Bigfoot DNA Dubbed Scam, Believers Undaunted

Aug. 15, 2008 -- Bigfoot's body has been found, according to two Georgia men who, with much media fanfare, showed reporters three blurry photos said to depict the creature at a press conference held today at a hotel a few miles from Stanford University.

The promised evidence for Bigfoot DNA turned out to be an e-mail from Curt Nelson, a University of Minnesota scientist who analyzed DNA samples provided by the two men. Nelson said one of the samples came from a human, the other from an opossum. The presenters sidestepped the issue by saying that is what their Bigfoot must have recently consumed.

The hotel's proximity to the California university is about as close to academia as the supposed findings will get, according to experts contacted by Discovery News. They say photographs of the body, supposedly stored in a freezer, resemble a widely available Halloween costume.

"What they are claiming to be Bigfoot in a photograph doesn't look natural," Jeffrey Meldrum, a professor of anatomy in the Department of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University, told Discovery News.

"When the photo is juxtaposed next to an off-the-shelf costume, the resemblance is remarkable," added Meldrum, who is the author of the book, "Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science."

Suspicious from the Beginning

Meldrum, who does not discount the Bigfoot legend, was at first "hopeful" that the discovery was legitimate. Matthew Whitton, identified as a Georgia police officer in a Searching for Bigfoot, Inc., press release, and former correctional officer Rick Dyer, say that they found "the creature" in the woods of northern Georgia.

"The exact location," the press release continues, "is being kept secret to protect the creatures."

"So here these men are in Georgia, which is home to the world-renowned Yerkes Primate Center, and what do they do? They turn to a charlatan instead," Meldrum said.

He identified the "charlatan" as Tom Biscardi, founder of the Great American Bigfoot Research Organization and one of the presenters at today's press conference. In 2005, Biscardi claimed his group captured an 8-foot-tall Bigfoot. That claim was quickly disputed.

More recently, Meldrum says Whitton and Dyer released a YouTube video said to show a scientist traveling to Georgia to examine the "body." Both Meldrum and The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization say that numerous viewers quickly figured out that the "scientist" was, in reality, Martin Whitton, the deputy's brother.

Georgia Fakelore

Long-time north Georgia resident Charles Doyle, who is a noted folklorist and an associate professor of English at the University of Georgia, told Discovery News he wasn't surprised that Bigfoot is an attention-getter in his region.