A Proper Response

Hey there every peoples!
I know I said I was quitting The Grand Vision for good, but I was weak. My depression got the better of me, but thanks to the support of my parents, my therapist, Meredith Riven, Traumador (everyone’s favorite stuffed theropod), and even Mrs. Olson herself, I have come back into the fold.

You may remember my little piece about the fossil whale brains found here in SLO County. Well it seems it got a response from Peaches Olson (the woman whose daughter was in the accident and sister of the woman who found the fossil). I have now come up with a proper response.

Although, I understand your wish for these rare finds to reside in their “home land” and in a museum of their own……….you have two problems. We do not have anyone qualified to study the calliber of these fossils and WHO is going to FUND this kind of Museum?

First off, this woman is not a paleontologist, so I shouldn’t expect her to understand how the science works. Paleontologists do a lot of traveling. No matter how big a museum’s collection is they don’t have everything. Paleontologists often have to travel to multiple museums for the specimens they use in their research. So obviously scientists could come to our museum to study the brains. In fact I think the Central Coast is an optimal place for a museum. Berkeley and Los Angeles, two world renowned museums, are each 4 hours away. That’s well within arm’s reach compared to some other museums they’d have to go to. What is more, because we would be between these two hubs, it would be easier for paleontologists to visit our collections in one fell swoop (start at Berkeley and go south and vice versa). Even if we wouldn’t have someone qualified, they could easily come to us.
And I’d find a way to fund it. It may not be easy, but I’d find a way. I’ll have a bake sale, I’ll get two jobs, I’ll get a loan, I’ll apply for grants, I’ll set up a donation stall at Farmer’s Market, I’ll sell a kidney, I’ll rob a bank, I’ll black mail a rich person. Whatever it takes, I’ll find a way (although I’m obviously kidding about some of those). And if we had such a rare and valuable fossil we could use to garner attention and support.

Although, I appreciate your passion for our past history, I need to emphasize how little credit or notice the central coast gave us of our finds…..Only until, the LA Museum of Natural History, were we even able to get anywhere. This is also true for the McGilvray Brain as well.

All the more reason the Central Coast could use a museum.

Most people who are in our shoes can not afford to go to these facilities for 3 weeks of their lives and with their loved ones who also miss work. We began to think, what are the odds of this spectacular find of a fossilized whale brain providing for a neuro center to help people regain their lives.? What is wrong with giving people a chance of possibilities, they thought would never happen.

Too true. Well I remember reading that the ideal situation is that someone buys the fossil and donates it to a museum. Who knows how long it could take to sell. What if I got an organization up that the fossil could be donated to? Again, we could use such a rare and important find.

here is an article coming out in the Naturalist and National Geographic. Reading about these great finds and their historical studies is often HOW we learn…..it’s OK that they do not reside right here.

She’s right. I mean, Los Angeles has a a museum for it’s fossils. As does San Bernardino County. Barstow’s “Miocene Motherland” has that museum and the Raymond Alf Museum. San Diego fossils have a home right in Balboa Park. A great deal of Montana’s and Utah’s dinosaurian wealth are nestled in their native range. As are the fossils of New Mexico, Oregon, and northern California. Orange County has the Cooper Center to salvage and preserve their rich paleontological and archaeological past. The tar pits, Diamond Valley, and the Fairmead Landfill all have museums built on site to house their spectacular finds. Nebraska and Florida, two of the best states for Cenozoic fossils, both have committed museums of their own. And don’t forget the Royal Tyrrell Museum. I mean really, why should the Central Coast have one? It’s not like there are any fossil whale brains, butchered mastodons, remains of ice age megafauna, a Miocene version of the Serengeti, the denizens of a sub-tropical rainforest, the transition into open landscapes, a unique island fauna, or dozens and dozens of marine organisms from around here. Nope, nothing that needs an outlet of its own (ok there is the museum in Santa Barbara, but they don’t have much in the way of Central Coast fossils. I would try to realize my dream through them, but they seem happy doing what they are doing and probably don’t what to get caught up in my ambitious delusions).

Why do all those other fossils get to stay in their native lands while ours don’t? I don’t get it. But Meredith Riven of the Cooper Center suggests one possibility:

Another issue is the curatorial crisis – all museums are out of space. LACM, UCMP, SDNHM all have issues finding room for more collections. So at least we can help with some of that. Of course, we are out of space too but since we didn’t start with much at least we have room to grow. Funding that is the next challenge.

