Dermals are only part of it. To my knowledge nobody's been able to do it on Walla Walla (Wrinkle Foot). Those ridges tuck under. Check this out for characteristics:*

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/sbs/elkins.html

There's a huge difference between looking at photos with diminishing resolution and handling actual copies. I'd seen LMS and WCS, but it wasn't until I held an OM copy that I could really see the characteristics. Some of them fairly jumped out at me. I could see what I'd been reading about.

Rest assured, Jimmy Chilcutt has not changed his postion on OM, the Skookum Cast or any of the casts he's examined. He's convinced these animals exist, based on what he saw. He was impressed with the work tube's done, but it does not prove that's what happened in 1967.

So, when is somebody going to bring one in?

wolftrax wrote:




:icon14: :appl:

I don't know why the dermal ridge pattern of an unidentified hominid primate would have to match apes.

Can someone please explain how to get "dessication ridges" in mud?

The same reason Boaz's "Hominoid clavicle" matched a dolphin rib.

And that reason is?

Are you talking about the ' suction ' features ?

Those are easy to duplicate also ... Do we really need to go to the trouble ?

How do you get "suction features" in fine, dry substrate?

Can you not keep your assertions in a row ? Forgetting which board you're on ?


You said :




I assumed you were refering to alleged dermals in prints found in mud; which can be shown to look
exactly like suction artifacts, not like dessication ridges ...


Or were you refering to some other prints in mud, that show the features we have been discussing in
the last few pages..

Features that look like this:



If you are refering to something else, can you post a pic, so we know what you are talking about ?

I've already done so, but since the resolution is too poor after uploading to show the fine detail, I get cracks about "moonscapes" and other dismissive comments.

I suggest you buy some casts and get away from the edges for awhile. You might possibly see what's going on then.

Just to clarify:

Question #1: How do you (generic you) get dessication ridges in mud?

Question #2: How do you get (generic you) get "suction features" in fine, dry substrate?

So your comment about ' dessication ridges in mud ' , was just a snipe, with no substance behind it ?



Not that we should expect anything more... Just noting it for the record..

I'm very sure that I'm just slow and this is somewhere else on the BFF board, but I found this report by Jimmy Chilcutt and the Elkins Creek cast VERY interesting. These lines could not be casting artifacts. They are either hoaxed by placing skin samples on the fake foot or they are real.

No, it wasn't. Some casts taken in mud show dermal ridges. Just how would those be "dessication ridges"?

There are characteristics on the ball of OM that could hardly be from suction in the exceedingly dry soil the original cast was taken in.

In your haste to snipe at me you seem to be letting the points go right by you.

Honest questions deserve honest answers. I don't seem to be getting them.




Did I miss the part where one of Ray Wallace's nephews skinned a living foot (with suitably wide dermal ridges and huge sweat pores) in order to pull off a better hoax?

Those are the suction artifacts I was referring to... Easy to duplicate where mud is present..

Real easy to test for yourself...

I'll have a comment on the photos in that article at some point. I may have to wait untill we thaw out of our current ice age up here...
IF(and I stress, the IF), what I am seeing pans out..my comments likely won't be much more popular then Wolftrax.
I'm entirely open to being wrong...but I'm seeing something entirely different then dermals in those photos. I'll do my best to illustrate what I mean, when I can figure out how to demonstrate it.
(ah..I see Sceptical Greg beat me to it. S.G...that's exactly what I am seeing..those are to me, clearly suction artifacts..I'll still try to demonstrate at some point).
BTW, wolftrax and Matt before him have taken alot of heat, I feel undeserved, for doing some of the best pure science I've seen here in a long time.

Ekkk! LAL - I realize that you are being sarcastic, but I really don't think it would be necessary to skin a real foot to pull off a hoax. I think real skin would have to be the model, but I think what Chilcutt is saying is that the skin ridges run the opposite way of humans (right?)...so to hoax the print, you couldn't just use a human foot...it would have to be turned.

Skeptical Greg wrote:



Oh, what I could do with this quote...

Suction huh?

So, are you suggesting that as the foot (be it real or not) comes out of the wet mud, suction action creates these fine lines and "pores"? It must only form in certain conditions, because I have seen prints in wet mud and haven't noticed these lines before. Sounds like I need to experiment with some mud and suction. :happy:

Look forward to seeing your experiments NW.

I don't know about pores.. I'm refering to the alleged dermal ridges..



Another question that has been asked again and again is; how do you suppose a substrate retains features like pores and dermal ridges, but fails to retain an impression of the flexion creases, that surely must be part of a large flexible foot ?

It may be related to the mud supporting the foot differently, and therefore not allowing the flex crease to transfer (plus, I'm not sure how the flex relates to gender and age....older feet maybe more/less heavily padded, females may have less as well, etc.). Plus again, I think there is an issue of not casting multiple prints in succession so we can see what characteristics the next footstep exhibited.

