Beginning in 2003 and over several years, I regularly covered a wide range of subjects for National Geographic News, the online news service of the National Geographic Society. Every day was a crash course in whatever scientific topic I was writing about. It was one of my favorite jobs.
The news service no longer exists in its original form, and, disappointingly, National Geographic has not made its archive of News stories available online. So if you search on the NG website for most of the hundreds of News stories I wrote, this is what comes up:
Some of the stories, however, have been re-posted on various other sites. Among them is one of the first I ever did, about a study showing that HIV originated with monkeys, not chimpanzees as previously thought. That story can be found here. The first story I ever did, published February 24, 2003, was called “Computer Made From DNA and Enzymes.” It was based on a study that had been published in the American Journal of Nanomaterials, a publication it is safe to say I was not an avid reader of. I shudder to think what my questions were like in my interview of the lead scientist, and it’s probably a good thing that the story can no longer be found.
What I loved most about the job was that I got to write — and learn — about anything and everything. I had no one beat. One day, I’d be writing about the history of Cinco de Mayo (for a story that was updated and put on the NG site in 2010 and can be read here), while the next I’d be onto climate change or the ancient Olympics (the latter a story that I had originally written ahead of the 2004 Olympics in Athens, but which was updated for the 2012 London games and posted here on the Nat Geo site).
For some reason, I was often given assignments for religion stories, which were very popular with our readers. A story I wrote about the lost gospel of Judas, a document that had been hidden for 1,700 years, was the most read Nat Geo News story in 2006. I must have written a dozen articles on early human migrations, such as this one, and several on forgotten languages, including this story. I regularly covered astronomy studies and loved writing about the search for extraterrestrial life. Read “Alien Contact More Likely by Mail Than Radio, Study Says” here. The news director, David Braun, promised me that when alien life is found I would get to write the story for Nat Geo News. But now the service is finished, and David has retired anyway.
Being based in Los Angeles, I regularly wrote feature stories about movies with connections that appealed to National Geographic. I got to interview some big names, like Jim Cameron, but as a Star Wars fanatic my favorite story was a Q&A I did for one of the Star Wars movies with two astrophysicists I had used as sources for other stories. Here is an excerpt from that Q&A re-posted on what appears to be a Brazilian fan site called the Star Wars Jedi Academy:
One of the most popular stories I ever wrote for National Geographic News was about the bipedal ape man known as Bigfoot. I’m reprinting the text here courtesy of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, whose founder (or maybe he was just a member, I forget) kept messaging and emailing me for years after the story was published with new Bigfoot sightings around North America. I think he liked the story, even though he felt compelled to include a disclaimer about my reporting (as seen at the end of the text).
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Forensic Expert Says Bigfoot is Real
By Stefan Lovgren
It’s been the subject of campfire stories for decades. A camera-elusive, grooming-challenged, bipedal ape-man that roams the mountain regions of North America. Some call it Sasquatch. Others know it as Bigfoot.
Thousands of people claim to have seen the hairy hominoid, but the evidence of its existence is fuzzy. There are few clear photographs of the oversized beast. No bones have ever been found. Countless pranksters have admitted to faking footprints.
Yet a small but vociferous number of scientists remain undeterred. Risking ridicule from other academics, they propose that there’s enough forensic evidence to warrant something that has never been done: a comprehensive, scientific study to determine if the legendary primate actually exists.
“Given the scientific evidence that I have examined, I’m convinced there’s a creature out there that is yet to be identified,” said Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University in Pocatello.
Thousands of Sightings
Sasquatch stories go back centuries. Tales of mythical giant apes lurk in the oral traditions of most Native American tribes, as well as in Europe and Asia. The Himalaya has its Abominable Snowman, or the Yeti. In Australia, Bigfoot is known as the Yowie Man.
Bigfoot advocates hypothesize that the primate is the offspring of an ape from Asia that wandered to North America during the Ice Age. They believe there are at least 2,000 ape men walking upright in North America’s woods today.
An adult male is said to be at least 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall, weigh 800 pounds (360 kilograms), and have feet twice the size of a human’s. The creatures are described as shy and nocturnal, and their diets consist mostly of berries and fruits.
Matt Moneymaker had been searching for Bigfoot for years. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive primate.
“It was 2 o’clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full,” recalled Moneymaker. “Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away, growling at me. He wanted to let me know I was in the wrong place.”
Moneymaker, who lives in Dana Point in southern California, is a lawyer who runs his own marketing agency. In his spare time, he leads the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a network of more than 3,000 people who claim to have seen the Sasquatch.
Unfortunately, no one has been able to snap a clear picture of the beast.
Perhaps the most compelling photographic evidence of Bigfoot is a controversial short film shot by Roger Patterson in 1967, which appears to document a female Bigfoot striding along a riverbank in northern California.
“It certainly wasn’t human”
Now, Bigfoot advocates are increasingly turning to forensic evidence to prove the existence of the giant creature.
Investigator Jimmy Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger- and footprints, has analyzed the more than 150 casts of Bigfoot prints that Meldrum, the Idaho State professor, keeps in a laboratory.
Chilcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla in Washington State has convinced him that Bigfoot is real.
“The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It certainly wasn’t human, and of no known primate that I’ve examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin.”
Meldrum, meanwhile, says a 400-pound (180-kilogram) block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast provides further evidence of Bigfoot’s existence. The cast was made in September 2000 from an impression of a large animal that had apparently lain down on its side to retrieve some fruit next to a mud hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State.
Meldrum says the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, buttocks, an Achilles tendon and heel. “It’s 40 to 50 percent bigger than a normal human,” he said. “The anatomy doesn’t jive with any known animal.”
A few academics believe Meldrum could be right.
Renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall last year surprised an interviewer from National Public Radio when she said she was sure that large, undiscovered primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, exist.
The Skeptics
But the vast majority of scientists still believe Bigfoot is little more than supermarket tabloid fodder. They wonder why no Bigfoot has ever been captured, dead or alive.
“The bottom line is, they don’t have a body,” said Michael Dennett, who writes for Skeptical Inquirer magazine and who has followed the Bigfoot debate for 20 years.
Bigfoot buffs note that it’s rare to find a carcass of a grizzly bear in the wild. While that’s true, grizzlies have not escaped photographic documentation.
Hair samples that have been recovered from alleged Bigfoot encounters have turned out to come from elk, bears or cows.
Many of the sightings and footprints, meanwhile, have proved to be hoaxes.
After Bigfoot tracker Ray Wallace died in a California nursing home last year, his children finally announced that their prank-loving dad had created the modern myth of Bigfoot when he used a pair of carved wooden feet to create a track of giant footprints in a northern California logging camp in 1958.
Dennett says he’s not surprised by the flood of Bigfoot sightings.
“It’s the same kind of eyewitness reports we see for the Loch Ness Sea Monster, UFOs, ghosts, you name it,” he said. “The monster thing is a universal product of the human mind. We hear such stories from around the world.”
