More
information is coming out that was not clear in the press release
itself. Over one hundred individual samples were processed and this
allowed an excellent work up of the DNA. Earlier tests would
certainly have been utterly misled by the human component in the
mitochondrial DNA and would have in fact been naturally dismissed as
contamination. The real achievement here is that we have now gotten
past that little issue.
We
have two reasonable candidates at least for the father. One is the
reported Eurasian wild man who may also be a hybrid and we certainly
have evidence supporting recent outright intermarriage that backs
this up. The other is the fossil gigantopithecus who may well have
been the progenitor of both the Sasquatch and the Eurasian wild man.
So
far we have no indication of such progenitors in North America but
the hybrid situation strongly suggests that the creature participated
in the later crossing through the Bering Plain as the Ice Age ended.
Recall that a Sasquatch was seen tramping North this summer deep in
the barrens of Northern Quebec.
This
also explains the disappearance of gigantopithecus. The human hybrid
would have taken over the ecological niche as its population
expanded ultimately absorbing the rest. The same may well have
happened to the neanderthal branch of humanity and any number of
other small groups.
Bigfoot DNA Tests
Prove Hairy Creature Exists, Genetic Researcher Says
Posted: 11/28/2012
11:03 am EST Updated: 11/28/2012 11:35 am EST
Lee Speigel
Bigfoot is real. At
least that's what veterinarian Melba S. Ketchum claims after
a five-year study of more than 100 DNA samples that she believes
comes from the elusive hairy beast.
Under Ketchum's
direction at DNA Diagnostics in Nacogdoches, Texas, a team
of researchers has concluded that the creature may be a human
relative that somehow developed around 15,000 years ago as a result
of a hybrid cross between Homo sapiens with an unknown primate.
Ketchum's research has
yet to stand the scrutiny of independent researchers. While many
people have claimed to have seen the creature, its existence has
never been confirmed, despite a plethora of photos and footprints[
10,000 separate individual eye witness reports – arclein ].
The ongoing search is the subject of Animal Planet's "Finding
Bigfoot" television series.
"Well, it came to
me, I didn't go after it, that's for sure," Ketchum said of the
evidence of Bigfoot's existence in an exclusive interview with The
Huffington Post. "I did not believe in these creatures. But my
lab did a lot of animal testing, and we did species identification.
We didn't have any hits on anything interesting until five years
ago."
Ketchum's professional
work includes nearly 30 years in genetics research and forensics.
After her team attempted DNA sequencing of hair samples from an
alleged Bigfoot encounter, they found some unusual things in the
hair. But there wasn't enough DNA to conclusively verify what they
were seeing.
DNA Diagnostics
received more samples to investigate -- including hair, blood, saliva
and urine, all reportedly from various Bigfoot sightings.
Ketchum's team
consists of experts in genetics, forensics, imaging and pathology.
The researcher said she believes that over the past five years, the
team has successfully found three Sasquatch nuclear genomes -- an
organism's hereditary code -- leading them to suggest that the
animal is real and a human hybrid.
Ketchum's study showed
that part of the DNA her team sequenced revealed an unknown
primate species, she said, which suggests that Bigfoot is a real
creature that resulted from this primate "crossing with female
Homo sapiens."
"They're not any
of the large apes -- they branch off as a separate lineage,"
Ketchum said. "My personal theory is that it probably
branched off and evolved in parallel with the rest of the primate
lineage."[
we also have an apparent parallel linage in the fossil record from
Africa – arclein ]
The overall results of
Ketchum's study will soon be revealed, she said, after a
peer-reviewed journal is published. But skeptic Benjamin
Radford is dubious about the outcome of this latest attempt to
give credibility to the existence of Bigfoot.
"If the data are
good and the science is sound, any reputable science journal would
jump at the chance to be the first to publish this groundbreaking
information," Radford, the deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer
magazine, wrote in LiveScience.com.
Radford suggests that
if the mitochondrial DNA is identical to Homo sapiens (modern
humans), it could mean one of two things.
