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It is half man, half ape.

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It lives in the shadows.

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Thousands of people claim they have seen it.

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From the wilds of the Pacific Northwest to the mountaintops of Tibet.

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But it remains a lucid.

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Truth or Scare tracks the truth about the creature known as Bigfoot.

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No!

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The Bigfoot

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Its name has been translated from many native languages.

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Yes, Yeti, Sasquatch, the abominable snowman, and yes, Bigfoot.

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Is this creature the last great undiscovered animal in the world, or just an oversized prank?

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For many generations, Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest have told of an ape-like creature they call Sasquatch.

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But it was only folklore, or so they thought.

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Beginning in the 1950s, hikers and woodsmen roaming the wilderness of Northern California came back with reports of a strange ape-like creature.

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Then, in 1958, some loggers deep in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest found huge, strange footprints.

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The press immediately dubbed it Bigfoot.

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Hey, you fellas, gotta come up here and take a look at this.

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But as this ancient legend turned to modern rumor, two hunters who'd never seen Bigfoot set out to shoot it.

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On film, that is.

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They headed to Bluff Creek in Trinity National Forest,

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160 miles north of San Francisco.

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It had a reputation as one of Bigfoot's stomping grounds.

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Roger Patterson was a former rodeo rider and part-time inventor.

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Bob, Gimlin, an expert horseman and tracker.

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According to Patterson, for seven days they saw nothing.

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But all that changed on October 20, 1967.

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Patterson was so stunned he fell from his horse.

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As he stumbled forward with his camera, he said Bigfoot stopped to look back at them.

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Gimlin aimed his gun at the beast in case it attacked.

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The creature had seen enough. It disappeared into the forest.

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Patterson followed it with his camera, but he'd already filmed too much of the beautiful mountain scenery.

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A breath of air, he ran out of film.

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This is the actual film shot by Roger Patterson.

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Most scientists dismiss the film as a clever hoax.

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A man in a modified ape costume, perhaps, pretending to be the fabled creature.

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It is true that Roger Patterson sold rights to the footage all over the world and made a small fortune.

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But Bob Gimlin, who made no money for his part in the adventure, swears the film is real.

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Many alleged Bigfoot prints and hair samples have turned out to be fake.

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One bit of fur found alongside a footprint in California was actually the hair from a Barbie doll.

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Do these incidents prove Bigfoot is nothing more than a fable?

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Did Roger Patterson actually film a shy relative of man hiding out in the wilderness for thousands?

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Maybe even millions of years?

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Maybe the key to tracking Bigfoot is in his footprints.

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Find out next on Truth or Scare.

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Claims of a Bigfoot creature are not limited to North America alone.

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There have been reports of a similar creature in Australia, Central Asia, India and Tibet.

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Coincidence? Or is it possible that a gigantic man ape could go and capture it for thousands of years?

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It may seem unlikely that animals thought to be extinct have turned up before.

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In the early 20th century, many zoologists believed that all Earth's largest animals had already been discovered.

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But in 1939, a supposedly extinct fish, the Silicam, was discovered in South Africa.

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Scientists also found the very first mountain gorilla in Africa as recently as 1901.

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And the first giant panda was captured in China in 1936.

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These animals were once dismissed as mere folklore, until science proved they were real.

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I did a calculation and I came up with about 40% of all known mammal species.

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40% were discovered in this century.

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Richard Greenwell is a member of the International Society of Cryptozoology, which searches for unknown animals.

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More traditional scientists say that Cryptozoology isn't a real science at all.

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They say that looking for such mythical creatures as giant octopuses and living dinosaurs is inspired by pure fantasy.

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But Greenwell thinks Bigfoot is alive and well hidden.

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There are vast regions on this planet where there is hardly anybody at all or hardly anybody goes.

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And certainly intelligent animals like primates could survive there and remain undetected. It is possible.

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Greenwell believes the animal may also be an octurnal creature, only coming out at night.

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Animals have strategies for survival, you know, some move in herds, others have spines on their backs.

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Perhaps some animals have a strategy that makes them more difficult to find. I call that elusiveness.

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Bigfoot may be elusive, but he does leave tracks.

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At least that's what believers say, who point to his footprints as their strongest evidence.

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So far, collectors have cast more than 400 footprints.

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Bob Titmiss of British Columbia, Canada saw his first Bigfoot track on a logging road in 1958.

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I'd never seen anything like it. I couldn't imagine what on earth was making it.

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And after I tracked it several times in the next few weeks,

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I came to believe that it had to be, absolutely had to be some live animal.

