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The Bigfoot Discovery Project (BDP) accepts the Patterson/Gimlin Film of Oct 20, 1967 as THE type specimen for the Northwestern Bigfoot or Sasquatch. The BDP will add to the dialogue on the implications of the impending "discovery of bigfoot" by Western science and the general public, while offering hypotheses as to bigfoot's place in the biological and social order. If the anthropologists are right, the only thing separating us from the forest giants is our culture. So let's revel in our humanness while acknowledging the beauty of the bigfoot's minimalistic, yet ecologically sound interactions with Mother Earth. The BDP will seek to facilitate the discovery of bigfoot by sharing information, and attempting to "flesh out" the hairy biped's dossier. There is a large enough database of sightings and encounters now available to create a hypothetical "profile" of the bigfoot creatures. Accepting the P/G film as genuine, we have a model to compare with verbal descriptions in an effort to get a consensus on the bigfoot's physical characteristics as well. This will be done against a backdrop of local history, as this area was once (and apparently still is) home to bigfoot, as were all the forests of the Pacific coast, and beyond. CapriTaurus has been an arts and crafts gallery, a folk music center and manufacturer of musical instruments. Now its the home of the Bigfoot Discovery Project. The new CapriTaurus "complex," once complete, will include exhibits of local history, unidentified hairy bipeds, and folk music. It will house a research library of books, periodicals, and tapes on subjects ranging from ABSMs to UFOs alongside art, handcrafts and collectibles. We hope that a visit here will "edutain" you, and help to open your eyes and mind to things you may not have thought about before. The Source of My Obsession In the summer of 1950, my parents and I traveled to Humboldt County frequently on camping and fishing trips. My Dad had once operated a sawmill in Laytonville, near the Avenue of the Giants. My Mom was a very dedicated driftwood collector. She loved to put on old tennis shoes and hike up and down the riverbeds in search of sculptured wood smoothed by the action of water. Driftwood was especially popular during that era as garden accents and objects of art to be displayed in the home. Because of the time my Dad had spent in Humboldt when he owned the mill, it was the area of choice for these family outings.It was during one of these trips that I first saw a bigfoot. It was early in the morning, and we were camped on a river beach. It was probably on the South Fork of the Eel River as that's where most of our outings took place. My Dad loved to cook freshly caught trout for breakfast, and I suspect that's what he and Mom were doing when I wandered off down a trail next to the river. I was between 4 and 5 years old at the time and shouldn't have gone off on my own that way, but I did. I remember passing through a bunch of tall straight plants (probably reeds of some sort) and as I brushed them away from my face and stepped out on to a sand bar I looked up into the gaze of a very large man completely covered in bushy dark hair, with nothing on but a rather poorly fitting, torn shirt. I looked at the hairy man, and he looked at me, then my parents started screaming for me, "Mikey, Mikey where are you!?" Fascinated by the sight before me I hesitated a moment, then turned and ran towards the campsite to reassure my parents that I was all right. They were relieved when they saw me, but as they began scolding me for running off alone, I insisted they follow me to see the "big hairy man." We returned to the spot on the sandbar, but, of course, the "big man" was no longer there. They had no reason to doubt that I had seen somebody, so they assured me it was nothing to fear, "It was probably a tramp, just forget about it." Now I don't remember looking for tracks or any proof of what I saw, but at 5 years old I was still willing to take my parents' word that everything was OK; the incident was something to forget. So that's what I did until 20-some years later. While reading one of the many bigfoot books I have collected over the years, I came across a passage that jogged my memory. A woman described a sighting she had while hiking near the Eel River in Humboldt County. The creature she saw was "wearing a shirt." Reading that phrase gave me an immediate flashback memory of the event I described above. I suddenly knew the origin of my life-long obsession. I began methodically collecting articles and other memorabilia about the "abominable snowman," in 1951, when the photos of mysterious footprints on Mount Everest were printed in newspapers around the world. I particularly enjoyed reading in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories about Scrooge McDuck going in search of the "Lost Crown of Genghis Khan," which was eventually found in the lair of "Goo, the Abominable Snowman!" I read every book in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes series. I bought and read over and over again Ivan Sanderson's book Abominable Snowman, Legend Come to Life when it was published in 1961. I watched with great anticipation, during the mid '60's, for the delivery of the San Francisco Chronicle when they ran a series of articles about the "man animal," of the Pacific Northwest. I went "ape," over hairy bipeds, and primates in general, in a big way. __Michael Rugg |
