SO EP: 676 Dr. Jeff Meldrum

In this special remastered episode of Sasquatch Odyssey, we honor the late Dr. Jeff Meldrum — a man whose dedication, kindness, and scientific curiosity forever changed the way the world views Sasquatch research.There are some people who leave a mark so deep, so genuine, that their absence feels almost impossible to comprehend. For me, one of those people was Dr. Jeff Meldrum.

I first met Jeff back in March of 2021, when I was just a fledgling podcaster trying to find my footing. He didn’t have to say yes to being on my show — but he did. Graciously. Humbly. From that moment on, he set the tone for the kind of person I’d come to know him to be.

Just a few short years later, I found myself standing beside him on stage, sharing the spotlight with Jeff, Cliff Barackman, and Michael Freeman at a conference in Idaho. It was surreal — the same man I had admired for years was now a colleague, a friend, and a mentor. The last time I saw Jeff was back at the end of July, at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. 

We had just finished setting up our booths when I noticed Jeff sitting quietly off to the side. I carried over the plaster casts of the footprints from our property — as I’d done before — hoping to get his thoughts.

We sat and talked for a while — about his upcoming retirement, about life, and about the things that still fascinated him most. He joked about trying to convince his wife, Lauren, that he needed more space at home to store his growing collection of casts since he’d be losing his massive lab space at the university.I laughed, but something felt different. Jeff still had that kindness in his eyes, that thoughtful way about him — but there was a quiet heaviness there too.

Still, as always, he was generous with his time and his spirit.I had no idea it would be the last time I’d see him.Since his passing, I’ve watched as countless people have shared their memories and tributes — from students and colleagues to lifelong fans around the world.

I didn’t rush to do the same, because I needed time. Time to sit with the loss. Time to reflect on what Jeff meant to me, and to this community.

So tonight, I want to honor him in the most fitting way I can think of — by going back to where it all began.What you’re about to hear is our very first conversation — fully remastered from the original Sasquatch Odyssey interview that aired back in March of 2021.

This is my way of saying thank you, Jeff.

For your kindness.
For your brilliance.
And for the legacy you’ve left behind in the study of Sasquatch — and in the hearts of all of us who were lucky enough to know you.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
on here, something.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Just because my dog.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Something killed your dog.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
My dog.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
We're flying through the air over the tree. I don't
know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused.
All I saw was my dog.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Coming over the fence and he was dead.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see
any cars.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Sat, what are you putting?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
We got some wonder or something crawling around out here?
Did you see what it was?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
It was?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
It was standing enough.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
I'm out here looking through the window now and I
don't see anything.

Speaker 4 (00:55):
I don't want to go outside.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Jesus Quice, you better.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hello, hit thebody out here when I'm out there. I
thought of a venus about Tex forty nine.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Easy him out there.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, I'm working right.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Hey.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
You know, there are some people who leave a mark
so deep, so genuine, that their absence feels almost impossible
to comprehend. For me, one of those people was doctor
Jeff Meldrum. I first met Jeff back in March of
twenty twenty one, when I was just a fledgling podcaster
trying to find my footing. He didn't have to say
yes to being on my show, but he did graciously, humbly,

(01:36):
and from that moment on he set the tone for
the kind of person I'd come to know him to be.
Just a few short years later, I found myself standing
beside him on stage sharing that moment with Jeff Cliff Barrockman,
and Michael Freeman at a conference in Idaho. It was
surreal the same man I'd admired for years was now
a colleague, a friend, and a mentorstime I saw Jeff

(02:00):
was back at the end of July at the Smoky
Mountain big Foot Conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We had just
finished setting up our booths and Jeff was sitting quietly
off to the side. I carried over the plaster casts
of footprints from our property, hoping to get his take
on them, as I always valued his eye for detail.
We sat and talked for a while about his upcoming retirement,

(02:23):
about life, and about the things that still fascinated him most.
He joked about trying to convince his wife Lauren, that
he needed more space at home to store his ever
growing collection of casts, since he'd be losing that massive
lab space at the University. I remember laughing, but I
also remember feeling that something was different. Jeff still had

(02:45):
that kindness in his eyes, that thoughtfulness in his words,
but there was a quiet heaviness there too. Still, as always,
he was giving with his time, generous with his spirit.
I had no idea that it would be the life
last time I'd ever see him. Since his passing, I've
watched as countless people have paid tribute to him, students, colleagues,

(03:07):
fellow researchers, and fans from all around the world. I
didn't rush to do the same, because, to be honest,
I needed time, time to sit with the loss, time
to process what Jeff meant to me personally and what
he meant to this community. So tonight I want to
honor him in the most fitting way I can think of,

(03:28):
by going back to where it all began. What you're
about to hear is our very first conversation, fully remastered
from that original Sasquatch Odyssey interview we recorded back in
March of twenty twenty one. This is my way of
saying thank you, Jeff for your kindness, for your brilliance,
and for the legacy you've left behind in the study

(03:49):
of Sasquatch and in the hearts of all of us
who were lucky enough to know you. Welcome to the show, Doctor.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Meldrim, Thank you pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
It's my pleasure and it's an honor to get to
speak to you. I wanted to jump right into this
journey that you've been on basically since the nineties. I
know before that something got you interested in the subject
of Sasquatch and sent you on this path. Can you
walk me and the audience into your first introduction to
these things? What happened? Did it piqued your interest?