It's sort of this weird catch 22...if dermal ridges are casting artifacts, why aren't there more casts that show it? If skin ridge detail is mud suction, where are they all? But if bigfoot does really have a flex crease, why don't more casts show this as well? It is very odd that I have seen both sides argue that a lack of consistency proves it a hoax AND proves it is real. Both can't be right. I would expect a degree of variability, but what degree is acceptable?

Ok..considering that it's like 8 degrees out, and we are buried in yet more snow...I didn't feel like finding real "free range" mud to experiment with.
So, I tried to make a "mix" of kitchen ingredients roughly approximating the consistency of mud.
THis is what happened when I pushed a wooden spoon into it and pulled it back out. The green line is the "directly of travel" for the spoon.
I think that this shows the same overall pattern type as in the photos, although on a larger scale. I'd guess that the material of whatever made the track, and the consistency of the mud, would affect greatly the size and perhaps pattern of the suction artifacts..but the same pattern is here. What I see in the photos linked by H.M. is pretty much this, but on a smaller scale. THe "mud" I had, was very "sloopy" and I could not get any small detail to "take" (I tried it with my hand also, and not even close to a dermal).
I may try this again once I can see the ground outside.

It was a dolphin rib. Noel Boaz had been comparing the fossil to chimpanzees and hominid bones and theorized it was a hominoid clavicle based on the resemblance. Tim White had studied the fossil and realized it was a dolphin rib, because it was a match. When the fossil was compared to both a chimpanzee clavicle and a dolphin rib, it was apparent the fossil matched the rib.

Here we have something similar. The pattern seen on casts does not match that of apes or humans (also apes), but it does match that known in artifact tests.

Attached is a comparison of the dermal pattern seen in apes, humans, a baboon, and the test cast alongside the OM cast (CA-19). I know I posted this earlier, but I also asked which pattern CA-19 matched?

Nice work NW!

Another question I have that may resolve some of the dermal issue;

Of all the casts said to have dermals, were any of the tracks photographed and showed dermals before the tracks were cast? If so, can those be posted here?

I'm certain that these "pour" artifacts would be almost completely random - even when poured in the same track (were that possible).

I'm struggling to find much in the way of in formation on duplicate dermals from a trackway. I've seen one reference to Jeff Meldrum finding a fainter duplicate in a second track from a run.

Anyone help out? Are there others?

This was the focus of a topic over at JREF, and the subject of an email sent to Dr. Meldrum by one of the members there..

I referenced it earlier in this thread..

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?s=&...st&p=368213

So far, the silence is deafening..

I suspect if there were two prints with matching dermals it would be all in our faces, and at least one of the color plates in Dr. Meldrum's book, if not a whole chapter...

Tube suggested CA-6 from the same trackway(s) and posted photos on JREF. Supposedly other casts from the event ended up in the BC Museum. Got any friends in BC?

What about Abbott Hill? One of the casts was compelling. Are there more? There are photos of the trackway, but I don't know how many were cast.

A dermal ridge has to have some very specific characteristics to be considered a dermal ridge. Does anyone here have expertise in fingerprinting? (I know I don't.)

Thanks for this. Now I understand what you were talking about!






A very interesting question and one I hope someone knows the answer to. This is making me want to grab a pan of the fine particle sand in my front yard and experiment with it to see if dermals will show up. It makes very nice tracks of the wolves when they step in it. :happy:

Maybe the two boards should just merge. That would make it easier for everybody.

Did not Tube say that he only got his feature in dry materials. Not in mud or moist ground. Something he repeated several times. And that he concidered castings from wet/moist ground and mud legitamate.

Thanks Lu & Greg :icon14: .

A skinned sasquatch foot would probably work better.

I finally found a site with some explanations of those characteristics:

http://www.policensw.com/info/fingerprints/finger08.html

Now all I have to do is learn how to pronounce "bifurcation" correctly.

He may have at one time. Now he seems to be saying (or at least strongly implying) they're all faked.

It seems he's only been able to get the lines using a dessicant and heated water. The water for casting the originals was taken from a lake or stream in the area. Neither tube nor Melissa has been able to get the lines using actual Onion Mountain soil, last I heard.

Nice appeal to authority Lu..


You don't have to be a fingerprint expert to see whether two patterns match or not..
In the case of an individual source, they would be a perfect match ..


Can you see the difference in the structures in this comp ?



I suspect most of the members here could identify the real dermals ...


I suspect one or two might even deny they can, even though they really do .. ..


Are we supposed to believe only a fingerprint expert can pick out the real thing ...


Don't give me a song and dance about ' not enough detail ' in the cast/s .. There are supposed
to be pores in at least one of the samples above..

Pronunciation: Buy-fur-kay-shun



:wink:

Or maybe the fights started over there should stay over there. They're getting mighty old here.

