Earlier this year I joined the discussion on the forum about hair analysis for
dna purposes. I promised to post results. Unfortunately I am still waiting for
results from the hair sent to NYU in June. I can't even get a reply as to how
long it might take. I would bet however, that the hair recently found by the high
profile Yeti expedition will be tested before mine, sent to the same place.

Be that as it may, I know that there are many readers who are interested in
the scientific approach to sasquatch research involving the study of hair, so I
will try to post pictures of one of the other hairs I have found since June.

The root is in the top frame, and representative sections are below, all of
the same hair. It was captured from one of my hair traps where I have seen
frequent signs of possible Sasquatch. I have a database of native animals
hair, and there is no match amoung them. It closely resembles Human, but
there is too much taper for Homo sapiens, and if it is Bear, then it is very
non-typical of Bear, and does not match my Bear samples.
Click to view attachment

Good stuff. I don't remember this the first time around. Where to you get the fibers? Ohio?
I hope NYU responds to your request.

Nevermind about the where question. I forgot the name of the thread. Brain freeze.

I would not call myself a hair expert, but I'd rephrase "too much taper for Homo sapiens" to taper not typical for a homo sapiens culture practising haircutting, shaving or other forms of depilation... my arm hair would appear to have taper though...

Is there another thread concerning this hair and your other studies?

In your above hair sample picture, could you please tell me how long the hair is and at what magnification the picture was taken at?

edit spelling

Furious George and jamin
I searched for about half an hour and couldn't find all the threads I mentioned, that's why
I put it on a new thread. It is 28 mm long. the mag was 400x but the picture is reduced for
ease of posting. I can't measure diameter but the base is larger than mod human and tapering
down.
Because of posts like flashman's I do not usually post on bff. But some of my reports are on
my blog, http://bigfoot-evidence.blogspot.com/

OlMan, don't let Flash's post bug you! He's got a valid point, and I didn't think he was trying to criticize your find.
Nice pics of the sample, by the way! I see a couple of things that are interesting in that hair:
First, there doesn't seem to be a cellular medulla. This is supposed to be consistent with Sasquatch hair, among a few other species. So this is a plus.
Second, as has been mentioned, this hair doesn't appear to have been cut at any time during it's life. Another plus.
Third, you've got the root end intact, meaning there is a good chance there's some DNA in there.

Make sure it goes to the right place. One of the things I had the pleasure of discussing with Dr. Meldrum last week was that all DNA labs are not alike. There was one in particular that he mentioned (dang it, I wish I could remember which one) that he likes for this kind of analisys. If you Google the good doctor, you'll get his Gmail address and can ask him specifically which lab he prefers. It may very well have been NYU, but I just don't remember.

Either way, I hope it comes back as something unknown (instead of "human" or "contaminated").
Good luck, and can you describe your hair traps for us? I'd sure like to try something like that myself...

Thanks again,
S.

Whatever you do, don't send anything to that guy with the mohawk. Total goomba.

Too late, that's NYU. But I am holding the later ones, looking for a better place

Spazmo,
The hair trap consists of a springy twig placed so that your subject brushes against
it as he passes, with a drop of mouse trap glue smeared on the tip. The only trick
is to figure out where he will pass. I clean the glue from the hair with alcohol.

Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, Laboratory of Microscopy, 6835 E. Las Animas Trail. Gold Canyon, Arizona 85118

He does BF hair analysis. Might be better to get an opinion of someone who examines BF hair on a regular basis. Then let him decide if it needs DNA work. Give him a call. Send him pics of the hair that you have in here.

Thanks Grazhopprr
But I have sent pictures to both Fahrenbach and Meldrum in the past and they don't bother to
answer. I think they want the actual hair sent, but the hair is too scarce, and I lost a good one
that way in the past. It would be nice to get an answer even if it was no. The only help I got
was from Dr John Bindernagle who gave a positive opinion and he suggested NYU, which I did.

I have been contacting other places and may have another good contact.

I had planned to ignore this post, but I suppose I should address the critics
as well as the supporters.
It's just irritating when a critic assumes you don't know what you're talking
about.

But on to the point. The reason I made the statement that there is too much
taper for Homo Sapiens is that the base of the subject hair is 200 per cent
larger in diameter than a typical Sapien hair. Therefore, even though many
parts of the Sapien body produces tapering hairs, the taper is much less
rapid than in the subject hair.

I don't have diameter measuring capability, but use photo comparisons.

I was more trying to point out that you could be digging yourself into the same hole as if your were comparing a negroid hair to a caucasian hair and trying to define seperate "species" thereby.