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Certainly? It began back when I was a youngster, about
ten years old in the fifth grade. As I recall,
at that time, it just happened that Roger Patterson began
his public airing of the documentary, which showcased the sixty
second film clip from Bluff Cree. One of the premiere

(04:38):
showings was at the Spokane Coliseum, where I lived at
the time. The kids at school were all a buzz
about the announcement that appeared in the paper, and I
had never heard of Bigfoot or Sasquatch before that, but
was always fascinated in all things prehistoric. Went through the
dinosaur phase, was fascinated with the questions of human evolution

(04:59):
even at that age, cave in and so forth. This
just seemed to embody all the mysteries prehistoric man and
all that wrapped into one package long story shorts. We
were there for one of the showings. My dad took
myself and my younger brother, and I know the rest.
Just one thing fell into another. I guess the other
thing that really the course was The next year in

(05:22):
sixth grade was a unit on primates, and because of
an open minded, excellent to sixth grade teacher when someone
equipped that Bickfoot would be a primate, rather than just
dismiss it as myth or fable, she had us evaluate
it based on how it was described by suppose that
eyewitnesses films. We determined that it seemed to have those

(05:43):
characteristics that we were enumerating to define primates, so she
included it on a litany of examples of primates that
we were going to Then, in turn, Doo reports on it. I,
by the quick draw action of my hand shooting up,
got picked to do Sasquatch along with another classmate. It
turns out that our librarian was the niece of John Green,

(06:05):
and had herself quite an extensive little file with the
newspaper clippings and magazine articles and a brand's banking new
copy of John Green's On the Track of the Sasquatch.
That was my introduction early on was Roger Patterson's book,
followed by John Greens On the Track of the Sasquatch.
And then shortly thereafter I got hold of a copy

(06:28):
of Ivan Sanderson's A Bomb Snowman Legend comes a live
boy once the fire was lit. Then I went after
it with a lot of gusto and started my own
collection of clippings. I was always scouring through other books
that mentioned things about the Yetti and Bigfoot. Of course,
I found out there was another Bigfoot in Idaho. Once

(06:50):
I moved to Idah, we shortly thereafter moved to Boise
found out about the renegade Indian by the name of
Bigfoot who was shot by Star Wilkerson down in the
Awahi Desert. It was a kind of all encompassing obsession
with the subject matter.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
It definitely sounds like quite the introduction. When did you
get the opportunity to dive into the footprints and the
castings and what was your introduction to that.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Eventually I read Grover Krantz's book A Big Footprints, in
which footprints and casts figure very prominently. Grover was an
anatomist and that was where his attention tended to focus
was on the physical trace of the creature in the
form of the footprints and footprint casts. Of course, he
was very involved with the investigation into the Bosberg cripplefoot incident,

(07:40):
and that was what really tipped the scales for him.
He was just so impressed by the subtleties of anatomy
that were evident in that either pathological or traumatized individual
that he felt it tipped the scale definitely decidedly for
him by involved in as an academic. It started just

(08:00):
a little bit before my first real big exposure to
footprints and casts myself. I was capped to help with
the evaluation of a piece of video footage that was
shot down in the California Redwoods and the Jededi Smith
National Forest, and this became known as the Playmate video.
It was shot by a documentary crew with a guest

(08:24):
hostess who had been the Playmate of the Year on
a previous occasion. It unfortunately got a lot of insinuation
and so forth the comic relief if you will, as
a result of that. But it was an interesting piece
of video footage to kind of peak my curiosity, because
when I was recruited to analyze it, I thought, all
this would be a fun exercise to identify the zipper.

(08:45):
The more I scrutinized it, less I felt I could
see any kind of red flag that it was not
the real deal. And there were some really striking parallels
and convergences, in fact in the shape confirmation of the
body form with Patty from the Patterson Gimlin film specifically,
and so that had set the wheels in motion. It

(09:06):
was just an interesting cascade of coincidences that there are
such things. On the return from that, we actually went
and visited the site in northern California and did all
kinds of on the site forensic measurement and analysis in
concert with the reviewing and analysis of the film. The
fellow I was working with, the late Richard Greenwell, formerly

(09:27):
the International Cryptology Society. Richard handed me a little book
about Bigfoot of the in the Blues, namely the Blue
Mountains of eastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. That was written
by Vance Orchard. That was the second stepping stone, because
that focused on the exploits of Paul Freeman, West Summerlind

(09:48):
Vance Orchards, and Bill Lowry and other characters in that
area surrounding Walla, Washington. It was in the course of
actually writing a review of that book for Richard Greenwell
for his journal, that I came into direct contact with
Paul Freeman in West Summerland and these other principal personalities

(10:09):
in this book. Was there on an occasion had the
opportunity to see some of Freeman in Summerland's casts firsthand.
Freeman happened to have found some footprints that very morning.
This is too coincidental for to the odds, but I thought,
what we got to lose, Let's go out and take
a look at least, and so we did. And man,
here was this long line of extremely fresh tracks that

(10:31):
had been laid down in the hours of the previous
night or early morning, thirty five forty five clear footprints
in the mud. It just really bowled me over. As
a backdrop, my academic profession is teaching human gross anatomy,
but my research focuses on the evolution of human bipedalism,
especially those adaptations of the lower extremity, particularly the foot

(10:55):
With that the analysis of fossil footprints and contemporary human
and non human primate footprints in order to carry out
comparative anatomical analyzes of those specimens. I know footprints. I
think I'm in the position to scrutinize these and know
what I'm looking at. It was sobering because these were

(11:16):
very compelling pieces of evidence. I'll leave it there at
some time for some more questions.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
I'm fascinated by that because I've heard you talk about
that in the past, and that these guys had no
idea that you were coming. Your trip was completely unplanned.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
Here.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
These footprints were that you got to examine some of
the questions that I've gotten from folks that listen to
the show. One of them was talking about the dermal ridges.
Can you talk a little bit about the dermal ridges?