See, another reason my museum could be of use. I know museums like to brag about their vast collections, but when does it get too big to manage? Some of these large museums have had new species named from their fossils because they just sat around for 50, 75, even 100 years but because they were “lost” amongst such vast collections they just gathered dust until someone came along. If we were able to bring the fossils of the Central Coast back home, the big museums (Berkeley and Los Angeles) would have some room freed up for their current and future collecting activities. And as noted above, they would still be a relatively short distance away. It’s not like I’m trying to relocate them across the country.

Might I suggest that you volunteer at a Museum or that you further your career in one of these arenas of study?
The archeology at Cal Poly could use a little help……you could start there.

I have tried that. Santa Barbara doesn’t have an active paleontology program. I tried talking to folks at the LA Museum. But apparently I can’t go down for one weekend a month and volunteer there. I have tried going on their field trips to Red Rock Canyon, but those don’t really do much in the way of actually exercising my passion. I mean, yeah I found a fossil, but i couldn’t partake in digging it out or jacketing it, even though I have read about the process all my life, watched countless videos about it, and even practiced it on cow bones in my backyard. Plus, i never really felt like i fit in there. I tried to mingle with the people and the scientists, but i just never felt accepted. Unlike so many of the people there, I haven’t this trip year after year after year (some of the younger folk there are even going to college, or plan to, to pursue a career in paleontology.) so i don’t know many people. I just felt like that weird, stupid, bumbling kid who all the other kids in class just put up with because they are forced to be in proximity to each other. I have done that and trips with the San Bernardino County Museum. But it’s never anything substantive, just pay them and go on a little field trip, nothing like what volunteers and scientists get to do.

I have tried talking to a paleontologist at the LA museum about trying to access their Central Coast material so that i might try to publish a paper on some of it. I thought this would help me get into a university, get to exercise my passion for paleontology, learn more about my home region’s rich fossil record, and share that information with the world. But nope, it got shot down. Apparently community college students don’t count in the grand scheme of things. I have a learning disability and have always struggled with school. God knows if I’ll be able to even get into a university, let alone survive one. All the while i get to sit back and read day in and day out about people going out into the field, finding, and working with fossils. I even read about small museums who managed to create successful paleontology programs but apparently they got something i don’t. I have tried desperately to get off the sidelines but my efforts have for the most part been futile (cause who wants to help a failure like me pursue a career). I am nothing more than a fossil fanboy. I don’t find any fossils, I don’t publish any papers, I don’t volunteer, I don’t teach people about paleontology. I am a ghost in the paleontology community.

People keep telling me that I should to be a teacher. Well i thought with this museum idea of mine, i could not only go into the field and build a collection of fossils, but also share them with the community, teaching people about the science of paleontology, the fossil history of the Central Coast, and the world beyond. It sounds unrealistic, but again Meredith Riven shines some light:

Anything is possible. If brains can fossilize, you can be a paleontologist

The Museum of the Rockies started off with only 3 dinosaur fossils and now they house the largest collection of United States dinosaur fossils known. The little Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois was just another small, unknown local museum and now they have a successful paleontology program going. Xiaoming Wang didn’t think there were any fossils in the cliffs above our campground at Red Rock Canyon and yet I managed to find bone fragments up there. And yes, fossilized whale brains. So don’t say something is unrealistic.

The Grand Vision may sound unrealistic, but I’m only 23 (closing in on 24), so who knows what I can pull off in the next 5, 10, 20 years? The Marmarth Research Foundation managed to garner enough funds to build a field laboratory for fossil prep and curation. Marmarth is out in the middle of nowhere. San Luis Obispo County is a well populated, well traveled spot in the most populous state in the country. Who in the world could predict who may show up in support of such a project? Only time will tell.

So I’m back in the game loyal readers. It’s time to stop moping and focus that energy instead on working to bring the Grand Vision to life!

Till next time!

The Fossil Whale Brains of SLO County

Hey there every peoples!

A quick post today to take advantage of a piece of news while it was fresh. I came across this story in today’s edition of The Telegram Tribune, our local newspaper. It is a story about an incredible find that for me is not only heart warming but also infuriating. Let’s dive right in!

Around nine years ago, a local woman named Pepper O’Shaughnessy was wandering about her family’s property when she noticed something sticking out of a sand bank. She pulled it and had no idea what she just found. What she was holding was a 15 million year old fossilized whale brain. You read that right a fossilized whale brain. Now fossilized brains have been found before, most notably among dinosaurs. But these are usually endocasts, molds of the inside of the skull that show the rough outline of the brain. This whale brain is something else, according to Howel Thomas and Lawrence Barnes, a marine mammal experts at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

The fossil whale brain found right here in SLO County!

