Zoology Professor Claims:

Abominable Snowman May Roam California Hills

November 25, 1967, The Lima News

Lima, Ohio, USA

(Also published in abbreviated form in the December 23, 1967 Daily Times of Burlington, N.C., USA.)

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author, who holds degrees with honors in zoology, botany and geology from Cambridge University, England, has led scientific collecting expeditions to several continents for leading institutions, such as the British Museum. He is the author of “Animal Treasure,” “Following the Whale,” “The Monkey Kingdom,” “How to Know the North American Mammals,” and, especially relevant to the following article, “Abominable Snowmen” (Chilton Co.).

By IVAN T. SANDERSON

NEW YORK(NANA)- The most compelling evidence to date that "Abominable Snowmen" exist was brought

here this week ;by two men from Yakima, Washington.

The evidence consists of a roll of color film clearly showing a hairy, seven-foot creature ambling along a creek in the mountains of northern California.

The creature was sighted Friday, October 20,by Gimlin and Roger Patterson near Bluff Creek, in rarely

penetrated forest country, the film footage already aroused widespread interest among U.S. and Canadian scientists.

Dr. Ion McTaggert Cowan, Dean of graduate studies of the University of British Columbia, curator Don Abbott of the Museum of Natural History in Victoria, B. C., and 15 other scientists, viewed the foottage (sic) at a showing in Vancouver two weeks ago, and the consensus was evidence definitely called for further investigation. None declared it a hoax. "What we need now," said one of the scientists pressent (sic), "is a skull."

The footage also was shown to the special effects department of Universal Pictures in Hollywood, and the experts said it was impossible that the creature was a man in a monkey suite. The film company’s photo laboratory saw the film, too, and said it was not faked.

Life, Look and television companies have been bidding for rights to the film this week.

I, myself, have viewed and studied the footage and can vouch for its authenticity. I say this after having studied all the available evidence of abominable snowmen, in all their varieties, for over 30 years. Few, if any, trained zoologists have spent the time and effort I have spent in collecting and analyzing reports, hairs, droppings and foot prints of these elusive creatures, which have been sighted everywhere from the Himalayas to the Southern Congo, to our own California.

I first heard of the California creatures in 1946. They are called “big feet” in the U.S. northwest and in Canada, they are called “Sasquatch Men.” In 1959, I went out there for a look-see and intervieweed hundreds of woodmen and Indians, who often are more familiar with their own habitat than passing-through scientists. The stories were consistant (sic) and the evidence cumulative.

The evidence goes back well over a century, and there is a report of the capture of a Sasquatch on a railroad track in British Columbia in 1884. During the California gold rush, they were sitghted all the way down to the outskirts of San Francisco.

Ever since, there have been reports by mountaineers, woodsmen, road builders and trappers of very large footprints, both in the snow and mud, all the way from the Yukon to Humboldt County, California. They are just like a man’s except they are 16 inches and longer. “Nests” or “beds” of these large creatures have also been found, and four huge masses of “scat,” unlike that dropped by any known animal in the west, have been examined in scientific laboratories. These were of human form but contained the eggs of parasitic worms not known to infect normal human beings.

Now Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin offer the best evidence yet of the California “big feet.” Gimlin, a part-Apache woodsman and tracker, has been searching with Patterson, a self-employed inventor, for three years.

From my careful viewing of the film footage, here is what the “big foot” or “Sasquatch” is like:

The creature seen is a female, judging from its clearly hanging breasts.

She is about seven feet tall, weighs about 400 pounds, and walks upright like a human, with straight legs.

She is covered all over with shiny, jet-black hair and, as she walks along in the film, she swings her arms.

Her head is covered with hair which comes up to the bottom of the check bones and down over the forehead to join with the eyebrows.

Her face is flat, not protuberant like a gorilla’s, and with a wide, pug nose. The eyes are small and deep-sunken.

Her head rises to a crest. She has no neck, and the shoulders are three feet wide. The stomach is flat.

The film lasts about one minute and shows the creature walking along a dry sand bank, littered with logs and driftwood. At one point, she turned around and looked directly at the camera. Then, as Roger Patterson continued after her, holding his movie camera, she ambled off into the bush. She left clear tracks in the sand measuring 41 inches from left heel to right heel and each print is 16 inches long.

I have studied the animals of America and all the continents for several decades. Nothing like this one has ever been captured for science. To me, there is no doubt it exists.