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Doctor Krantz drew attention initially to these, or at least
publicized it widely. There was actually an account by a
group from Idaho, a crypto zoology club up at the
College of Northern Idaho. They had investigated an account of
footprints that were found there the cast that was made

(12:02):
showed evidence of dramatoglyphics. They didn't take it much beyond
just acknowledging. Noting that presence, Doctor Krantz went to great
lengths to consult with other latent fingerprint examiners, students of
dramaticglyphics in anthropology, and so forth, and published a couple
of papers that quite interesting. I had mentioned this because

(12:22):
some of the footprints that I had received from Paul
Freeman and West Summerlin showed evidence of dramatoglyphics above and
beyond the ones that Grover had drawn attention to, and
I'd mentioned this in the documentary that aired, and a
latent fingerprint examiner in Texas, officer Jimmy chilcut took note
and sat up in his chair. He was not only

(12:45):
a very skilled fingerprint expert and analyst, but he was
also very interested in the distribution of distinguishing characteristics of
different ethnic groups of human populations. To better appreciate that
very and understand it, he had taken it on himself
to start studying up on actually collecting an extensive collection

(13:09):
of non human primate traumatoglyphics. He would go and make
arrangements to go into the zoos. For example, when the
primates were undergoing their annual veterinary examinations and were anesthetized,
he would come in and while they were still asleep,
he would fingerprint their hands and feet. Had quite a collection.
He contacted me. Eventually came up from Texas to Idaho

(13:31):
and spent a couple of days in my lab. I
just turned him loose at first and let him find
his way without biasing him by pointing any particular things out.
And pretty soon he calls me into the lab and
he has all the most pertinent examples laid out on
the benchtop from the collection. We started to go through them,
and it was really quite interesting to have his perspective

(13:52):
on them. Now, it's been a little bit of a
mixed bag because a couple of the specimens had features
that were similar to dramaticglyphics. But I think we're all
convinced now are artifacts of the casting process under certain conditions,
particularly if it's very hot and dry, the soils are powdery,

(14:14):
like the dusting logging roads from northern California there back
in the sixties, when a couple of these specimens, that
attention has been drawn to by chillcut were made. If
you pour plaster that has been mixed in hot water
or warm water, if your two liter bottles been sitting
out in the sun or whatever, it tends to set

(14:36):
up very abruptly. It kicks, they call that when it
sets up well. Especially then on top of that, when
it hits the very dry, powdery substrate, it wicks water
away very quickly, and that causes the plaster to kick,
so you can get some of these weird features. It's
like people I've probably seen something very similar. If they

(14:58):
make pancakes on a good hot grip and you pour
that batter, it cooks very rapidly. But the batter that
you continue pouring flows over the top of that cooked
edge and makes another cooked hedge and another, and you
flip the pancake and it has these concentric rings around
the outside. Everyone's seen this at some time or another.
That's the same principle in a way, the same effect,

(15:22):
but a different principle. The principle here is the water
sucked out and the plaster kicks, and then the more
fluid plaster flows over and hits that substrate that dust
and kicks again. Point being, there are some examples that
are simply artifact. But to dismiss all of them as artifact,
I think is missing the boat is throwing the baby

(15:43):
out the bath water, because we have some very interesting
ones that were poured under the opposite conditions, very wet
saturated cold soils that were wet clay shoulders of a
road right underneath a melting snow bank. So the ridge
detail there is very real.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to sea. We'll
be right back after these messages.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Plus I've observed it in the field the tracks that
I examined in ninety six, this long line of tracks
thirty five to forty five I nailed down and there
was still ridge detail visible in some of the tracks,
but by the time we got back had been drizzling
rain off and on all afternoon. The ridge detail under
those conditions is very transient. The weather and the gravity

(16:37):
literally pulls the detail out, flattens it out, if not
washes it out. So by the time we actually made
some plaster casts, some representative casts, those details had been obliterated.
We are no no longer visible. People say, why don't
you have repeat appearances where you can identify based on
the No. Unfortunately, because they are not extensive, they're very rare.