Dubbed the Olson specimen, the brain is very complete and detailed, so much so that it was initially thought to be brain coral. But further analysis revealed it to be an actual brain and not an invertebrate imitation. And what makes the story more incredible is that this isn’t the first whale brain found in SLO County. Back in the 1940s a partial whale brain was found near Paso Robles, on what is now the Halter Ranch. The specimen is owned by Templeton man Bob MacGillivray of Templeton. According to him, his specimen is not as complete as the Olson specimen but more detailed. And to make these fossils even more amazing is that they each represent different types of whales. The Olson specimen is from a baleen whale and the MacGillivray specimen is from a toothed whale. Alright Howel and Lawrence, lay it on us why these fossils are a big deal (from a preliminary report):

“To have two fossil whale brains from the same geographic area, from the same time period, with the same type of preservation and representing both orders of whales is simply incredible,”

While the MacGillivray specimen is on loan to the LA Museum, the Olsons have other plans for their fossil. This requires a trip back to 1998. Pepper O’Shaughnessy’s niece, Tara Olson, and her friends were coming back from a concert in Paso Robles when she fell asleep at the wheel and wrecked here car. Tara survived the accident but suffered brain damage. Doctors thought that she’d be paralyzed for life and would be wheelchair-bound for the rest of her days. But Tara fought on. She was sent to the Brucker Biofeedback Center in Miami, Florida. With sheer tenacity and attitude, she was able to get back on her feet in 3 weeks. She now walks with a cane and has some trouble speaking, but considering her original prognosis, she’s accomplished the unthinkable. Now the Olson family wants to help others with neurological troubles by opening a branch of Brucker Center on the west coast, right here in SLO County. And they plan on using their rarest of fossils to fund it. They hope to find a philanthropist to sell the fossil to. The ideal situation is to use the money to at least get the ball rolling on the neurological center and the donor would donate the fossil to a museum. While i am staunchly opposed to the sale of fossils, this plan doesn’t sound so bad, assuming it went as planned. But what museum would it go to? Alas, that is where this story really gets to me.

If it were to end up in a museum, it would probably be LA. Now i know that would be a good place for it, considering they have the staff and facilities to properly curate and research the specimen. But hear me out. You heard how incredible and important the find is, having two fossil whale brains from the same time and place (from my home of SLO County no less). Add to that the fact that a cast of a sperm whale brain was found in Los Olivos, that makes three whale brains known from the Central Coast. But if the brains went to LA (the Los Olivos specimen is there), then they will have left their “native land”, relegated to the cavernous collections of a (relatively) foreign museum.

The reason i want to start a museum here on the Central Coast is to tell the surprisingly rich story of it’s ancient past. I have come to learn that the Central Coast is full of amazing fossils but almost none are displayed anywhere and finding information on them is quite difficult to say the least.There is a fascinating story to be told here, but it’s not being told. It’s treasures, the fossils, the very words that compose this story are locked away in distant museums. These whale brains would be a great asset to a museum on the Central Coast, but chances are they go elsewhere, to be stored and eventually forgotten.

This is a saga  that i have seen paly out time and time again. Fossil whales were found on the Channel Islands, a place thought to only harbor Pleistocene mammoth bones, ended up in Los Angeles. The same goes for whale fossils found in the vicinity of Lompoc. And other items over the years. I feel the surprising abundance of fossils should be where it can be appreciated and shared, which i feel would be here on the Central Coast. Why don’t these fossils go to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History? It’s a local museum, it should display local fossils! Unfortunately, the museum never had a paleontology curator or an active collecting program. Their fossil collection is limited and simply pales in comparison to the collections of LA and Berkeley, where most of my beloved Central Coast fossils reside. I have toyed with the idea that rather than try to start my own museum up here, instead help the Santa Barbara Museum build their collections. Maybe even create a satellite, like the Sea Center, except devoted to paleontology. But that’s assuming they wanted any part in my lofty ambitions. From what i can gather they  seem happy doing what they are now.

I’m sure all this ranting will amount to nothing. I may have my convictions, but people won’t give a damn. I’m sure that those with the LA Museum and Berkeley will brush my thoughts off as petulant self-entitlement, that they got the fossils first and have no obligation of turning them loose to a regional institution. And they’d be right. I’m nobody. They are are world renowned institutions who run large, successful collecting programs, produce quality research, and conduct important public programs. I’m just some community college hack who sits at home whining about things beyond his control. But this simple fact, that the rich fossil history of the Central Coast is carted away and hidden from the world, and that i can’t do anything about it, is once of the biggest factors in my depression. It is perhaps the biggest source of this overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness that i have to constantly fight. I could put on a fantastic museum with all the fossils i have learned were found hauled away from the Central Coast. The fact that i probably never could, since a significant portion of them are kept at large scale museums, is a most bitter pill to swallow. I can’t help but think it will haunt me forever.

