This is going to be a short one, as I'm multi-tasking my way through a chaotic end-of-semester soup. I wanted to add a little information as a follow-up to Jason Colavito's post yesterday discussing a continuing education course about Bigfoot offered at Centralia College in Washington state.  The course ("The Old Ones, the First Americans") is being taught by Mitchel Townsend, whose claims about Bigfoot evidence I briefly discussed last June. Thanks to the miracle of social media, I have now learned that Townsend is actually, apparently . . .

Dr. Johnny Dagger, Bigfoot Tracker!

I was made aware of Townsend's alter ego by Steven Streufert, who pointed me to his blog post from June of 2015.

Have a look at this KickStarter page where Dr. Dagger attempted to raise $35,000 to "solve the mystery of Bigfoot once and for all:

"Dr. Jonny Dagger is a US Army Special Operations Trained NCO with 12 years of service. He additionally holds several Graduate degrees from world renowned Universities. Finally, he teaches Bigfoot courses at the college level. The only college professor in the world who designs and teaches these courses. He has the skill, experience, and abilities to solve this mystery once and for all with your help!!"

There: a ten minute blog post with thousands of loose ends to pursue. You're welcome.

I don't closely follow the goings-on in the world of Bigfoot. For the most part, I've written about Bigfoot claims when they intersect with the domains of archaeology, anthropology, and human evolution. There's a whole Bigfoot culture out there that I know little about. It's an interesting phenomenon, but there's only so much time in the day.

Last December, I wrote this post about the modern-day drama swirling around the claim that the arm of a Bigfoot (quickly revealed to be the articulated leg of an alligator) had been found in Florida.  I was interested in the story because the key ingredients of how it unfolded (including a climate of public interest, a lack of basic scientific acumen about the actual "evidence," profit motivations, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories) are all things that likely contibuted to the "giants" fad that rolled wave-like through late 1800's America. While the two are not the same thing, I see some potential parallels between finding giant skeletons back then and searching for Bigfoot today.

One part of the Bigfoot phenomenon that doesn't have a parallel in the world of 19th century giant skeletons, however, is the weird clan-based, trash-talking celebrity culture of self-poclaimed "Bigfooters." These guys (as far as I can tell, searching for Bigfoot is largely the domain of white males) compete for attention in just about every way possible except for producing actual physical evidence of Bigfoot. Given that we can't use the discovery of real evidence as an objective criterion for resolving all the mutually exclusive claims about who the best Bigfooters actually are, I was happy to learn that there are professional publications available for helping the layman sort the wheat from the chaff.  

And the 2016 award for Bigfooter of the Year goes to . . .  Stacy Brown, Jr.: the guy who mistook an alligator limb for a Bigfoot arm. 

I don't have access to the complete article, so I don't know exactly what went into the decision to give such an honor to Brown. In the snippet I have, it appears important that Brown hikes around a lot. I guess as long as you're out getting exercise, it doesn't really matter so much that you apparently can't tell the difference between the anatomy of the hypothetical hominid you're hiking around looking for and the bones of a quadrupedal reptile. Mammals and reptiles have only been separate evolutionary lineages for about 300 million years. No biggee.

​Maybe Bigfooting awards are like paticipation ribbons now.  Hey -- good for you!  You tried!

What brought this important story to my attention was a posting in a Facebook group of some emails that appear to show Brown discussing how to keep the "Bigfoot arm" story in the news even though he knew it was a hoax. I have no way of knowing if those emails are legitimate or not, but you can read them here if you like.

Maybe we should start a year end tradition of awards for the archaeological "fringe." Help me brainstom categories and we'll get it done.

Anyway, Happy Holidays to all the Bigfooters out there who didn't win an award this year. Keep up the good work!

I'm still on the road in North Carolina. If you're interested, you can read about Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. If not, you've only got a few more words to go until we get to giants.

Yesterday Jason Colavito wrote about the "Giant in My Backyard" website of Mirrell Blum. I had never heard of this one before. Blum claims to have found a letter left by her grandfather describing an encounter with a "huge, hairy beast man" that ended with the creature being shot and buried. Colavito's post discusses the strange interactions that Blum reported with Nephilim enthusiasts Steve Quayle and L. A. Marzulli. A few days ago, Blum claimed that they were actively digging up the beast man:

"We went as far as changing our phone numbers, emails, and cut off all communication about the letter and what might be buried on our property. After a couple of weeks of trying to figure out what we should do, we gathered a small group of family and friends to come up with a solution.