Meaning that I think it's just as likely that we're dealing with a "homo sapiens robustus" as a gigantopithecus. In which case we might not get anywhere until we have complete enough DNA sequences to see how many hundreds of years it's removed from a typical mongoloid phenotype, rather than how many tens to hundreds of thousands of years it is from sapiens, or millions from any homo genus.....

There obviously aren't any easy answers to anything within the bigfoot phenomenon, so some things might come down to splitting hairs (groan)

I think we really could use a central hair and DNA database, so that similarities between samples can be defined and studied, or a pattern of subtle deviations from modern sapiens or "appears to be primate" hair and DNA can be found.

Anyway, good luck in the sample collecting, good work so far, and keep at it, the more "alike" samples you collect from different areas at different times, the more convincing the evidence will be even if it only represents subtle deviation from known hair sources. Ideally it would be great if the DNA were complete enough to identify separate individuals across a multitude of samples that all had that subtle difference in common.


Flash

I would recomend contacting David Paulides with the info on where and how you found the hairs. He may be willing to have it tested through the lab he is working with, but with the length being so short (28 mm) he may suspect that it is human arm hair. I'm not the expert either, but if you have other hairs that are longer without cut ends those would be more interesting I think.

I like the hair snare idea though, I have a sample that was recovered from some limb twists on a cedar tree, that may have been deposited while attempting to remove cockel burrs from it's coat, as the burrs were found on the ground beneath the breaks with the same hair wrapped up on them.

I'm waiting on results myself, and am contemplating sending out yet another sample to Paulides, if the testing gets hung up. Paulides mentions that there are some problems with inhibitors interfering with the DNA extractions, but ofcoarse this only happens when it's squatch hair right?

I prefer to deal with evidence rather than the multitudes of theories. Procure one of these
"homo sapiens robustus" hairs and post it and let's see how they compare.

I'm pretty sure that supposed yeti hair turned out to be from a goat, and over a year ago. Unless they found more hair on a more recent expedition, but I assume there was really only one big one? I can't tell from the online info.

BBC article on goat-yeti hair result

Well, you have to rule everything in, before definitively ruling anything out, otherwise it looks like you're trying to support your own preconceived notions rather than finding the best fit theory to a full an accurate description of the evidence.



That would be like working backwards, a luxury we don't have.

I really don't understand doubletalk very well. I don't really have any preconceived notions other
than that I have ruled out Cattle, Horses, dogs, cats, skunks, deer, raccoons, oppossums, foxes,
coyotes, typical Humans, and typical Bears.
All I'm saying is that when you try to shoot someone down you should do it with evidence which
is as good, rather than your theories.

Your type of posts are the reason that I never posted any information here before, and the reason
that I won't again. Perhaps that will satisfy you.

Oldmanofthewoods; the technology of DNA analysis is rapidly advancing and while not quite there yet, in a few years it may be within reach of avid hobbyists to have the DNA from hair read for the complete genome, and not just for the mitochondrial DNA found in the follicle's bulbous end, and so one could make pretty accurate comparisons to and maybe even some predictions with similar living forms.
It was long supposed that since any DNA in hair would be fragmented and difficult if not impossible to decipher, but it turns out that the material from which hair is produced can preserve the DNA, fragmented or not,in its original order and modern analyzing machines may be able to record the sequence regardless of its state of fragmentation since the pieces would still be in its proper relative position.
This relatively recent understanding has prompted a number of museums to inspect their collection for samples of long extinct animals for which we have hair and other chitinous material, like horn, hide, hooves, claws, feathers, etc. By comparing these extinct forms to the modern ones it's been proposed that the ancient forms could be re-created by starting with modern DNA and making alterations to it so that it matches the sequence found in the chitinous material from the related extinct forms. The wooly mammoth, giant ground sloth, wooly rhinoceros, passenger pigeons, dodo, steller sea-cow, and a few others have been suggested as candidates.
So, if you think it could be the real deal, even if you don't post, you might want to keep your antennae up and tuned into what is happening on that front.
Patience above all else.

OUCH...
OlManOfTheWoods, you've got to be able to take the good with the bad here, and this stuff from Flash isn't even really bad, it's just critical thinking. Please lighten up, and continue to post your findings. We're all curious, regardless of our point of view.
I like your work and hope to see more of it!

Olmanofthewoods,

Flashman ask direct questions and wasn't rude in any way, yet you act as though he insulted you? I am not sure why you feel that way. If you cannot handle critical review of your evidence here, how would you handle a peer review on a much larger scale?

Redwolf

Good lord order a shipment of Huggies, stat!

And quickly! Volsquatch has been dribbling disappointment all over the boards lately...

Won't the alcohol mess up any potential dna traces from the root?