My depression aside, this was a very interesting story. The intentions with the fossil are honorable and Tara’s story of recovery is inspiring. Hopefully these world class fossils will find a good home. I just wish it were the one i created for them…

Till next time.

Critters Abroad: Alamosaurus

Hey there every peoples!

This post goes out to a little known sauropod who got a boost from a recent paper. I could try to build it up but you already know who it is from the title. Today i want to talk about Alamosaurus and how he pertains to my grandiose ambitions.

Right off the bat, let’s get the common misconception out of the way. Alamosaurus is not named for the Alamo in Texas! It is instead named after a cottonwood tree (in a round about sort of way). The first fossils were discovered in the Ojo Alamo formation of New Mexico in 1922 (dinosaurs come mostly from the Naashoibito member, which many consider part of the Kirtland formation). The dinosaur was named for the formation it was found in, which in turn was named after the Ojo Alamo Trading Post which was in turn named after a cottonwood tree growing next to a nearby spring (Alamo is the local Spanish name for cottonwood trees). It would be a long while after this initial discovery that Alamosaurus would be found in Texas. This dinosaur has so far been restricted to the American southwest, being found in New Mexico, Texas, and Utah (with that last one representing the northernmost extent of Alamosaurus’ range). So far the two most complete specimens are an adult from the North Horn formation of Utah and a juvenile from Big Bend National Park in Texas.

Aside from those 2, many isolated bones have been referred Alamoaurus. How do we know these bones are Alamosaurus? Well for the same reason that Alamosaurus is unique among North American sauropods. Alamosaurus lived at the end of the Cretaceous period, 69 to 65 million years ago. For a long time in paleontology this represented a bit of an enigma. The late Jurassic was the heyday, it seemed, of North America’s giant long necked plant-eaters. But after reaching such a high diversity they all just vanished at the close of the Jurassic period. There was a gap of over 75 million years before the arrival of Alamosaurus into North America. Even though a large crop of early Cretaceous sauropods have been found in Utah (as well as a couple in Texas and Oklahoma) that shows they persisited well into the Cretaceous, they still managed to peter out around 100 million years ago. There wouldn’t be a sauropod in North America until Alamosaurs arrived in the late Cretaceous. Why? Scientists are still working that one that. The currently accepted view is that Alamosaurus migrated north from South America. This idea is supported by the fact that Alamosaurus was a titanosaur, a group of sauropods who thrived throughout the Cretaceous in the southern hemisphere. So far Alamosaurus is the only late Cretaceous sauropod in North America, so scientists can be fairly confident that when they find a sauropod in strata younger than 70 million years it is probably Alamosaurus.

Brian Switek once said “For years, one of the cardinal sins of paleontology illustration was showing a Tyrannosaurus attacking a sauropod dinosaur.” This was largely due to T. rex living tens of millions of years after the last sauropods died out. But a face off between the tyrant lizard king and a lumbering sauropod was declared a possibility when in 2005 a T. rex specimen was found in Utah’s North Horn formation. Since one of the most complete specimens of Alamosaurus was found in the same strata, it is reasonable to assume they lived at the same time and place. Though i find it interesting that few reconstructions of a T. rex attacking Alamosaurus have been rendered, considering that they have both been known from the same areas for some time (The north Horn formation, Utah; Javalina formation, Texas; and New Mexico). Nonetheless, one or two have emerged (though i couldn’t find any to post here).

Recently the big guy got another boost to his public image. Not too long ago paleontologists Denver Fowler (Museum of the Rockies) and Robert Sullivan (State Museum of Pennsylvania) published fragmentary specimens from New Mexico’s San Juan Basin. The fragments proved to be especially large, so the two scientists compared two vertebra fragments ( cervical and caudal) and a distal femur to some dinosaurs from South America, a continent that has produced many contenders for the title of largest dinosaur*. Specifically, they compared Alamosaurus to Puertasaurus and Futalognkosaurus and found that the Alamosauruses from which the three specimens came from (each was found in a different location, ruling out that they came from a single, abnormally large individual) were in the same ballpark in terms of size. Of course, this is all based on fragmentary remains:

Cervical vertebra fragment of Alamosaurus (top, in posterior and right lateral views) compared to cervical vertebra of Puertasaurus (bottom, in anterior and right lateral views). From Fowler and Sullivan, 2011

Caudal vertebra of Alamosaurus (first 3: vertebra 2-4 from the North Horn specimen. Fourth: fragment from the San Juan Basin, New Mexico) compared to caudal vertebra of Futalognkosaurus. From Fowler and Sullivan, 2011