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Find out why this professional tracker thinks these footprints are the real deal.

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Next on Truth or Scare.

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The giant creature known as Bigfoot has been dodging hunters and investigators for years.

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He supposedly hides by day and hunts by night in the giant forests of the Pacific Northwest.

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The only physical evidence is its unusual footprints.

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The question is, are any of them real?

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Bob Titmiss has been a professional hunter all his life.

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From Alaska to Mexico, but the trophies on his wall are of Bigfoot.

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He believes these tracks cannot have been made by man or machine.

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The fluctuation in the track and the movement in the foot,

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and the places this would go that no mechanical thing could have gone.

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The tracks would eventually lead him to a remote canyon,

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in the Rockies of Northern British Columbia, on a summer day in 1963.

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Over 30 years later, the memory of what he claims he saw there remains as clear as when it happened.

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I was going up an old glacier bed, and there was reports of Indians having shot one up there many years before.

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And looking across the canyon, a huge canyon in front of me,

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I noticed three Sasquatches going up the opposite wall,

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and they were climbing just hand over hand.

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That was a sight to see.

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Like other Sasquatch hunters who came back without even a snapshot, no one believed him.

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Except John W. W. W.

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Except John Green, a writer and publisher in British Columbia.

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He had followed Bigfoot in the press.

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When he heard about Bob to Mrs. Find, he tracked him down.

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By 1958, there was a picture in the newspaper of a man holding a cast.

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One of these huge footprints.

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I just got in the car and went down there to see what it was all about.

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And footprints are real.

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There has to be something real to make them.

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Since 1958, John Green has gathered more than 3,000 eyewitness accounts from the United States and Canada.

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Most sightings are in the Pacific Northwest.

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Others come from as far east as Indiana and Arkansas.

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He admits some reports have turned out to be false, but he's convinced most are real.

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It reaches the point where the evidence is true.

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The explanation that there is an animal with a foot like that and it looks like what people say they see,

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is by far the simpler explanation than to try to patch together some human conspiracy,

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operating over hundreds of years and right across the entire globe.

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From 1958 to 1962, both Titmuss and Green became involved in Bigfoot hunting expeditions led by Tom Slick.

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An oil millionaire, he spent a small fortune trying to track Bigfoot down.

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He even collected some alleged Bigfoot droppings.

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Lovely.

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But when Slick died in a plane crash, the trail grew cold.

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His records and evidence vanished.

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Some say his company destroyed them out of embarrassment.

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Others say they're still hidden away.

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Perhaps the most complete and thorough search for Bigfoot is taking place here at Washington State University.

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Anthropologist Grover Kranz has risked his professional reputation by taking Bigfoot seriously.

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He believes the footprints are real.

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They're not just oversized human feet.

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They show seven slightly different characteristics.

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Five of these I've published in journal articles.

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Kranz won't say what he calls the other two typical Bigfoot traits.

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That way, he says, he can more easily uncover a phony.

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The common traits that he will reveal include flat, wide feet with near equal sized toes.

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Some alleged prints have ridges like a fingerprint,

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but again, some have turned out to be human.

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Nothing.

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But clever forgeries.

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Grover Kranz has found examples of Bigfoot tracks he believes would be impossible to fake.

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What happened here is the individual stepped on a stone and the stone impressed deeply into the foot.

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Now, we know that this was not a fake that somebody put on and rocked it side to side to get the impression on both sides

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because a very good fingerprint expert was able to trace dermal ridges running all the way across the footprint

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without any break right through the rock impression.

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And since there's no human foot that this is this large, no human foot has that thickness of padding,

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we're quite sure this is real.

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By studying the Patterson film frame by frame, Kranz has even come up with a theory on the mechanics of how he thinks Bigfoot walks.

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They do swing their arms back and forth in a human manner,

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but the differences come from they lean forward at the hip more than a normal human does or should.

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When they put weight support on one foot, they bend the knee, so...

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And most reports of Bigfoot have described the same slumping posture,

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slightly bent knees, and free-swaying arms.

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That's roughly how the Sasquatches walking on the Patterson film,

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and that's about how they would have to walk if they weigh 500 pounds or more and are well muscled.

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Solid proof, like Bigfoot, remains hidden.

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Can bones discovered in a cave in China prove the existence of a giant mannete?

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Find out next on Truth or Scare.

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The Himalayas, one place with a long history of sightings, is home of the legendary Yeti.

