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| Possible Sasquatch Hair Sample from Finding Bigfoot |
Cliff barackman continues his excellent re-caps of the Finding Bigfoot Episode. In his current
Finding Bigfoot Cliff Notes, Cliff Barackman covers his meeting of Roger Roberts who had investigated Bigfoot sightings next to a nearby Indian reservation. Below is a short excerpt from his notes on the possible Bigfoot hair sample.
Of most interest to us was the hair sample. The hair sample had been found by a tribal game officer on an animal trail leading from a location where a bigfoot had been recently seen. It was found on some broken branches more than eight feet above the ground, which would seem to rule out that it was buffalo (which are kept nearby), bear, deer, or human hair. Roger had in his possession enough hairs to spare some for us to have tested for DNA material. In hair, all of the viable DNA is found in the medulla, or hollow center shaft of the hair. This is a bit problematic because bigfoot hair tends to have fragmentary medullas, if any is present at all. However, a DNA lab in Oklahoma City called DNA Solutions offered to test the sample to see if any material could be extracted for testing. If nothing else, they could examine the hair and tell us what animals the could eliminate as a possible source for the hairs. Also of value is that they could get the results back to us in about a week.
Dr. Brandt Cassidy of DNA Solutions was unable to extract any DNA material from the hairs. He said that the samples were just too old and had not been stored in the the optimal way to prevent the gradual breaking down of the DNA material. However, he was clear about a few things. While superficially similar to a person’s hair, the hair did not appear to be human in origin. First off the hair shafts had tapered ends which would indicate that the hairs had never been subjected to a hair cut. Another difference that was found was that the medulla width was different than what is commonly found among humans. I was supplied with photographs of his microscopic analysis, and I was interested in the fact that the hairs showed to have a reddish tinge when lit from behind, even though the hair appeared to be black when viewed against other backgrounds. This reddish tinge is another distinct characteristic of bigfoot hair.
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| How the hair was delivered |
Here is a clip from Finding Bigfoot's Bigfoot CSI episode
You can read Cliff Barackman's entire Oklahoma Episode recap at his website
CliffBarackman.com
I don't see anything that disqualifies this being from a squirrel. Would it kill Barackman to restrain his enthusiasm, just once?
ReplyDeletehttp://squirrely.wordpress.com/2008/03/08/lovely-photo-red-and-black-squirrel/
Anon, we added a second picture to the post which, among others, are available at CliffBarackman.com. The clump of hairs in the second picture give a little more context to the hair sample.
DeleteThanks for the clarification, but I saw the episode. I was a little brief, so I'll say more plainly that there are many ways mammal hair can end up in a tree without the aid of a "9 foot" primate rubbing against it. A bird could have brought it up there to make a nest. Not to mention that the hair, which is at least 12 years old (!), looks exactly like something I recently pulled out of my shower drain. It really wasn't one of their strongest shows. It would turn people like me off a lot less if you ran these "investigations" like proper criminal investigations, in which reasonable doubt carries the day. Unlike Bigfooting, forensics is scientific. There is a lot of animosity against scientists and academics around here, but you won't catch the average person accusing cops of being "closed minded." And unlike Finding Bigfoot, cops very often catch their prey.
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ReplyDeleteI got the impression dna extraction methods had improved purely from the comments of Dr Bryan Sykes, maybe all genetics labs do not have the same facilities.
The medullar index of your hair seems to be in the region of0.30 which is common for humans. Why would you say it is unlike human in that regard. I agree on the point about the uncut tip and the pigmentation seems somewhat distinct. However the image is too poor to determine the distribution of pigmentation across the cortex, which would help compare with human type hairs. What shape was the root btw.
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