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 Saturday August 9, 2008 Featuring presentations by: Dr. Jeff Meldrum Richard Noll Kathy Moskowitz Strain David Paulides ...and bigfoot songs by Tom Yamarone 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Felton Community Hall 6191 Highway 9 (corner of Kirby Street) Tickets: $15/adult, $12/museum members, students, seniors $5 children 14 and under We are offering reserved seats for this event. $25 ($20 museum members, $15 children) For ticket reservations please contact
Kathy Moskowitz Strain David Paulides Jeff Meldrum Come meet and greet the presenters and other bigfooters. Join us for the 2nd annual Bigfoot Discovery Day! For a visually more complete version of this announcement click on the graphic above or here Comments from the Curator: Littlefoot a.k.a. Homo floresiensis by Michael Rugg Bones of a gracile hominid were found September 2003 in a cave in Liang Bua, on the Indonesian island of Flores. The most complete skeleton was that of a 30 yr old female 3'3" tall and similar in build to the australopithecine "Lucy" but decidedly of the genus Homo. The skeleton was only 18,000 ya (but others went back as far as 95,000 ya) and had not yet fossilized. It could also be said that "Florrie" fit the physical description of the local Littlefoots, the ebu gogo. Gregory Forth, an anthropologist from the University of Alberta in Canada says the stories of the ebu gogo have much in common with other "legendary" wildmen, such as the abom-inable snowman and bigfoot. The contemporary inhabitants of the island, the Nage of central Flores describe them as being diminutive hairy bipeds. Village elders say they exterminated the ebu gogo, all but a single pair that escaped into the deepest forest, and survive there to this day. It has been suggested that the littlefoot people got small via "endemic dwarfing," an adaptive process wherein animals trapped on an island swap sizes over time (e.g. elephants get smaller while rats gets bigger). The implications are that unique and diverse species of humans might have evolved elsewhere in the archipelago of Indonesia, perhaps from sea faring Homo erectus that landed on the islands, much as birds and tortoises evolved in unique ways on the various Galapagos Islands. This would be a first for the genus Homo, whose adaptive devices thus far noted have been culture and technology, but apparently NOT morphology. There is some controversy between anthropol-ogists over the makers of the stone tools found on the site. The discoverers say that Littlefoot was a Hobbit; a tool using mini human. Other anthropologists suggest the tools were more likely made by homo erectus. Forth points to the descriptions of the Nage, who characterized the ebu gogo as hairy wildmen, with no tools or apparent culture. Does that sound familiar? The lesson here may be that local ethnic histories (sometimes referred to as myths or legends by non-experiencers) may offer more truths than previously suspected, for divining the complete picture of a fossil hominid's physiology and lifestyle. As Forth states, "Rather than simply assuming that these traditions are as fantastical as Tolkien's fiction, the challenge for social anthropologists is to discover the correct relationship between the paleontological and ethnographic images and the true source of their resemblance." (see the article by Gregory Forth in Anthropology Today Vol21 No3 June 2005 pp. 13-17)
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Frequently asked questions Bigfoot Discovery Project Blog
Museum Membership: We are now accepting museum memberships (offering discounts, a monthly newsletter and so forth.) Click HERE for more information. Our regular museum meetings will usually be held on the third Sunday of every month at 6 pm 2008 Meeting Schedule March 15 Saturday Night Movies April 20 Plan Field Outing May 24 Parade & BBQ June 22 Bigfoot Inn Countdown July 20 Planning BDDII August 9 Bigfoot Discovery Day II September 21 TBA October 19 TBA November 16 TBA No meeting in December Museum Newsletter Archive Here are past issues of our Museum Newsletter. Become a member and receive the newsletter when it is first published, along with an overview of the activities of the Museum Study Group (meeting minutes). Non-Members will have access to past issues here, which will be archived from time to time. Non-members will not have access to the meeting minutes. Newsletter photos by Tom Yamarone, Mike Rugg and others. Vol 1 No 1 May 2005 Premiere Issue (1 MB .pdf) Vol 1 No 2 June 2005 Bellingham Conference (1.8 MB .pdf) Vol 1 No 3 July 2005 Zayante Habitat (1.1 MB .pdf) Vol 1 No 4 August 2005 School Visit (790 kb .pdf) Vol 1 No 5 September 2005 Marx-Biscardi (788kb) Vol 1 No 6 October 2005 Patterson-Gimlin (876kb .pdf) Vol 1 No 7 November 2005 Bluff Creek (1.8 MB .pdf) Vol 1 No 8 December 2005 Historical Archives (1.3 MB .pdf) Vol 1 No 9 January 2006 John Green Trip (1.10 MB .pdf) Vol 1 No 10 Febuary 2006 Pee Wee Herman (1.0 MB .pdf ) Vol 1 No 11 March 2006 Vance Orchard (2.0 MB) Vol 1 No 12 April 2006 Membership (848kb) Here are past issues of Volume 2 of our Newsletter: Vol 2 No 1 May 2006 Malaysian Bigfoot (744kb) Vol 2 No 2 June 2006 Grand Opening (864kb .pdf) Vol 2 No 3 July 2006 Clawed (608kb .pdf) Vol 2 No 4 August 2006 Museum Campout (776kb .pdf) Vol 2 No 5 September 2006 Loch Lomond (672kb .pdf) Vol 2 No 6 October 2006 Autumn Williams (864kb .pdf ) Vol 2 No 7 November 2006 Rummage Sale (394kb .pdf) Vol 2 No 8 December 2006 Yowie Authors (376kb .pdf) Vol 2 No 9 January 2007 Jaimie Jackson (504kb .pdf) Vol 2 No 10 Febuary 2007 CA BFRO (416kb .pdf ) Vol 2 No 11 March 2007 Bigfooter Visit (324kb .pdf) Vol 2 No 12 April 2007 Bonny Doon BF (436kb .pdf)
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