I totally agree. They got mighty old there, too.




Edited because I can't spell today.

Thank you. That seems too short somehow. I keep trying to put another syllable in. I kind of like "Galton details". Has a nice ring to it.

You're welcome.

I think part of the problem is that people didn't realize the importance of casting consecutive prints. They cast the "best". In the case of Abbott Hill, the surface was actually sanded to make the finished product look better. Fine surface detail would have been removed. It's rare to have a substrate that's even capable of capturing such fine detail. I doubt most folks would think to look for it.

I've been reading John Green's account of the OM/BCM event recently. Don Abbott tried preserving whole prints with glue rather than casting them. The road crew ran over those prints too, thinking they'd finished.

It's a wonder John's still sane.

As part of this research I contacted Diane France, and though she does not claim to be a fingerprint examiner she is a forensic anthropologist, has owned a casting business for over 20 years and has been casting for over 30 years, currently on the Board of Directors for the A.B.F.A., is past Vice Chairman of the Forensic Science Foundation, fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and the Director of the Laboratory for Human Identification at Colorado State University. Diane is a member of DMORT, and has responded to many mass fatality incidents with that federal team as well as with a local Body Identification Team. She regularly teaches human identification methods and remains search and recovery for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and for the University of Bradford in Great Britain. Dr. France was a member of NecroSearch when it was still known as the PIG Group and is a former president of NecroSearch. She is also a professional skeptic.

I sent her photographs of CA-19 and this was her comment on them:






We've just been through this. Tube was able to get casting artifacts from Duwamish river soil, clays, Lon Erickson got them from Loess soil. Tube had heated water previously but his latest experiments were with cold water, as was mine. The Onion Mt. soil both Melissa and Tube were sent was clearly organic and different from the soil that was present there at the track site. The ownership of the casts is in questions and customary cast copying procedures could very likely have introduced artifacts.

Why would you leave this info out?

Waiting for more images that show differences between CA-19 and the test cast.

Because I didn't see it. I stayed off this thread for awhile.

So, are most of these "dessication ridges" happening around the edges? Does the plaster produce rounded lumps in one spot but not in another resembling actual fat pads squashing into the substrate? Are these other soils identical to Onion Mountain soil on the day of casting or just "like" it? Do they produce dots, islands and bifurcations and ending ridges in the ball area or are there lines lacking continuity around the perimeter of the test casts while the center stays relatively smooth? Do the lines show sharp turns? Anybody get them in mud yet? Do the ridges tuck under like on Walla Walla? Is everyone pouring at the same speed, using the the same method? Have the manufacturers been notified their products are doing things they're not supposed to do?

Do you think looking at a photo of a cast is as good as looking at the cast itself, even if it is a copy? Loess was what Dr. Meldrum used in his experiments to see if some of the features on CA-19 were casting artifacts, wasn't it?

I agree 100%

Did you bother to follow my link ?

The reference I made, had nothing to do with a fight..

It was with regard to a serious, polite inquiry to Dr. Meldrum, that is relevant to the discussion we are having.


Lu seems intent on making it into something else .. Perhaps because she has nothing substantive to add
to the discussion. It happens a lot.


I'm waiting for her opinion and analysis of the images of the alleged dermals I posted ..

I'm confident she's giving it some serious thought before replying, and not just ignoring me...

She is in fact ignoring you for the same reason she's ignoring you on the other board.

Congratulations! You're the first.

Then maybe it'd be a good idea to read it, as most of the answers to your questions are there.



I tell you what, you post photos showing what you are talking about and I will post photos showing that they are indeed on this test cast.


I studied and compared CA-19 and Tube's test casts both in Meldrum's lab and at Tube's. The problem with a copy or unknown origins or which cast is the original is that you never know what substrate it was copied in.




It was Dr. Meldrum's student, Lon Erickson, who used Loess soil and got casting artifacts.

Tube did not say that casts allegedly showing dermals cast in mud were legitimate, he did say that substrate that contains lots of organic material seems to inhibit the artifact process. However, DesertYeti states he has produced these kinds of ridges from muddy substrates.

The thing is that the artifact tests produce a pattern that matches the pattern seen in these casts alleged to have dermals, and the pattern seen in the casts alleged to have dermals does not match that of apes (including humans). It therefore seems the most logical choice to see where this pattern belongs and what caused it, it is the result of artifacts, as that is what the evidence supports.

So this leas to several questions. How do we know even what substrates the casts were really made in? How do we know the casts given to Krantz and Meldrum really are the originals?

This is why I asked what casts said to have dermals actually have photos taken of them while they were tracks, in the ground, not yet casted. Photos that document that dermals were actually present in the track, not introduced as an artifact.

Duplicate post.

I'll read...........carefully.



