Bigfoot group has busy agenda

What is it with Big foot Groups and their four-letter acronyms and why are they so busy? That was my best Andy Rooney impression. But really theres the Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO), Michigan Bigfoot Information Center (MBIC), Sasquatch Bigfoot Research Unit (SBRU), Alliance of Independent Bigfoot Researchers (AIBR), Ohio Bigfoot Research Team (OBRT), Texas Bigfoot Research Center (TBRC)...the list goes on and on. And now Elusive Primates of North America (EPNA).

We at the BfRLC have dared enough to add a fifth letter to our
acronym but that's the kind of mavericks we are -- and promise to
always be.

Meanwhile read how busy EPNA are in this article from The Sand Mountain Reporter



By Lionel GreenThe Reporter
Published August 5, 2008


An area Bigfoot research group is busy this summer with planned expeditions near Douglas and Guntersville.


“We just had a report in Cleveland; the police department was chasing a large hairy man off (Alabama) Highway 160,” said Hawk Spearman, a founder of the Alabama chapter of the Elusive Primates of North America. “I’m trying to get in touch with the police officers to get more details from them.”


EPNA meets again Aug. 16 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Oneonta Public Library.


If you add to all the activity a widely circulated story of two men in Georgia who say they have a Bigfoot corpse in their possession, Spearman will have plenty to discuss at the meeting.


“The biggest thing we’re going to be talking about is the supposed Bigfoot find and how it’s going to impact the Bigfoot community,” said Spearman, who heads EPNA in Alabama with his wife, Karen.


The discovery allegedly involves a law enforcement officer and an associate claiming to have found the dead body of a Bigfoot while on an expedition in the mountains of north Georgia. The men are releasing very little information but say they are preserving the large body in a freezer and will reveal the corpse Sept. 1. They insist it’s not a hoax, but many are skeptical because of their lack of professionalism in videos on YouTube.


Spearman is hopeful but wary of the purported discovery.


“I’m in between,” he said. “I believe it’s possible it could happen. If this is a prank, it will be the biggest hoax ever, and the ones that actually believed, it’s going to make them look really, really bad.”


In the meantime, EPNA is planning three expeditions in the next couple of months, including two in Marshall County. The first is an overnight trip in Ashville at the end of this month followed by a search in Horton near Douglas off Alabama 75 in mid-September.


At the end of September or first of October, EPNA is looking at an overnight excursion in the forests surrounding Lake Guntersville.


Spearman said the expeditions are free, but participants will have to pay for their campsites on the overnight trips.


“Anybody’s welcome,” Spearman said. “They’ll need a flashlight and plaster of Paris just in case footprints are found. We believe if you find the evidence, it’s yours.” No firearms or alcohol is allowed on the expeditions. For more information about the Alabama chapter of EPNA, call 205-589-4622 or 205-359-0130 or visit www.epna.webs.com on the Internet.

Copyright © 2008 Sand Mountain Reporter

'Yeti hair' sent to lab for DNA tests

From correspondents in London

A BRITISH scientist is anxiously awaiting the results of DNA tests on hair claimed to be from a yeti after initial examinations showed it had human and ape-like characteristics.

Ian Redmond, a biologist and expert in ape conservation, said the hairs found in the Indian jungle resembled samples collected by the conqueror of Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, in the 1950s.

"Under the microscope, they look slightly human, slightly like an orang-utan and slightly like the hairs brought back by Edmund Hillary," Dr Redmond said.

"These hairs remain an enigma. They could be a new species, but the DNA tests will hopefully tell us more."

The hairs were brought back from India this year by BBC journalist Alastair Lawson, who contacted Dr Redmond and was put in touch with a team at Oxford Brookes University in south central England.

Lawson was given the hairs by yeti believer Dipu Marak, who retrieved them them in dense jungle in the Meghalaya state of India after a forester allegedly spotted the creature on three consecutive days in 2003.

Mr Marak believes the hairs come from an ape-like Indian version of the fabled yeti, or abominable snowman, called mande barung, which he believes stands about 3m tall.

Dr Redmond and scientists from Oxford Brookes examined the hairs last Thursday under powerful microscopes, comparing them with samples taken from an Asiatic black bear, yaks, orang utangs and gorillas at Oxford's Natural History Museum and even a hair from Dr Redmond's beard.

"The hairs are complete with the cuticle, and between 3.3cm and 4.4cm long and thick and wiry and curved," Dr Redmond said.

"At one point we thought they looked like they came from a wild boar. That was quite a tense moment, but when we got a sample from the museum it turned out they were quite different."

Dr Redmond also contacted the English laboratory that analysed the hairs brought back by Hillary in the 1950s from his Everest expedition and found they were similar in appearance.

While the microscope tests were inconclusive, the hairs are now undergoing DNA tests in separate laboratories in Oxford and Cardiff.

Dr Redmond admitted his excitement at a potential scientific breakthrough was tinged with fear.

"My concern is that if we do find something unusual, it will be from a very small population of animals and I would want to talk to the State Government and Indian Government so they are not inundated with people trying to catch one for a museum.

"I want us to approach this in a 21st century and not a 19th century way."


Reprinted from the Sun

Yeti Hairs DNA Test: Update

UK experts optimistic about 'yeti' hairs

British experts say tests on hairs claimed to come from a yeti in an Indian jungle show they bear "a startling resemblance" to those brought back from the Himalayas by famed New Zealand adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary nearly half a century ago.


"The hairs are the most positive evidence yet that a yeti might possibly exist, because they are tangible," ape expert Ian Redmond, who is co-ordinating the research, told The Independent in London.

The hairs had the same cuticle pattern as hairs brought back to Britain by the late Sir Edmund and donated to the Natural History Museum, he claimed.

"We are very excited about the preliminary results, although more tests need to be done."

The two short hairs - 33mm and 44mm long - were picked up in thick forest in the Garo hills in the mountains of northeast India five years ago after a forester reported seeing a yeti - locally known as mande barung, or "forest man".

Sir Edmund led an expedition at much higher altitudes in Nepal in 1960, and investigated reports of yeti footprints on the Ripimu Glacier at the head of the Rolwaling Valley.

But hidden microphones and cameras enmeshed in trip wires failed to capture a Nepalese yeti's likeness - or record its famous high-pitched whistle - and the Hillary team said that "yeti" footprints they had found were the tracks of a relatively small animal which had melted out in the sun.

Sir Edmund borrowed a yeti scalp from Khumjung Gompa, a Sherpa temple, to take to America and Europe to be looked at by scientists who eventually said the scalp had been made from the hide of the serow antelope - probably intended as a ceremonial hat but gradually acquiring the status of an actual scalp.

A "yeti skin" was identified as a blue bear.

The scalp might not have been the real thing, but one of its guardians, village elder Khunjo Chumbi won a debate with Professor J Millot of the Museum of Man in Paris, who suggested that yetis did not exist.

"In Nepal we have neither giraffes nor kangaroos so we know nothing about them. In France, there are no yetis, so I sympathise with your ignorance," Khunjo told him.