"The first,
endorsed by Ketchum, is that Bigfoot ancestors had sex with women
about 15,000 years ago and created a half-human hybrid species
currently hiding across North America.
"There is,
however, another, simpler interpretation of such results: The samples
were contaminated. Whatever the sample originally was -- Bigfoot,
bear, human or something else -- it's possible that the people who
collected and handled the specimens accidentally introduced their DNA
into the sample, which can easily occur with something as innocent as
a spit, sneeze or cough," Radford wrote.[
that is merely the first reasonable assumption and it has kept other
evidence out of the loop until now - arclein]
Not so, counters
Ketchum.
"Early on, we
started getting human results on the mitochondrial DNA -- that's
maternally inherited and it can show where you're from," Ketchum
said. "Different labs had already tested alleged Sasquatch
samples, and all of these labs were getting human results, so they
just threw it out.[
WHOOPS ]
"We split the
samples with another forensic lab -- one worked on it manually while
the other did it robotically, extracting the DNA -- and we ran
several tests to confirm there was no contamination. And we ended up
getting human sequences on many samples."
In LiveScience.com,
Radford pointed out that since "There is no reference sample of
Bigfoot DNA to compare it with, by definition, there cannot be a
conclusive match."
Ketchum's work isn't
the only ongoing research project aimed at trying to confirm, through
DNA, the existence of Bigfoot.
In the U.K.,
researchers from Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology
are examining alleged Bigfoot remains to test for unusual DNA.
Their results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific
journal.
One theory about a
possible explanation for Bigfoot or Sasquatch is that it could turn
out to be a large primate called Gigantopithecus, 9-foot-tall
apes that presumably went extinct around 100,000 years ago.
"My working
hypothesis has always been that this is very likely Gigantopithecus
extant -- that we have a species that's in the right place at the
right time, the right size and some of the right characteristics in
the form of Gigantopithecus in East Asia during the late Pleistocene
[era] to have expanded into North America," said Jeff
Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State
University.
"It's not a
matter of belief or wishful thinking -- it's a matter of the
preponderance of the evidence, be it eyewitness accounts, footprints
or hair that defies identification or attribution to known species,"
Meldrum told HuffPost.
"We're waiting
for the results in studies that are ongoing, looking at potential DNA
evidence -- DNA sequences extracted from samples of hair and blood
and tissue. All of these things are the basis and motivation for
undertaking this kind of approach," he said.
Meldrum, author
of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, is skeptical of most Bigfoot
videos that show up on YouTube.
"In this day and
age of cellphones, smartphones and Handycams, why aren't there more
pictures? And there are, but it's also a testament to the fact that
most people are lousy photographers, even if they're composed long
enough to snap a picture in that brief instant of an encounter with
something strange and unusual like this."
If a peer review of
Ketchum's findings eventually confirms Bigfoot's existence to the
satisfaction of the scientific community, she's adamant about what
the next step should be.
"I’d like to
see them have the same protections as any other human as far as the
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of their own happiness,
meaning that they be left alone and not put under a microscope, not
hunted, not harassed, not chased through the woods -- leave them
alone," she said. "They’ve existed for thousands of years
this way and don’t need habitats set aside. They’ve lived under
our noses all this time."
Yakima Herald gets
statement from Dr. Melba Ketchum
The whole Sasquatch thing may be moving from the realm of the weird to the level of “truth is stranger than fiction.”
That will depend on how mainstream science responds to the impending release of a five-year DNA study apparently suggesting Sasquatch exists, and is not entirely human and not entirely non-human. It is, says the study’s author, a hybrid cross of the two.
The research was done by a team led by Melba Ketchum, a former veterinarian who moved into genetic research 27 years ago and runs DNA Diagnostics, Inc., based in Texas. Ketchum had hoped to see the results announced in a peer-reviewed scientific journal but they were “outed” last Friday by a note on the website of the Russia-based International Center of Hominology.