Unfortunately the resolution isn't going to be good enough, but these are from Jimmy Chilcutt's presentation at WCS 2003 (and he hasn't changed his mind on what he saw):

Click to view attachment

He was specifically talking about this area:

Click to view attachment

I've seen the lines on the test cast photos circling the ball before the toes, so no need to post those.

It's obvious from a copy I handled there's overflow and a line running across the ball and old air bubbles and new air bubbles and pits that don't look anything like air bubbles and pits that look like air bubbles chipped out and evident bifurcations. Note how some of those irregular pits with rounded edges are only on the ridges. The photos below are of my friend's copy through a magnifier:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

The edges are a real mess in places, but I don't see fine lines on the overflow.



CA-19 is a copy, but it's of John Green's original, isn't it? I seem to recall he was able to provide a lot of information about it.



And that was the idea, wasn't it? No fixative spray was used and the detail in the center was flattened by the pour. Jeff noted the artifacts did not "consistantly exhibit uniform width or other details consistant with dermatoglyphics." (pg. 256)

I'll take that as a ' No ' ..... You have no idea what you are talking about, when it comes to
alleged dermal detail .

Why is this so hard to understand? (and I think you do BTW) CA-19 is a copy, there is no documentation to know the type of material the copy was cast in to. Was is sand, volcanic ash, black dirt, mud, silicone, clay, Silly putty or what?
Even if there were actual sasquatch dermals on the original they could have been destroyed by the copying process and if there weren't what has been interpreted as dermals could have been created in the form of artifacts.

A similar argument was used against DY's study of the Skookum Cast by his detractors, including you, but somehow, because you want to believe that this cast copy shows dermals, it means nothing now. The double standard is amazing. If a copy is useless as a scientific specimen in one case why isn't it useless in another?
In fact in the case of the Skookum Cast Dy's assertions were mostly based on large impressions not on something that requires magnification to see. Which do you think is more likely to be destroyed or created by the copying process?

Using terms like "I seem to recall", "I heard" or "I read somewhere" mean nothing without documentation and only serve to confuse the issue, but maybe that's the point.

E.G.:

"The information on page 137 of "Meet the Sasquatch" is part of a paper by Jeff Meldrum, who was misled by the fact that the 13" cast with the dermals that he examined was incorrectly labeled as being from Blue Creek Mountain.

Carefully read, the paragraph starting at the bottom of page 45 of the
original version of "On the Track of the Sasquatch" does state clearly that the print on which I saw tiny lines was a 15" one, but since the reference to the lines is on the following page that is easily overlooked.

I have no idea how the wrong labeling came about, and was not aware that the dermal cast was actually from Onion Mountain until Jeff sent me a photo of it not long ago. I no longer have the original, and don't remember why that is, but I do have an old picture that shows clear identifying marks. It was not, in other ways, a good cast, and until the dermals were noted was not considered important.

John Green
Harrison Hot Springs, B.C., Canada"

And:

"It is on a 13" track from Onion Mountain that Krantz, Meldrum and Chilcutt have identified dermals. The track on which I noted a straight pattern that I likened to wood grain was a 15" track on Blue Creek Mountain road and that is indeed an observation worth thinking about, but I was referring only to the fact that there appeared to be tiny lines running lengthwise along the foot. Carved wooden feet would be no more likely to show an impression of fine wood grain than any other object made of such wood. As a rule wood grain can be seen but not felt. That same track, by the way, caused the tracking dog to react as if it had been subjected to a sudden shock--limbs abruptly stiffened and hair on the back standing upright--a reaction it showed no sign of the following morning . A more substantial reason to consider fakery would be that the Blue Creek Mountain tracks showed up just a few days after I had tried using a tracking dog on the Onion Mountain tracks--but Bud Ryerson was the contractor on that road job and Ray Wallace was long gone from California.

John Green
Harrison Hot Springs, B.C., Canada"


(reposted with permission)

Keep in mind...



That seemed worth repeating.

RayG

Here on the back of the cast I have all kinds of air-bubbles, rounded edges, sharp edges, irregular, circular:

You're looking at the ball on the medial side, the overflow with the lines as noted by Zack Clothier is on the toes, I noticed them on the lateral side, but one other thing to notice is that the lines follow in a pattern from the plantar surface from finer lines to progessively thicker lines to the dorsal surface of the cast, these lines do continue to the overflow even in the images you've shown, and are seen on both CA-19 and the test cast.


Meldrum thought his CA-19 was the original, DDA stated it couldn't be and was a copy of unknown origins, Green doesn't recall what happened to his cast but he got rid of it.



No fixative spray was used on CA-19, hence the artifacts, and my own test cast has ridge flow on the surface of the center of the cast.

I just wanted to chime in and say that I see that a lot in the field casts that I make. The replicas I make don't tend to show those, but it's because I deliberately smooth out the surface prior to the cast fully hardening.