In the end, they were just as curious as we were and we decided pool our knowledge and skills. Myself and some of my friends work construction and other similar jobs, so we know our way around heavy equipment. We knew the general area that we needed to dig, so we rented and borrowed the equipment we needed and got to work."

 The post includes a picture of a pile of dirt and a dump truck (and a chipper-shredder). When you click a link at the bottom of the page ("Click Here To See Over 8 Hours of Video and 1,000+ Pics of The Dig") you're taken to a page asking you to provide complete credit card information for "Online Access To Pics and Video - Only $0.99." If you click the "Sign Up For Online Access" button (without entering any actual information, of course), you get the following screen (sorry - my laptop is damaged so I had to just take a photo with my phone):​

If your alarm bells haven't gone off yet, you haven't been paying attention.

When I did an image search on the "excavation in progress" photo with the dump truck and a pile of dirt, I got a hit on the website of Quality Landscaping Services in Connecticut. That site uses the exact same photo for illustration, which makes sense considering the presence of the chipper-shredded (which is not a piece of equipment I would bring on an excavation).

The photo of a hair sample being analyzed is taken from a May 2016 story about a Medieval-age plait of braided hair found in an English abbey.

So let's see these thousands of photos of the excavation of the beast man. At least we have a firm date and we won't be waiting long. Hartman Krug, fire up the countdown!

An ongoing conversation on an old blog post about the Humboldt skull somehow led me to this story about the claim of Mitchell Townsend that stacks of gnawed animal bones in the Cascade Mountains provide definitive physical evidence for the existence of Bigfoot. I had flashes of "Roman sword white paper" as I read this paragraph:

"Townsend’s information will be published in a research paper, and he challenges the scientific community to discredit his information. He said the four-year project helped solve the mystery because the focus was based on forensic evidence. The information used was also heavily based on comparison proof from the top scientists in the world."

Just as I was settling in to wait for the paper, I was happy to find that I had misread the publication date of the news article: it was from May of 2015 rather than May of 2016.  The paper ("Using Biotic Taphonomy Signature Analysis and Neoichnology Profiling to determine the identity of the carnivore taxa responsible for the deposition and mechanical mastication of three independent prey bone assemblages in the Mount St. Helen’s ecosystem of the Cascade mountain range" by Aaron Mills, Gerald Mills, and M. N. Townsend) came out last June and is available here.  It doesn't appear that the paper generated much discussion, which I find curious given the amount of detail it contains. I don't know if the lack of attention means that the Bigfoot community just didn't buy it (?) or just didn't read it: the paper weighs in at 94 pages and is densely packed with jargon.

I was intrigued, so I waded through it.

The paper describes three "bone stacks" located and documented by the authors in the Mt. St. Helens area in 2013 and 2014. The authors attribute the formation of these bone assemblages to Bigfoot, arguing that (1) the stacks of bones could not have been created by any other known carnivore in the area and (2) the bones preserve evidence of consumption by a creature with very large but very human-like teeth.  Here is a quote from Townsend's "discovery narrative" about the first bone stack (pg. 6):​

". . . ​I did a physical examination of the site contents and discovered at least two sets of deer remains based upon the deer skulls found in direct proximity to the main assemblage of bones. The skulls had their noses/snouts crushed by what looked like blunt force trauma and had been placed in the same general nose downhill orientation. This seemed odd at first glance. What really caught my eye was a pile of bones next to a small log. My first impression was that something or someone had sat down and consumed these animals and just dropped the bones between their legs as they finished them. I further confirmed this by looking closely at the stack and noted some very interesting observations. The bones seemed to be mostly rib bones that showed evidence of teeth marks and mechanical manipulation to varying degrees. Some areas had seemingly been bitten out and discernable dental impressions left behind. These dental impressions looked measurably different from the other known species that inhabit this ecosystem." 

Townsend later (pg. 7) reiterates his vision of the behavior that created the record he was looking at: 

"What resident animal species would kill deer with blunt force trauma on the head, position them in the same directional orientation, eat the animals and drop the bones in a pile? How come scavengers were avoiding this site even though some of the bones still had flesh attached? These were just some of the questions now rushing through my thoughts." 