*(I define “largest” by mass. It just seems like the best measurement to determine who is bigger than another. For example, a giraffe is much taller than an elephant and yet it is the elephant who is granted the title of largest living land mammal. Another example is the Arctic lion’s mane jellyfish and the blue whale. Even though the jelly fish can grow longer, the whale is considered bigger because it is exponentially heavier. Plain and simple, putting two of any of these animals on a scale against each other, the scale will always tip towards who is heavier. So i think the best definition of largest is by weight)

The Alamosaurus material is all incomplete bones, Puertasaurus is based on four vertebra, and Futalognkosaurus is known from a significant section of the spinal column made up of 3 individuals. These animals have been estimated between 90 and 110 feet long and anywhere between 80 and 100 tons. Since Alamosaurus appears to be of a similar size, that would make it North America’s largest dinosaur, surpassing the two current contenders Supersaurus (108 to 112 ft long and 35 to 40 tons) and Sauroposeidon (~80 ft long, 56 ft tall, and 55-65 tons).  Of course, Alamosaurus and Sauroposeidon are known from very fragmented (and in the case of Sauroposeidon limited) materiel, so knowing just how bulky and proportioned they were is going to take a lot more fossils and study.

While throwing North America back into the ring as far as fossil records go, Denver Fowler apparently had another goal intended with this paper. He wrote in a comment on Dinosaur tracking:

Anyway, the “biggest dinosaur” label is fun, but I was hoping that this paper might drum up some further interest in the New Mexico faunas. We really need to get down there with larger field teams and find more complete specimens of the unique fauna.

Over the past 20 years or so, fieldwork by Bob Sullivan (State Museum PA) and the NMMNH has identified a number of good fossil sites and horizons. I would really like to see the New Mexico Late Cretaceous achieve something similar to the great work the Utah crew have done in the Kaiparowits (and elsewhere, e.g. the early Cretaceous).

To which i replied in the same post:

While not as a result of your paper (well, a little bit), I do have interest in the late cretaceous of New Mexico. I got hooked by the idea of dinosaur provincialism (boosted by the description of Bistahieversor (god, that’s a hard name to spell and pronounce!)) and as such want to build a provincial collection. No one has any idea how much i have been chomping at the bit to go search the Two Medicine, Kaiparowits, and Kirtland formations (and maybe the El Gallo formation in Baja California. Anyone got good relations with Mexico?). I agree that the late Cretaceous of New Mexico does warrant more exploration. Wish i could be out there right now looking for Titanoceratops, Bistahieversor, Kritosaurus, and their countrparts to the north. Unfortunately, i’m just a community college student at the moment and am so far having trouble just looking for fossils in my home county. But at least your paper has given me one more incentive!

As some of you might know, i have a rather unrealistic vision of opening my own museum some day (which i feel like is likely never to happen. I figured i might be better off helping some other museum. We’ll just have to wait and see) and part of that vision is building a provincial collection of dinosaurs. It would consist of: Two Medicine formation in Montana for north; Kirtland formation in New Mexico for south; and the El Gallo formation in Baja California for west. While it would be nice to dig into the Kaiparowits to complete the north-south chain, the El Gallo has priority for me (but if i can’t get search the El Gallo, the Kaiparowits will make a nice back up). As i mentioned above many consider the Ojo Alamo formation to be part of the Kirtland formation. While it doesn’t necessarily fit with the typical idea of dinosaur provincialism, I said i wanted to search the Kirtland formation so that means looking in this member as well. And why not? Finding more of the (possibly) largest dinosaur in North America, finding new species, fleshing out what the south looked like at the end of the Cretaceous (so much has been focused on the north, namely the Hell Creek formation) sounds awfully enticing. This rock preserves the final chapter of North America’s dinosaurs. Considering that so little has been done in the Ojo Alamo formation, it’s sounds like a fantastic place to break new ground (like several other instances in this post, no pun was intended). That’s plenty reason enough for me! So thanks Denver and Robert for giving me another reason to go to New Mexico for my dinosaurs.

Till next time!

Legend of the Hairy Man

Hey there every peoples!

I had meant to write this sooner, but the 2011 MLG finals were the first distraction. The winner and champion was Leenok (who’s Korean, go figure. But seriously, he beat some of the best players in the world, he earned it) with Naniwa coming in second. Plus i had get the house ready for thanksgiving and i even got a liver biopsy. On top of that, i have been trying to prep marine invertebrates i found up at Shell Creek Road, which hasn’t been easy ( the initial dirt is easy to get off, but once you get to the fossil, you have to contend with this hard sandstone that i can barely etch away with my little dental picks). But i managed to find this pocket of time between now and finals to write about an intriguing aspect of one of science’s more peculiar debates. I am talking about the debate over the existence of Bigfoot.

