dermal ridges and casting artifacts Options

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I'm starting this thread as a follow up for those people who have questions or want to discuss the information I presented at Jason Valenti's Bellingham conference. For those who were not there I'll try to post some photos so that everyone can see what we are talking about.

I have been doing casting tests for several months and I have waited until now to post results publicly. I was hoping that Jimmy Chilcutt was going to attend the conference but unfortunately he did not make it. The primary peer reveiw of my materials was from Jeff Meldrum and Owen Caddy with whom I privately showed my casts. I showed photographs of my test casts and methods to everyone in attendance and put my test casts out for examination. Rick Noll is quite familiar with this line of inquiry as he has been documenting the testing with still photographs and video. I sent Jimmy Chilcutt a number of small test "coupons" some time ago but I have made further discoveries since that time. The test casts I sent Mr. Chilcutt are not completly representative of everything I have discovered.

First off, I need to give credit where credit is due. I cannot claim that I discovered the casting artifact process as I learned from Dr. Meldrum that he had seen ridges spontainously develop on test casts some years ago for which he had no solid explanation. He may have discovered this process. I believe Rick Noll was familiar with this process when I showed him my first test cast. I did not pursue "what he knew and when he knew it". In the professional casting world, of which Rick is a part, these kind of ridges would be seen as a mistake or an example of poor casting technique and actions would be taken to avoid them. As far as can tell I am the first person to pursue researching this phenomenon, at least as far as it concerns the understanding of surface features seen on Sasquatch footprint casts.

In a nutshell for those who were not in Bellingham this weekend I have found that under certain conditions cement casts can spontainously develop surface ridges that have a strong resemblance to what are being claimed as dermal ridges, at least on one cast known as the "Onion Mountain" cast made by John Green in August of 1967. Numerous pieces of evidence come together to suggest that the ridges seen on Green's Onion Mountain cast are ridge artifacts and not an accurate representation of dermal ridges pressed into the soil by a primate foot.

Just so we do not get off on the "wrong foot" let me be clear about the scope of these investigations. I am not "debunking" the claims made about all casts that are claimed to have dermal ridges. My scope of investigation has been limited to ONE cast which was made under rather extrordinary conditions. Various other casts such as Paul Freeman's "Wrinkle Foot" or the Elkins cast made in Georgia were made in mud. My tests suggest that this ridge artifact process does not occur in mud. Various other casts are claimed to exhibit dermal ridges. Of those I have no first hand knowledge or opinion, as I have not seen the casts nor do I have any knowledge of the soil conditions under which they were made.

I will be giving the same presentation and cast exhibition at the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries Sasquatch conferance this coming Sunday at the Seattle Center. John Green is scheduled to be there and I hope to verify the information I have gathered second hand about his 1967 track find.