

Chronology of a Coverup, 1941-1973, Richa

M. Dolan, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2002

Searching For Ropens - Living Pterosaurs in

Papua New Guinea, Jonathan Whitcomb,

BookShelf Press, 2006

Tales of the Cryptids: Mysterious Creatures

That May or May Not Exist, Kelly Milner

Halls, Darby Creek Publishing, 2006

The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings,

John Keel, Tor Books, 1970

Roadside Americana: Landmark Tourist

Attractions, Eric Peterson, Publications

International, 2005

Weird California, Greg Bishop, Joe Oesterle

and Mike Marinacci, Sterling Publishing, 200

---Michael Rugg

Jamie Jackson, a visiting Bigfooter from WA

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Happy New Year!

Lets Take a Walk in the

Forest of Nisene Marks

by Tom Yamarone

Its always a wonderful time of year

even the weather has been nice! The new

year brings a new beginning to just about

everything. It seems that way to me. The

only drawback I can see is that were still

several months away from the right

conditions to be getting out in the woods

on a consistent basis. For now, its still the

off season the time of day hikes and

scouring the home library (or bigfoot

museum) shelves for something interesting

to bide our time.

The on-line investigations have been

busier than usual this Winter. I have been

following-up on several reports but the

best one is from years ago. The current

ones turned out to be nothing more than

bored individuals submitting a series of

seemingly believable reports from a little

town in northern California. It still took up

a chunk of time just before Christmas, but

fortunately, didnt become a problem.

I can tell you about a great local area to

explore. On a frigid morning in mid-

December, I had the opportunity to take a

friend and spend a few hours out in the

Forest of Nisene Marks a state park just

south of the bigfoot museum. I chose this

location because a report came into the

BFRO from a man who had a sighting

here in April 1958.

Back then the area was logging company

land that had been logged in the 1920s

and 1930s. He and his friends would rid

their bikes on the logging roads, hike and

camp in the area. Today, most of the sam

area is preserved much as it was in the

state park.

We were looking for the logging road he

was on and its still there today as a fire

road specifically Hinkley Creek fire

road. On the map, it begins off of OliveSprings Road just up from Soquel, CA.

We were fortunate to come upon two loc

residents taking a Sunday morning walk

otherwise we might never have found it.

They directed us to a gated dirt road with

a posted no trespassing sign care of a

local lumber company. They said it was

OK to access the state park via this road,

so we did. We had to cross one substanti

creek and three smaller ones in the first

mile and were soon climbing up a steep

grade above Hinkley Creek.

Another chance encounter with a local

woman walking her dogs allowed us to ask

about the road and what lay ahead. She

assured us we were on the right path and

that we would soon come to a sign indicat-

ing we were entering the state park. We

proceeded along this road for another mile

or so and soon reached the first ridge line.

F I E L D W O R K

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The area is beautiful and heavily wooded

with 2nd growth redwoods and we had

barely penetrated the expanse that is now

the Forest of Nisene Marks. There are still

two residences within this area of the park

and they use the road we were on to come

and go from their homes. We could smell

the smoke from their wood burning stove

but never actually saw the residences.

Its not hard to imagine that this area could

still be habitat for bigfoot creatures. I am

of the opinion that there is ample, untram-

meled forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains

for this to be a distinct possibility and the

reports that Mike has received at the

museum bears this out. There is also a

report on the BFRO database from just

south of the state park boundary from

November 2004. Yes, the Forest of Nisene

Marks is an expansive area with many

remote places not explored on a consistent

basis to this day.

The report I took in December involves two

14 year old boys who pushed their bicycles

up this very dirt road on that April day in

1958 and coasted back down. It was whilethey were coasting down the logging road

that the witness slowed his bike at a large

mud puddle so as to not splash through it.

He glanced to his right to see a large, dark

figure leaning out from behind a redwood

tree alongside the road. As his friend

approached from behind him, and he

looked in that direction, it moved back

behind the tree and jumped down the steep

slope off the road. They both stopped and

heard it running down a slope that was sosteep that had they considered doing the

same, they would have been sliding down on

their behinds. He reported that they listened

to it running down towards Hinkley Creek

for quite a while more than a minute at his

estimation. He said they were more surprised

than scared. The creature never intimidated

them and it wasnt anything that they were

aware of like the black bears they knew

were up here.

No, they werent scared of what they

couldnt figure out. It was a mystery and

remained so for many years. So were all t

other strange occurrences that they would

experience in this forest mostly wood-

on-wood knocking, whistles and some

strange screams. Then in the early 1960s

this young man was riding motorcycles o

these roads and had a very alarming

encounter. As they sat on their bikeswatching the sunset from Sandy Point

Overlook, something started screamin

from down below them. A blood curdling

scream and roar that was unbelievably lou

Over the next ten minutes, the creature

sounded off two more times the last one

emanating from just below their vantage

point. The young men started up their

motorcycles and fled the other direction

exiting the hills near the current state park

entrance.