(17:02):
They're not present in a lot of examples. We don't
have repeat appearances of individuals that show the same areas
preserving ridge details. So you could look at that spot
and see it and be satisfied with it or identified
it as the same individual. We can recognize individuals in

(17:22):
the basis of morphology. We've got ample, numerous repeat appearances
of individuals where a given geographical area, being that there
are very few sasquatch, if you find footprints, the odds
of those footprints being from one of those very few
number of individuals is very high. You're likely to find
footprints of those individuals. Again, that's the case, especially in

(17:46):
somewhere like the Blues, where there's been an inordinate number
of footprint casts made because of the conditions that prevail
the many roads that are undeveloped, that are just simply
bladed codes. In the summertime, they're dusty, and those fall
and spring their muddy and clayey fine dust turns into

(18:08):
a really nice clay that picks up fine details. We've
got lots of examples of repeat appearances of recognizable individuals
in that sample from the Blues of Washington.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
I think you touched on something that's key is the
actual population of these things across North America. Do you
have a best estimate on what you think the actual
population that's currently in North America would be.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
I do Ballpark anyway, or at least the western part
of North America that I'm more familiar with. And it's
based on a number of inferences. It's layered cake of explanation. Basically,
it rests upon factors of their natural history and also
factors of the biogeography. We have hints about their behavior

(18:53):
and natural history. For example, most of the sightings and
footprints or solitary individuals. So it's most like I believe,
I'm convinced I've concluded that they're solitary. They might most
closely represent or approximate something like an orangutan. When you
look at the great apes. Every species of great apes
has a different social structure. No two are alike. So

(19:16):
the orangutan, rather than say a guerrilla, has a harem.
A dominant male guerrilla controls access to a group of
females by directly defending his group, whereas an orangutan male
controls access to females in his neighborhood. By controlling the
real estate, he broadcasts his presence, his dominance, and essentially,

(19:41):
quote unquote defends a territory, or at least advertises his
presence in the territory. When the females are receptive, they
come looking for him for companionship. That's more likely, I think,
and it fits the anecdotal evidence too of visual encounters
and behavior of solitary individuals. We I have also some
indirect evidence that points to a large home range, probably

(20:06):
on the order of a thousand square miles, which isn't exceptional.
There are grizzly bears, for example, a male grizzly bear
can easily defend or a patrol an area of that size.
So then when you take other clues, like we know
that there's quite an alignment with the bioclimatic factors associated

(20:27):
with sasquatch reports as well as with black bear distribution.
There's been a paper published that kind of shows that
remarkable parallel. So if we use that kind of as
a rule of thumb and look at the areas where
black bear survive are found, the types of habitat variables
they need they're a large omnivore. Sasquatch presumably the large

(20:51):
omnivore based on reports of the food items that they
take and heat about everything that isn't nailed down, it
seems with all that taken together, let's just take Idaho,
for example, how many home ranges of a dominant male
could you fit? How many thousand square mile plots would
fit in the areas of Idaho that support bear populations.

(21:16):
Others such as John Green, was one of the first
to point out a remarkable correlation between precipitation levels and
sasquatch reports that agrees well with bear as well. Again,
you have to have a habitat that's producing enough greens
forbes and so forth, as well as fruits and other
small mammals, and while not that they can feed upon.

(21:39):
You do that for Idaho, and you come up with
about twelve or fifteen plots, just depending on how you
slice it. There's a lot of heterogeneity in the topography
and in the patchiness of the forest, et cetera. And
each of those plots then represents you know, let's just
say five for easy maths, five times, let's say fifteen.
It is seven five Sasquatch. A lot of people push

(22:02):
back to say, oh, that can't be, that's not enough.
Let's just double it. Then still at one hundred and fifty.
Then compare that to thirty five thousand black bear in Idaho.
When you consider that thirty five thousand versus one hundred
and fifty or even three hundred will make it so
you can even compare orders of magnitude more easily. You

(22:24):
start to realize how rare and how elusive these animals
really are, why we don't find bodies and bones, and
why encounters are so infrequent, The credible ones, the substantial ones.
We have a proliferation of hopeful accounts of encounter, discoveries
of footprints, but the credible, solid, substantial ones are much

(22:46):
rarer and fewer between. So if you were to repeat
that process across the other states, it's surprising even the
state like Washington, half the state is staged for us
essentially like Idaho, like southern Idaho, and so until you
get to the cascade, so really the area is further
restricted in Washington and Oregon. In northern California, go up

(23:09):
to British Columbia. British Columbia has one hundred and ten
thousand black bear estimated, So there's a lot more terrain.
Then you look at black bear distribution. If you look
at a map black bear range across North America, go
across the boreal forest down around the Great Lakes, down
New England and backside of Appalatia down hook up into

(23:31):
the four corners of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma. In that
area there you've got it. Now. Of course back east though,
if you start looking at the black bear numbers as
well as their distribution, you may have black bear distribution
through all those areas I talked about. I'll get it wrong,
and some will get me on this because I can't
keep them straight. I have to always look them up.

(23:52):
But they're some of those southern states. South Carolina that
probably has about five thousand black bear, not thirty five thousand,
just five thousand. So that says even though there's some habitat,
it's rather restricted and it doesn't support a large population.
There's a much larger human population development. There's fewer large
tracts of uninterrorrupted, undisturbed habitat. So you put that all together,

(24:17):
what you come up with a couple of thousand, several
thousand in Western United States and Canada, I would put
it at two or three thousand. Then across Boreal Canada
and down into eastern United States, I would put it
at maybe another thousand.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
It's always fascinating to me that the naysayers, the folks
that don't think these things exist, that's the go to.
There's never been a body, There's never been real evidence
there has been live in North Carolina. We were hiking
a couple of winters ago and ran into a saw
and two cubs on our property. It's not a common occurrence,
but that they're here. I go back to the Patterson

(24:53):
Gimlin film. I know you saw that as a child,
and you've had an opportunity now as an academic to
look back at that film. What do you think about
the Patterson Gimblin film. Do you think it stood the
test of time?