Now i’ll admit that i kinda follow cryptozoology as a bit of a side interest. While Darren Naish has shown that there can be legitimate, more grounded research into cryptids (unknown animals. He does this mainly by trying to find actual animals that could have been the inspiration for cryptids, like their hypothesis that Caddy was just a misidentified pipefish), scientists and believers alike are constantly butting heads over the validity of mystery creatures. Scientists mostly flat out reject the possibly that there are large, undiscovered animals that have managed to elude us. Now this rejection seems just when you consider the more outlandish cryptids out there (Mothman, claimed to be an alien; The Flatwoods Monster, another alleged alien who attacks with poison gas; The Loveland Frogman, a large, human shaped amphibian; and Mokele Mbembe, a surviving sauropod reputed to dwell in the deep recesses of the Congo). But what about some of these other beasts who appear to have a heftier set of evidence?

Bigfoot falls into the later category. While many would call it all bunk, Bigfoot appears to have a lot of evidence going for him. The multitude of tracks that have been found (including the Skookum cast, a possible body impression complete with possible ass print, as well as the “Cripple Foot” tracks, a set of over 1000 tracks that consistently suggested a sasquatch with a club foot), strange calls recorded in the night, possible dna evidence, and a handful of photographic and video documentation. None of this evidence has proved more contentious than the Patterson Footage. Believers, skeptics, and special effects artists have revisited the film countless times to either prove it’s real or that it’s just a shameless hoax. I will not weigh in as this is something above my intellectual pay grade. (i would like to note that in science eyewitness testimony is treated as the lowest form of evidence.  And yet when someone claims that they hoaxed the film, skeptics just take them at their word, without requiring any corroborating evidence. Just feels like a double standard to me.) I’m here to discuss another, harder to dismiss area of evidence: the archaeological record.

America’s fascination with Bigfoot began in 1958 when a bulldozer operator found strange footprints on his construction site in Bluff Creek, California. One Ray Wallace later claimed to have faked the tracks and skeptics claim that this proves Bigfoot is not real. But what about stuff that predates the Bigfoot craze? There are reports from the late 19th/ early 20th centuries (including one by Theodore Roosevelt, an avid outdoors-man ), but again, science disregards eyewitness testimony. So this is where the archaeological record comes in. If we found precolumbian art that depicts tall hairy humanoids, would that lend support to the existence of large, bipedal apes living in North America? Let’s find out.

The first artifact in our investigation is the “Hairy Man” pictographs (their Yokut name is Mayak datat, which translates as “hairy man”. They have another name for the creature: Shoonshoonootr, one of the few natives words to literally translate as “big foot”). This set of rock art in east central California seemingly depicts three of these hairy giants. They are believed by some to represent a male, female, and juvenile Bigfoot. It’s easy to see why: The male is drawn with a tall body with long arms attached to a broad chest. The female has short arms but is nonetheless tall. The baby is proportioned like the female with short arms and a tall body.

The "Hairy Man" Pictographs from California. The child is on the left, the female to it's right, and the male dominates the right side of the panel.

All three figures have fingers and toes and share a very similar body plan. These creatures even feature in the Yokut’s Creation Story; Kathy Moskowitz, an anthropologist who has documented Native American legends about hairy humanoids, notes that this is unique and that no other tribe has a bigfoot-like creature in it’s creation story. But the more important aspect of the “Hairy Man” is how old it is. Dating rock art can be tricky. Many scientists have dated the art and their estimates vary quite a bit. The current range of age is between 2000 and 700 years old. That means rock art can’t be modern graffiti (also because it shows obvious signs of weathering) and more importantly, they existed long before America’s image of Bigfoot came about.

Next items on the list: effigies. An effigy is basically any type of carving or sculpture that is made in the likeness of a human, an animal, or a supernatural force. First, let’s get a couple of those masks from the Pacific Northwest out of the way:

Possible Sasquatch mask from the Pacific Northwest

Possible Sasquatch mask from the Pacific Northwest

Possible Sasquatch mask from the Pacific Northwest

Those are the most commonly featured in discussions about Bigfoot. But there are a couple other examples that are equally intriguing. One is a set of seven stone heads discovered along the Columbia River in Oregon. The heads have features commonly seen in apes:

Ape-like effigy discovered along Oregon's Columbia River

How would Native Americans know what a primate’s face looks like, seeing as the nearest monkeys live thousands of miles away in Mesoamerica? It is certainly an intriguing aspect, but in my search for images of these stone heads, i also found this:

Supposed mountain sheep effigy

This effigy has primate like features, but the sign says it depicts a mountain sheep. I don’t know if this is from the set found in Oregon. If it isn’t then is it possible that the Columbia River effigies represent sheep as well? Unlikely, at least a bit. Some of the Columbia River effigies have sagittal crests. The sagittal crest is a ridge of bone that provides more area to attach heavy jaw muscles. This helps give predators a more powerful bite but does the same for herbivores. Whether carnivore or herbivore, though, the males in such species use that stronger bite in fights with other males. Sagittal crests are found in many different kinds of animals. They are not found in sheep but are well known in primates, especially the great apes.