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Like Bigfoot, the Yeti is said to be a hairy, ape-like creature with a cone-shaped head.

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In 1921, British explorers were the first Westerners to try climbing Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain.

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At 17,000 feet, a Sherpa guide spotted dark figures moving in a snow field above them.

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According to the guide, the creature was what the Sherpa natives called Matoa Kongmi,

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or the man who is not a man.

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But a mistake in the translation ended up giving the mysterious beast its more familiar name, the abominable Snowman.

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Overnight, the abominable Snowman became a worldwide sensation.

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According to the Sherpas, he was a man-like creature, and he wasn't abominable at all,

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but a shy, harmless beast who was afraid of humans.

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For the next 40 years, dozens of other Yeti sightings were reported in the Himalayan Mountains of Tibet.

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Then, in 1960, the man who had originally conquered Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, returned to the Himalayas.

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One of his goals was to find the so-called abominable Snowman.

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He found snowy footprints allegedly made by the creature.

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He concluded that they were ordinary animal tracks, perhaps those of a bear,

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made larger and more frightening by the melting snow.

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Hillary also examined a so-called Yeti skullcap preserved in a Tibetan monastery.

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It turned out to be the skin of a goat-like animal called a serral.

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However, the abominable Snowman, the Sherpas believed, was also invisible.

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According to native folklore, he could disappear at will.

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But the famed beast, Sir Edmund Hillary concluded, was merely a fascinating fairy tale.

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A startling discovery in a forgotten cave has added a new character to the story,

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an extinct giant ape that's dead ringer for Bigfoot.

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In 1989, anthropologists found the teeth and fossilized bones of a giant ape-like creature hidden in a remote cave in China.

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The bones were really just fragments, but scientists were able to estimate that the animal stood more than 8 feet tall

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and weighed as much as 1200 pounds.

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They named it Gigantopithecus.

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This is a specimen of lower jaw of Gigantopithecus. This is the only adult male specimen.

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It contains the teeth and the tooth-bearing part of the jaw.

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When you compare that with a human jaw broken off at the same parts,

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you can see it's obviously extraordinarily large.

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Some anthropologists believe that we are distantly related to the human jaw.

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Some anthropologists believe that we are distantly related to Gigantopithecus

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and that roughly 11 million years ago, our lines split and we climbed different branches of our family tree.

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They also think it's possible that by 2 million years ago,

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Gigantopithecus roamed the land alongside Homo erectus, the forefather of modern man.

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The proof lay in the cave in China.

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Along with the Gigantopithecus bones, scientists found fragments of Homo erectus that dated to the same time.

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If the two creatures coexisted 2 million years ago, could we still be living with Gigantopithecus' descendants?

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Grover Kranz thinks so.

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The descriptions that people give of the big foot are the same size as what we have reconstructed here on the Gigantopithecus.

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It comes out to be about 8 feet tall, hairy, wide-shouldered, a very heavy set,

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and with a nearly ape-like face but somewhat straighter, more vertical.

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And that's an exact description of the big foot.

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According to this theory, Gigantopithecus originated in East Asia, where its bones were found.

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It could have crossed into North America over land bridges that formed during the Ice Ages.

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Scientists believe this was the same root taken by the first Americans, whose descendants still know the creature as Sasquatch.

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With nothing to go on but questionable sightings and footprints,

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Bigfoot, by any name, remains the mere shadow of a ghost.

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Its bones have never been discovered.

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But Grover Kranz thinks he can explain that as well.

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He believes animals dying in natural death tend to hide themselves before they die.

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I have talked to so many hunters, game guides, officials, and asked them all the same question.

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How many dead bears have you found that died in natural death?

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So far, my grand total is zero.

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Far from achieving fame and fortune, many who seriously search for big foot pay a heavy price for their beliefs.

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If you're in the academic world and you let it be known that you take the big foot story seriously,

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your reputation suffers rather badly for that.

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Promotions and pay raises are greatly delayed.

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On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I absolutely believe in Bigfoot.

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After I evaluate all the data and read all the information,

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and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I think it's a lot of nonsense.

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On Sundays, I rest.

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Many sightings of a mythical ape man have been reported, but to this day, no hard evidence exists.

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And so Bigfoot remains what he has always been, a mythical legend.

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If the secret of Bigfoot's survival is to remain hidden, it may be very difficult to ever prove its existence.

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Sightings and stories, legends and half truths, footprints and fabrications.

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Somewhere in between lies the truth and the answer to the question, is there a real Bigfoot?

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Thank you for watching.