Speaker 4 (25:04):
I do, Yeah, I do.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
I've said it before. I'm as confident as I could
be short of having stood there on the sandbar with
those fellows and observed it firsthand. If I had just
the footprints to go by, I would be convinced in
the credibility of that claim. To have the footprints the
film and all the anatomy that goes with it, and

(25:27):
the kinematics of locomotion. One of the things that most
impressive to me, a theme that I have emphasized in
concert with the fiftieth anniversary and since, is the fact
that you have to continually remind yourself. This was shot
in nineteen sixty seven, and based on what was conventional
wisdom and anthropology in nineteen sixty seven, that creature couldn't exist.

(25:51):
There was no accommodation, There was no context or place
to allow for the existence of another bipedal hominin. That
was counter to the accepted paradigm, the notion that the
hominin niche was so particular and specific there could be
only one species in it for the old ecological axiom
one niche, one species, and so we were it. We

(26:14):
were the principal species in that niche. So now we
know that that was hogwash, That was ridiculous, very egocentric
even to consider that. Really, we know that the hominin
family tree was very bushy, it wasn't very limited and
restricted in membership, and that many of those branches on
that bushy tree have persisted alongside us until more recently

(26:37):
than anyone would have guessed fifty years ago. The story
that I repeat often it is my favorite example of
that context was John Napier, who was one of the
first to view the film from the scientific community in
the Smithsonian. He was impressed enough to write a book
about the subject matter. Although on the topic of them

(26:59):
film he came down on the naysayer side, but he
had troubled defending that position and justified it ultimately by
saying that when he looked at the figure, he said,
from the waist up, it looked like an ape, but
from the waist down it looks like a human. He said,
it's inconceivable that such a hybrid would exist in nature,

(27:19):
so it must be false. That book came out in
seventy two. Shortly thereafter, within the few years in the
mid to late seventies, more fossils of Austrolopithecus afarensus were discovered,
particularly the postcrania, the pelvis, the knee, the ankle, and
so forth. It was very clear that they had a
lower extremity that showed many of the hallmarks of modern

(27:42):
human bipedalism. But in a little, small package. How is
it that little package described to the popular press. From
the waist up, it looks just like a chimpanzee. From
the waist down, it looks like a short, hairy human.
Isn't it curious how nature has combined expect a combination
of traits. That was the lynch pin. That was the

(28:04):
sticking point for Napier in accepting the credibility of the film.
That was the only thing he could settle on to
justify his irrational premise because it was because it was
based on a false premise that there could be only
one species, and the experts at the time tried to
justify their rejection of the film by saying some really

(28:24):
funky things, some really silly things about the way the
creature walked, if they had hair on its breasts, etc.
That were just in twenty twenty hindsight, are embarrassing that
these experts did not understand the most fundamental principles about
anatomy and locomotion.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
It makes you wonder if Napier had been introduced to Lucy,
maybe he might have had a different opinion on the
film exactly.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
That's usually my follow up. What if he'd waited just
a couple of years, or if the writing the book
took a couple of years longer, in other words, and
it overlapped the discovery of Lucy. Would he have had
a different opinion of the film when you've spoken out
more positively about it? As it was, he came down
positively on the potential existence of sasquatch based on the footprints.

(29:09):
It was the footprint evidence that really drove it home
for him. But he got a few points wrong in
that arena as well. But I think that was just
because he was working with a very limited sample, and
therefore differences between individuals seemed more start more distinctive than
they really were. With three hundred footprint casts instead of

(29:30):
a dozen, you can see the continuum of variation amongst
the population.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
I interviewed so many people, and we've had conversations about
the evidence. I think the Patterson Gimlin film did a
couple of things. It clearly put the subject on the map,
but it's such such a high bar for anything that
came after. We've got blob squatch or we've got footprint evidence. Sure,
but that's just not enough. I just don't know where

(29:58):
we go from here. It's so frustrated to me that
without the body or without the absolute proof you do
have hoaxers. That leads me into my next question. I
know you've seen enough tracks and you've seen enough cast
what do you look for and how do you go
about proving that a track is in fact from a
sasquatch or a hoax.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
The hoaxes seem to be few and far between. There
have been some dramatic example. There was a flap of
hoaxers who were taking advantage of the droughts and the
drawn down reservoirs because they seem to like those mudflats
that were easy to put on stompers and go trapsing

(30:40):
across large tracts of land. We had one here in
Idaho as well, the ones that cliffs examined down in
Oregon that Derek Randall's and a few other people were
involved with. Like I said, those are few and far between,
but by far the more common distraction that I have
to sit through. The chaff thats sit through are just misidentifications.
A lot of those are human. There are a lot

(31:02):
of people who get caught up and they like to
go out to places where modern day humans walk around
barefoot in the mud. For whatever reason, it feels nice
and cool, squishing up between your toes or whatever. Even
in sometimes inexplicable areas where you might not walk barefoot,
there are people who do. And there are some hallmarks
of the human foot, namely the arch, the differentiated ball,

(31:27):
the proportions of the toepads, the narrow heel breadth to
length ratios that are just unmistakable. There are signs of
shoe wear that are unmistakable in the compressed toe positions.
Especially the little toe is subject to getting squished in
and sometimes turned completely on its side, even when the shoes.