And then there is this effigy, which i also found in a search for images of the Columbia River Effigies:

A possible Bigfoot effigy from New Paltz, New York

Possible Bigfoot effigy from New Paltz, New York

This came from over at Cryptomundo. The head was found in New Paltz, New York, in 1932. William Bayer dug up the unusual carving when i was 9 years old. He estimates it was at a depth of 4 feet when he found it and that no other artifacts accompanied it. This appears to most blatantly embody people’s reports of Bigfoot, right down to the tall sloping forehead.

However, one detail makes its authenticity suspect. As one of the commenters pointed out, the eyes don’t match the patina of the rest of the head. They look they were carved after the artifact gained it’s patina. Was this caused by carelessness during cleaning or was someone trying to make the eyes stand out more? We may never know. In archaeology, just like it is in paleontology, context is everything. Artifacts need collateral data about where they were found, how deep, if there were any other artifacts associated with it, any possible outside factors that could have affected burial deposition. Since the discoverer of the New York effigy didn’t keep a detailed written record, dating it will prove very difficult. Dating will be even harder considering that no other artifacts were found alongside it; archaeologists can use certain artifacts to date a site (in the Southwest, archaeologists have created a chronology based on pottery. The styles are so varied throughout time  that just one potsherd could date a site). Since this is the only possible Bigfoot effigy in the east, trying to date it based on style would prove difficult as well. Similar problems would also plague the Columbia River effigies (I don’t know if they were collected amateurishly or professionally).

Finally, there are Native American stories. Kathy Moskowitz has compiled a whole book detailing tales from across North America that all have one thing I common: they all describe tall, hairy, human-like creatures. They are described as giants, thieves, and eaters of humans. Even the Inuits of the far north have tales of such creatures. How is it that just about every culture in native America could have stories about the same creature? Could it be that this is just a manifestation of our specie’s ancestral memory, a relic from our primal past? I myself, at least, can’t say for sure. But the most interesting may be the story of the “Hairy Man” in the California pictograph (from “Mayak datat:
An Archaeological Viewpoint of the Hairy Man Pictographs” by Kathy Moskowitz, 2003) :

How People Were Made
All the birds and animals of the mountains went to Hocheu to make People. Eagle, chief of all the animals, asked each animal how they wanted People to be. Each animal took a turn and said what they had to say.

Fish said, “People should know how to swim, like me, so let them be able to hold their breath and swim very deep.”

Hummingbird said, “People should be fast, like me, so let them have good feet and endurance.”

Eagle said, “People should be wise, wiser than me, so People will help animals and take care of the Earth.”

Turtle said, “People should be able to protect themselves, like me, so lets give them courage and strength.”

Lizard said, “People should have fingers, like me, so that People can make baskets, bows and arrows.”

Owl said, “People should be good hunters, like me, so give them knowledge and cunning.”

Condor said, “People should be different from us, so give them hair, not feathers or fur to keep warm.”

Then Coyote said, “People should be just like me, because I am smart and tricky, so have them walk on all fours.”

Hairy Man, who had not said anything yet, shook his head and said, “No, People should walk on two legs, like me.”

All the other animals agreed with Hairy Man, and Coyote became very angry. He challenged Hairy Man to a race, and they agreed who ever won could decide how People should walk.

They gathered at the waterfall, below Hocheu, to begin the race. Coyote started and took a shortcut. Hairy Man was wiser than Coyote and knew that Coyote would cheat to win and People would have to walk on all fours, so Hairy Man stayed behind and helped Eagle, Condor, and the others to make People. They went back to the rock and drew People, on two legs, on the ground. The animals breathed on them, and People came out of the ground. Hairy Man was very pleased and went to People, but when they saw Hairy Man, they were scared and ran away. That made Hairy Man sad. When Coyote came back and saw what they had done, he was very angry and drew himself on the rock eating the moon (he is called Su! Su! Na). All the other animals drew their pictures on the rock as well, so People would remember them. Hairy Man was sad because People were afraid of him, so he drew himself sad. That is why Hairy Man’s picture is crying to this day. That is how people were made.