The area that we hiked in last month is ju

as he described it. Very steep slopes drop

down from this road into the Hinkley Cre

watershed. And, as I mentioned earlier, th

is just one very small portion of the

protected parkland. We hope to spend mo

time this year exploring the trails of Nisen

Marks state park by day and, hopefully

arranging to camp out in the few backcou

try, walk-in camp sites that are available

here. Well keep you posted as to what w

plan and what we may find.

There are many more areas just like this i

the Santa Cruz Mountains. We would

encourage anyone interested in looking fo

bigfoot to come and explore them. The

back country of Big Basin Redwoods,

Portola and Butano state parks offer many

miles of isolated forest to enjoy and

investigate for possible bigfoot activity. L

us know if you are planning on doing so

and maybe we can join you.

Left: Little waterfall fern gullyTop center: Forest hillside, Nisene MarksBottom center: Steep hillside off Hinkley Creek Fire RdRight: Hillside of fire road Nisene Marks

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Oldest Australopithecine

Child Remains Discovered

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer

NEW YORK - In a discovery sure to fuel an

old debate about our evolutionary history,

scientists have found a remarkably complete

skeleton of a 3-year-old female from the

ape-man species represented by "Lucy."

The remains found in Africa are 3.3 million

years old, making this the oldest known

skeleton of such a youthful human ancestor.

"It's a pretty unbelievable discovery... It's

sensational," said Will Harcourt-Smith, a

researcher at the American Museum of Natural

History in New York who wasn't involved in

the find. "It provides you with a wealth of

information." For one thing, it gives new

evidence for a contentious feud about whether

this species, which walked upright, also

climbed and moved through trees easily.

The species is Australopithecus afarensis,

which lived in Africa between about 4 million

and 3 million years ago. The most famous

afarensis is Lucy, discovered in Ethiopia in

1974, a creature that lived about 100,000 years

after the newfound specimen.The new find wasreported in a recent issue of the journal Nature

by Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck

Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in

Leipzig, Germany; Fred Spoor, professor of

evolutionary anatomy at University College

London, and others.

The skeleton was discovered in 2000 in

northeastern Ethiopia. Scientists have spent six

painstaking years removing the bones from

sandstone, and the job will take years more to

complete. Judging by how well it was pre-

served, the skeleton may have come from

a body that was quickly buried by sediment in

a flood, the researchers said."It's a once-in-a-

lifetime find," said Spoor.The skeleton has

been nicknamed "Selam," which means

"peace" in several Ethiopian languages.

Most scientists believe afarensis stood uprightand walked on two feet, but they argue about

whether it had ape-like agility in trees.That

climbing ability would require anatomical

equipment like long arms, and afarensis had

arms that dangled down to just above the

knees. The question is whether such features

indicate climbing ability or just evolutionary

baggage. The loss of that ability would suggest

crossing a threshold toward a more human

existence.

Spoor said so far, analysis of the new fossil

hasn't settled the argument but does seem to

indicate some climbing ability.While the lower

body is very human-like, he said, the upper

body is ape-like:

The shoulder blades resemble those of a

gorilla rather than a modern human.

The neck seems short and thick like a great

ape's, rather than the more slender version

humans have to keep the head stable while

running.

The organ of balance in the inner ear is more

ape-like than human.

The fingers are very curved, which could

indicate climbing ability, "but I'm cautious

about that," Spoor said. Curved fingers

have been noted for afarensis before, but their

significance is in dispute.

A big question is what the foot bones willshow when their sandstone casing is removed,

he said. Will there be a grasping big toe like

the opposable thumb of a human hand? Such a

chimp-like feature would argue for climbing

ability, he said. Yet, to resolve the debate,

scientists may have to find a way to inspect

vanishingly small details of such old bones, to

get clues to how those bones were used in life,

he said.

Bernard Wood of George Washington Unive

sity, who didn't participate in the discovery,

in an interview that the fossil provides strong

evidence of climbing ability. But he also agr

that it won't settle the debate among scientis

which he said "makes the Middle East look l

a picnic." Overall, he wrote in a Nature

commentary, the discovery provides "a verit

mine of information about a crucial stage in

human evolutionary history."

The fossil revealed just the second hyoid bon

be recovered from any human ancestor. This

bone, which attaches to the tongue muscles,

very chimp-like in the new specimen, Spoor

said. While that doesn't directly reveal anyth

about language, it does suggest that whateve

sounds the creature made "would appeal mo

a chimpanzee mother than a human mother,

Spoor said.

The fossil find includes the complete skull,

including an impression of the brain and the

lower jaw, all the vertebrae from the neck to

just below the torso, all the ribs, both shouldblades and both collarbones, the right elbow

part of a hand, both knees and much of both

and thigh bones. One foot is almost complet

providing the first time scientists have found

afarensis foot with the bones

still positioned as they were in life, Spoor sa

The work was funded by the National

Geographic Society, the Institute of Human

Origins at Arizona State University, the Leak

Foundation and the Planck Institute.

P A L E O A N T H R O P O L O G Y