(31:47):
Often walking around barefoot and mud still shows up. It's
pretty straightforward to point those out. I tell people circumstances
taking into account are considered. If it walks like a
duck and e quects like a duck, it's a duck.
If I can't differentiate this from a human track, I
don't care. If you found it on the moon, it
still would be a human footprint based on the criteria.

(32:11):
Unless we have juvenile sasquatch, they're going through a phase
where they mimic human footprints. I guess we could come
the conspiracy to explain that, but I can't envision any
natural process by which a sasquatch would go from. And
we have little sasquatch feet, baby infants, juveniles, they look
like little broad flat footed displayed toed sasquatch. Why they

(32:35):
would go from that to a holy human looking appearance
and then broadened back out and flatten the arch again
as adults. Just doesn't make any sense to me. So
that's the big thing.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see. We'll
be right back after these messages.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Then right on its heels. As you talked about blob squatches,
we should come up with another term for ambiguous footprints,
because people see tracks that are old, or they're even tracks,
see features that resemble a footprint. I get lots of
images of erosional artifacts that there's no sign of an impression,
no sign of compression of soil or compression of those

(33:20):
pebbles and stones beneath the foot, but rather they're just
washed out. Sometimes it's just an outline from a pile
of pine needles that get washed into a ridge and
that strikes a somewhat oval looking appearance in a bare
spot of dirt and becomes a footprint. And then of
course the common animal track that is sometimes mistaken for

(33:43):
sasquashed because of its distinctive toepads. Is a bear, the
hind foot does have an elongated heel pad usually comes
to a taper unless it's a very big bear, and
fills out and rounds out as the weight gets pushed
down on that heel bone the calcaneus. So basically in
enumerting those things, I've pointed out some of the distinctions.

(34:04):
When we talk about a sasquatch footprint, if it's an adult,
it's a big, broad, flat footed, flexible mid footed print
with large toe relative size of the toes and toepads
that tend to be a little more similar in size.
Not al was not completely and Grover drew attention to

(34:26):
where there's a little bit of variation in that. But
compared to a human where the lateral toes are like
little grapes, compared to this big plum of a big toepad,
the distinction is quite visible and can be appreciated. There
should be a big, broad heel. Sometimes one of the
tells of a fake foot is an existing footprint might

(34:47):
be extended and flared to make it broader across the forefoot,
but sometimes they inexplicably leave this little narrow heel. It
makes it look like a swim fin, and that's obviously
very un likely unnatural. It's the big broad heel pad
that is one of the principal weight distributors of this

(35:09):
massive animal, an animal that say, given patty size that
could weigh anywhere from seven hundred eight hundred pounds, a
big eight and a half foot in male is going
to be twelve hundred pounds the side of a moose.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
What is your opinion on the DNA evidence, doctor Meldrum.
There's been some studies out there, There's been tons of
DNA evidence, there's environmental DNA. Is DNA evidence enough? What's
your opinion on what's been collected? The samples coming back
with mixed reviews.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Whether it's enough or not will be a bit of
a test case, because to my knowledge, there is no
precedent for acknowledging a novel species, not differentiating between two
closely related species for which skulls and skins exist in
museum drawers, but a novel species on the basis of
DNA alone. Now there's more and more debate that we

(35:58):
should knowledge the existence of a potential novel species on
that basis rather than requiring the lethal collection of a specimen,
especially when it's a rare and endangered species, where the
impact of the collection of a specimen itself could be catastrophic.
That said, to my knowledge, there is no DNA evidence yet,

(36:21):
at least not recognized or useful claims to the contrary. Notwithstanding,
I don't think those claims have any merit. The situation
I think that we're in is the DNA of the
squatch is probably very similar to US. I don't put
any stock in the claims of hybridization. I think there

(36:42):
have been good reviews written of that data and that
evidence that refuted resoundingly. The thing that we're up against
is a creature that is probably very closely related to us,
and therefore may only differ in a percentage point or
less in the total sequence. As such, to make it

(37:03):
short and sweet, this makes the example I think very
graspable for your listeners, and that is, imagine you had
an advance calendar, and a most an advanced calendar have
twenty four windows leading up to Christmas. You open up
the little door or a little window pane, and you
get the treat right. Well, imagine you had an advanced
calendar that had one hundred windows. So of course that

(37:27):
one percent difference isn't necessarily going to be behind just
one window. But for the sake of our illustration, we
could make thousand windows and spread that one percent into
ten different windows. Let's just make it simple. One hundred
windows and behind one window is the golden ticket. There's
the sequence that has the marker that distinguishes humans from sasquatch.

(37:48):
In most of the studies that have been done so
far that haven't had other unfortunate complications to cloud their credibility,
they've been rather superficial. Imagine that you have a study
with funding that only permits you to open up ten doors,
ten of the hundred. So what are the odds that
the ten that you open are going to include the

(38:12):
one door out of one hundred that as that marker
in it? And if you don't find that marker, what's
the conclusion you're going to draw Everything you look at
will be exactly identical to modern human So we've had
two possibilities presented. It's either contaminated through mishandling, or it
has been just misidentified that it's just simply a human

(38:33):
hair for example, or whatever. Tissue. The third possibility is
what I've just described, that you just haven't tested enough
to come to a definitive conclusion one way or the other.
So the jury should still be out rather than pronounced that, oh,
it's just human. So that's more unfortunately where I think
we're at. So it means we need to have good samples,