The center’s director, listed on the site as Dr. Igor Burtsev, wrote that Ketchum’s findings prove Sasquatch or Bigfoot “is human like us only different, a hybrid of a human with unknown species.”
Reached on telephone Monday, Ketchum said the 50-page manuscript containing the research and DNA findings is still in peer review at a scientific journal. As for whether the premature announcement would impact that, she said, “I hope not. So far we haven’t heard anything that says it’s going to stop it.” As for when the study might become public, she said, “in weeks instead of many months, that’s for sure.”
Ketchum said the study had sequenced “three complete Sasquatch nuclear genomes” and determined the species is a human hybrid — “the result of males of an unknown hominin species crossing with female Homo sapiens.”
Sasquatch nuclear DNA, Ketchum said, “is incredibly novel and not at all what we had expected. While it has human nuclear DNA within its genome, there are also distinctly non-human, non-archaic hominin (member of the genus Homo, including Homo sapiens), and non-ape sequences. We describe it as a mosaic of human and novel non-human sequence.”
What does that mean in non-scientific terms? David Paulides of North America Bigfoot Research, one of several private groups and individuals that financed the DNA study, said the research makes one thing clear: Sasquatch isn’t nonexistent and it isn’t an ape. It’s human. Or, at least, partly human.
“It falls in the realm of human,” Paulides said. “It has a human mother we can identify, that somehow evolved in the last 15,000 years, but in an unusual aspect of this we can’t track the father or find out who the father is. Based on millions of DNA strains that exist around the world, the father doesn’t exist.
“The only species we can identify is human. The male that procreated is unidentifiable.”
Then what is it?
“Some people out there have said we’ve used this word, ‘angel DNA.’ That is not true,” said Paulides, a former police officer in San Jose, Calif. “But there is some very unusual aspects to that male DNA that cannot be explained right now.”
Ketchum’s Texas lab didn’t do all of the testing. She said 13 labs — at universities, state-run forensive labs and private-sector facilities — were involved in the process, which included blind studies “and repeatability on most of it.” She said the labs tested 109 samples of all kinds — hair, tissue, blood and saliva.
“And all of them had the same results,” Paulides said. “If someone pooh-poohs it, they either haven’t read (the study) or they just refuse to believe it.”
Another Sasquatch DNA-research project is underway at Oxford University in England, but is entirely unrelated to the Ketchum study, said Thom Cantrall, a Sasquatch author who hosted an international Sasquatch symposium in the Tri-Cities last s summer.
“They’re not working in concert at all,” Cantrall said. “It’s entirely different, with entirely different samples. Some of the samples are from the same people.”
The release of Ketchum’s findings, Cantrall said, is “igniting a war” among different factions in the Bigfoot-believing community — those adamant that the creature is an ape or gorilla, and those who are convinced it’s more human than not.
The early announcement of Ketchum’s research “has the ape faction totally up in arms,” Cantrall said. “There’s so much personal psychology involved here — people who have staked their reputation on (Sasquatch) being ape that they can’t back away from that.”
Paulides said forensic testing of supposed Sasquatch hair and tissue samples through the years, including early DNA testing, has always come back as human. That invariably led to the presumption that the samples had been contaminated by the humans who had gathered them, he said — instead of what he said has been obvious for many years to some researchers, including himself: That the tests were correct all along. That Sasquatch is, if not human, at least a distant cousin.
Cantrall said he had “a tremendous fear” over what might happen to what he called “the Sasquatch population” over the coming months and years. If the creatures are indeed human, the government will seek to insure their safety, he said, noting that federal protections for the spotted owl will seem “only miniscule” in comparison.
“Really, the only protection (Sasquatch individuals) need is protection from being murdered,” he said. “Because there’s going to be that faction out there, too.”
Maybe. A September post on a hunting website referencing the two Sasquatch DNA studies ended with this little note: “PS: What gun do you think would be best for when I get my first Sasquatch tag?” - Yakima Herald
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