This creature is counted among animals when humans had not yet been created. Could the “Hairy Man” in fact be based on a real animal, a creature who looks like a hairy human? Of course, mythical animals need no basis in reality (though sometimes that is the case. Centaurs, half human half horse, are thought to have originated when a people encountered another people who rode on horseback, believing the horse and rider to be one creature (that’s certainly the impression the Aztecs had when they first saw Spanish cavalry). Also, it is thought that the myth of the Cyclops, a one-eyed giant, was inspired by ancient discoveries of mammoth skulls). Just because real animals are featured doesn’t mean that this “Hairy Man” is something in our world as cultures the world over often gave everyday animals supernatural powers. But the similarities of these human-like creatures across the vastness of Native American culture certainly can’t be a coincidence. Whether they describe an upright primate or are the product of cultural exchange or racial memory will require more study.

I have heard an argument against the existence of Bigfoot based on the lack of a fossil record. I think it is a decent argument. Believers point to the existence of a giant ape in the fossil record as a possible ancestor of Bigfoot: Gigantopithecus. Gigantopithecus lived in southern Asia during the middle Pleistocene epoch, going extinct around 300,000 years ago. Jeff Meldrom, an anthropologist and probably the most legitimate of Bigfoot researchers, argues that because of its size Gingantopithecus would not have been able to knuckle walk like modern apes and would have only been able to walk upright. But seeing as all we have of Gigantopithecus is a few jaws and lots of teeth, we can’t really say what Gigantopithecus even looked like, let alone how it moved. That, combined with the fact that no fossils have been found younger than 300k years makes Gigantopithecus an unlikely ancestor of Bigfoot. Supporters have mentioned that the lack of a fossil record is no problem for Bigfoot. They claim that Bigfoot’s preferred habitats are mainly in mountainous habitats and high rainfall forests, not exactly ideal places for fossilization. But shouldn’t we have found some fragment by now? We have fossils of bighorn sheep and mountain goats, animals who lived in mountainous terrain. And we even have bones of humans from the late Pleistocene from places like Oregon, California, and Mexico. All these fossils are very scarce and fragmentary and yet we have found them. I think that if Bigfoot is real, we should have found some scrap of fossil bone by now.

So, do these tales and artworks from North America’s archaeological and anthropological record prove the existence of Bigfoot? It might, but it’s an argument on thin ice. Like I said, context is vital and in this day and age stuff is getting easier and easier to fake. And since mainstream researchers almost always brush off Bigfoot stuff as false and unscientific, legitimate study of these relics may never be undertaken. People continue to report seeing these large hairy apes to this day; tracks are still be uncovered; and opinions on the Patterson film shift about as much as stock prices. I for one am open to the existence of Bigfoot but am far from convinced. Like most other science minded folks out there, I would need to see a body, an actual Bigfoot corpse before I accept that Bigfoot is out there. I find the reports, tracks, calls, video, and the native artifacts all intriguing, but not concrete. Perhaps belief in Bigfoot persists because we long for there to still be some mystery in this world. We have filled in the blank regions of the map, named all the large beasts we have encountered, and taken up residence in most habitable (and even some inhabitable) environments. Maybe people believe in Bigfoot for the same reason people believe in religion: they want to believe that we don’t know everything and that there are aspects of our world we have yet to fully explain. It’s certainly possible in this age where science, technology, and society are evolving at an accelerating rate. Maybe Bigfoot represents the hope for one of the last big discoveries we can make on our planet. We may never know. But for now, the search to prove the existence of a large, bipedal ape in the backcountry of North America will go one.

Till next time!

Red Rock Canyon 2011

Hey there every peoples!

Long time. Same excuse. Been very very busy the last few weeks. Going to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, Seeing the new Hall of Life at the Raymond Alf Museum, visiting my sister in Pasadena after her horrible accident, having to ride my dad’s bike/take the bus because the transmission on my Ghettomobile (aka 1993 Geo Prizm) died, and just fighting with my depression as usual. But one thing out of the busy mess was the Natural history Museum of Los Angeles County’s annual field trip to Red Rock Canyon State Park out in the Mojave Desert. You may recall my discussion on my first time last year. Well no need to talk about all that again, so here is my coverage of this year.

First, we get an intro to the paleontoogy of the park, meet the staff, and go searching for fossils on Saturday:

Then that night, Xiaoming gave a wonderful lecture on his new species of woolly rhino from Tibet (which i think he just gave at SVP):

finally, when all hope seemed lost, i found the complete ulna (lower arm bone) of a giant camel (at least i think it was a giant camel), plus my after thoughts:

And a more stable, in-depth look at the process:

All in all, it was a very good time. I hope i will be able to go next year. Now to get to work on some long over due posts.

Till next time!