(38:55):
but we also need to have the wherewithal the funding
and someone who's willing to put in the time. I'm
an effort because it will become a more involved process
to do a genomic test that is exhaustive enough to
be sure that you have found those particular markers.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
It was a brilliant analogy because I hear that often
from people there's DNA that should prove it. It's not
that simple if you follow the scientific method. That's the
reason that I love what you do so much is
because you look at it from that lens. Because people
get frustrated, and I understand the frustration. But there is
a process that has to be followed. It's not just

(39:33):
as simple as I think it exists.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Therefire does to make it very clear, because sometimes I
get to this criticism leveled at me that I'm trying
to convince people on the basis of the evidence at
hand that Bigfoot exists. It may appear to some people
who don't understand, as you mentioned a scientific method as
it is, that I'm trying to do that. But what
I'm doing is I'm simply just trying to make a
case that, hey, this is interesting evidence that points to

(39:59):
a possible hypothesis that needs further testing. No, I'm not
trying to convince. I understand fully that it requires at
the very least DNA sequence, a novel sequence, or perhaps
at least part of a body or a specimen.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
I want to shift gears. Your time is valuable, and
I want to get these questions in. I want to
go back to when you got into this subject back
in the nineties, your expectations going into this. I want
to talk a little bit about any of the backlash
from the academic community. What has been the repercussions, if any,
for your pursuit of this through your academic career.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
I was idealistic enough to think that if one comported
one's self as a scientist and pursuit a question objectively,
that it would be whereby acknowledged that a worthy undertaking.
Boy was I surprised by what actually transpired. The community
of scientists is plagued by the foibles of human nature,

(40:59):
just like any other community of people. Politics, personalities, prejudice,
and preconception are rampants, and there are some people who
seem to thrive on trying to denigrate or put down
other people. Or maybe they're more genuine or sincere in
their efforts. They are laboring under preconceptions or existing paradigms

(41:21):
that don't allow for As I alluded to with the
Patterson Gimblet film, I've had people say they can't exist,
therefore they don't exist, and it doesn't matter what evidence
you think you have. No one and I say that again,
no one can defend the idea that they can't exist,
that there isn't a context for them, like something like

(41:42):
the single species hypothesis that proposes only one species of
hominin can exist at a time. That's bocum. Now that
can be thrown out, So you can't defend that. So
we're left with the second side of that coin, the
other side of that coin, which is what's the probability
they do exist? They certainly can, but is the evidence

(42:04):
persuasive that they do is the context sufficient for them
both scientifically, theoretically and pragmatically. Under that umbrella comes the questions,
the objections about the bodies, about reproducing populations sufficient numbers
that a viable population can they elude our search if

(42:27):
you're honest with yourself about it, and you're informed about
the circumstances and the context, and you acknowledge what evidence
we have that points to, for example, our discussion of
the population size. When you think about how rare and
elusive even black bear are, relatively speaking, and yet there

(42:52):
are hundreds of black bear for everyone's sasquatch. Potentially if
my inference, my inference model is anywhere in the ballpark
as far as the absolute numbers, and I think that's
reasonable given the other aspects. We can also couch our
conversations or our inferences in terms of the bracketing variability

(43:14):
evident in the known grade apes, while acknowledging that shouldn't
be taken as an entirely limiting bracket because our knowledge
of apes is restricted to just a handful of species
that are themselves just the tip of the iceberg of
the variation that existed through the Miocene into the Plioceine

(43:37):
for grade apes, hundreds of species with all types of
locomotive adaptations and dietary variation and habitat preferences, of which
these existing species are just relic populations in the tropical
refugea even there, as I said earlier about their social structure,
every living species of grade ape has a different social

(43:57):
structure than the other just about significant. So anyway, when
you take all those factors into account, a lot of
these objections pale. They melt away in the light of
some informed conversation.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Just a couple of questions from some of the fans
of the show. We talked a little bit about the
academic community, But the question from the listener is are
there any other academic colleagues that are willing to step
up and support this type of research, particularly after the
passing of doctor John Bender. Nigel.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Certainly there are, and I have conversations dialogue with people academics,
not just anthropologists or anatomists, but to other persuasions other
disciplines of science on a regular basis, as well as
agency personnel, fish and wildlife and forest service. Behind the scenes,

(44:51):
none of them are really in a position to undertake
things on a more pragmatic and visible public basis, but
some of them do support the effort into terms of
reviewing manuscripts, my online journal, my referee Journal, the RelA
Commoid Inquiry. I'm just in the process of reorganizing the
editorial board because we've had a couple of passings like

(45:13):
doctor bindernegl you mentioned, but also because of competing those
that have been there. We're in our tenth year now,
so they've served for a decade. So I'm rearranging, refreshing things,
and giving other people a chance to participate in helping
with reviews, recruitment, editorials and commentaries they work with. Doctor
George Chalier is an honorary member of the editorial Board

(45:37):
of the journal and lends his support in that way
by association. And of course my book carries the endorsement
of doctor Jane Goodall on the cover. She's been supportive
in her own way whenever the opportunity presents itself. Yeah,
there are other academics that are quite interesting, and there's
a new generation. That's what's exciting is I've had some

(45:59):
exams recently of fresh PhDs who expressed their absolute enthusiasm
and interest for this subject. But because the old guards
the shift of paradigms is a glacial process. Thomas Kuhne
actually said, who is the one who coined the term
paradigm shifts? Said, sometimes it takes the entire generation for

(46:22):
the old guard to pass, literally die off, in order
to clear the way for new ideas to take root
and flourish.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
And stay tuned for more sasquat chatsy. We'll be right
back after these messages.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
So I suspect it's another decade before this new generation
has tenure, because right now it's the old guard still,
even though there have been changes, the shadow, the mindset,
the early training of these people. They're the department chairmen
and college deans. They're the diety presidents and the symposia organizers.

