Idaho State professor says FBI research dilutes evidence of bigfoot's existence [View all]

For the pursuers of the elusive bigfoot, skin and hair samples belonging to a deer provided a dead end. Newly released FBI records detail a 1976 request by Peter C. Byrne, who submitted samples he thought belonged to the beast. An Idaho State University professor who researches bigfoot says this is a misdirection, and he has hair samples he is confident belong to the legend.

“It’s a tempest in a teapot,” said Jeff Meldrum, an anatomy and anthropology professor at ISU. “Just from that poor quality black-and-white image, you can tell it’s not primate hair. I could have told you on the basis of that photo alone that it was almost certainly ungulate.”

News like this is a disservice to the bountiful evidence that does exist, Meldrum said.

“Skeptics love it, but it diverts attention away from the more compelling evidence, like the hair that I’ve mentioned and all the other evidence,” Meldrum said. “The footprint evidence, the vocalizations, the photographic evidence, the continuing, ongoing eyewitness accounts by credible, reliable, less impressionable witnesses.”