(47:03):
They're the gatekeepers. I experience it when I submit an
abstract for the professional meetings on this topic. It has
about a fifty to fifty chance. So far is the
track record. A lot of it is simply the luck
of the draw as to who the two people who
were tapped. So two people, essentially, two people wield the

(47:24):
power of whether you can discuss your subject matter at
a national meeting or not. There's something wrong with that system.
Isn't there absolute, especially when there's no appeals process.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
But it is great to hear from somebody like you
that there are these fresh faces coming up that are
interested and are willing to pick up the torch and
continue the journey. That's great to hear. One of the
other questions was when and what was your aha moment
that a living being made the tracks that you were
either looking at or examining.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
When I was there in southeastern Washington nineteen ninety looking
at these tracks that Paul Fraeman to take me out
shown me, I'm taking it all in. I'm taking note
of all the dynamic features. I'm taking note of the
pressure ridges, the tension cracks from compression, the toes slipping,
the toes gripping, dramaticglyphics. It did. It just hit me.

(48:19):
There was that realization that a sasquatch actually walked by
here just literally hours ago and the wee hours of
the morning, probably late on the previous night. Literally the hair
stood up on the back of my neck. Because it's
an interesting sensation. I've had something similar in an academic
context limited to that, but like, for example, the first

(48:41):
time when I was a brand new gradu student going
out to Long Island to start my graduate program in
the American Museum of Natural History was holding their Ancestors exhibit,
where they had brought for the first time in many instances,
all these original hominin fossils from all over the world,
and they were on exhibit. You set there, look looking
through this bulletproof plexiglass case at this skull into these

(49:05):
empty orbits, and realized that was a creature alive three
million years ago that was on our family tree. It
could have been a direct ancestor for all we know that.
There's an interesting sensation when that realization. You're not just
looking at a rock or an interesting bone, but you're
looking at the fossil of a hominin now extinct. The

(49:28):
only other time I had that experience, I think, was
when the first time I went panting for gold in
the Sacramento Valley in the mountains outside of Sacramento. And
when you swirl that around in that little nugget, that
little fleck of gold glints in the light, it's uha.
It really does bite you.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
I think Sasquatch has that effect on just about everybody
who has some sort of an encounter, whether it's a
vocalization or an actual sighting, it just takes hold. It
becomes almost an obsession. Last question, I'm in a lot
of Facebook groups. Obviously I get in these groups. I
talk to people about their encounters and I have them
on the show. And one of the big things in
most of these groups is it whether you're pro Kiel

(50:07):
or no Kiel. Do you have an opinion on some
of these groups that are out there to prove the
existence by taking a specimen.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
I must admit that when I undertook the prospect of
field research with a Vengeance and I hooked up with
a he was actually an MD, but he had a
financial interest in a game reserve in South Africa, so
he was very experienced outdoorsman big game hunter, but also
a conservationist and exotic animal breeder, importer, exporter. We started

(50:41):
off with the intent of the collecting the specimen by
whatever means practical. It was only after a lot of
mental raffling with my self ethics questions. Plus there was
just the pragmatic aspect of if I was really serious
about doing this and I had any funding that was
channeled through the university. All my protocols and methods in

(51:03):
the field had to be approved by Animal Welfare Committee
a protocol to shoot a sasquat. If they even overlooked
the subject matter, it would not have gotten past muster
with the committee. But I came to a change of heart.
At one point I had conversations with doctor Krantz, and
I had seen his utterances on the subject and others,
not just him. It's a funny story, but literally what

(51:26):
happened or where it came to a head, it's not
the thing. But I had taken the kids to see
the Disney Tarzan movie, and if you're familiar with that movie,
there's two very diametrically opposite characters. There's Clayton, who shoots
at everything that's moving, and of course he's motivated purely
out of profit and so forth and personal gain where

(51:48):
and the opposite was the professor, who was willing in
the end to give up his entire career and his
whole life in fact, to stay there and study these
majestic animals in their natural health habitat. And this little
imp was sitting on my shoulder and pose the question, Jeff,
which of these two are you? So I didn't take
a lot of soul searching. But it was the nexus

(52:10):
point I guess in my own mental struggles, and I
turned one hundred and eighty degrees and thought, what is
the motivation? Why am I so determined to do this?
And I couldn't justify it. And so from that point on,
the strategy was to try to get tissue or DNA
that we could put this question of recognizing a new
species on the basis of DNA to the test.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Thanks very much for that honest answer, Doc. Thank you
so much for coming on the show and answering all
my questions tonight. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (52:40):
My pleasure.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
All right, you have a good.

Speaker 4 (52:43):
They say you don't have to go home, but you
can't stay.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Step step step chid this child, that child, everything came

(53:24):
right back, pride back, joy for me, joy staying right,
you come it right away. Still still stays ss st

(54:07):
st stusts fact, do not, do't, don't talk about the thesis.

(54:34):
Still stills us stisst us thess