The first thing that struck me about the assemblages described by the authors is the representation of body parts: heads, feet, ribs, and spines (with a few other bones also present). The "kill sites" do not include all parts of animals, or even random pieces of the animals. Here is a listing of what the authors report they collected:
​

• Bone Stack #1 (BP1): 4 ribs, 8 lower foot bones, 2 wrist/ankle bones, a toe bone, and 2 partial hooves from black tail deer (a "partial shoulder assembly" was observed but not collected, and two damaged skulls were present);

• Bone Stack #2 (EK#1): 4 ribs, 1 vertebra, and 4 lower leg bones from an elk. (in the discovery narrative, the authors report that the skull was also observed in the general area but "The odd thing was we found no leg bones in the area, as if they had been carried off later");

• Bone Stack #3 (EK#2): "The lower spinal column, some ribs, and one rear leg were located in this location among elk hair tufts" (pg. 30).

​Students of anthropological archaeology will have anticipated where I'm going with this based on the title of the post: the bone stacks described by the authors appear to be examples of "low utility" assemblages, composed of the skeletal remains of those parts of the animals that contain relatively little meat.  All hunters know that different parts of a large animal have different "values" in terms of their protein and fat content. For cervids like deer and elk, the highest utility parts of the animal (those with the greatest concentration of edible tissue relative to bone) are the upper limbs. Heads, feet, lower limbs, ribs, and the spine -- the kinds of bones described in the bone stacks -- contain relatively less meat per unit of volume (and hence per weight).  When hunter-gatherers on foot (i.e., lacking ATVs, snowmobiles, pick-up trucks, and other mechanized transport technologies utilized by many sport hunters) must choose which parts of the animal to transport back to camp after a kill, they generally (and logically) pick the highest-utility pieces. As a general theoretical expectation, they will butcher the animal and preferentially transport the upper limbs back to camp, leaving behind the feet, heads, spine, etc. Thus we can generally expect that kill/butchery sites will have high proportions of low-utility parts while the camp/consumption sites will have high proportions of high-utility parts.

Again, I'm no expert on bears and cougar, so it seems reasonable to give some weight to the opinion of someone who is. It is logical to me that a person who was trying to use carcass parts to lure in carnivores would use collections of low utility parts (heads, feet, spines) to do the job rather than prime cuts of meat. The presence of parts of at least two different deer (based on the presence of two deer heads) at the first site described by Townsend suggests to me that the deer parts were transported to the site rather than killed there. Maybe the ribs were carried in a bag and dumped out into a pile by whoever was prepping the bait, if that's indeed what happened. Perhaps the skulls were damaged on purpose in an attempt to enhance the scent of the rotting brains -- hell, I don't know. 

And what of the reported tooth marks?  This is a part of the report I have not yet considered in detail. I would be surprised to find that the tooth marks could not be reasonably attributed to non-human carnivores (perhaps more than one kind). But I'll reserve comment on that until I read through their analysis carefully. 

In summary, we're told that the bone stacks are the results of single events: a Bigfoot killing a deer (or two), sitting down and depositing ribs in a pile, one after the other as he/she eats. But it's easy to imagine an alternative hypothesis (the selective use of leftover, low utility parts in bait piles for illegal hunting) that also appears to account for many of the facts presented by the authors. If those alternative hypotheses were fleshed out, it would be possible to develop critical test expectations that could falsify one or the other. I don't think we're given enough information to judge where in the sequence of butchery and deposition the bones were chewed -- before being "stacked"? after? Did the biting occur around the time of death or later? Are there any cutmarks on any of the bones that demonstrate that tools were used to disarticulate the carcasses? Are there bite marks on any bones that are not in the "stack"?  As shown by the "discovery narrative" I quoted above, the assumption that the killing, biting, and stacking all happened at about the same time seems to have been embedded in Townsend's thinking about these sites since the moment of discovery. Discarding that assumption and considering the formation of the sites as a set of analytical questions (which, admittedly, it may not be possible to address satisfactorily with the information they report) may result in a simpler answer than "Bigfoot."

I'm curious as to why the Bigfoot community did not seem to get excited about this work. Anyone care to chime in?  ​

As I wrote yesterday, I was hoping that my next post would be about body size estimates for Gigantopithecus. It's taking more time than I hoped to track down some of the information I want for that one, so it will be on hold for a bit. I'm trying to find a source of raw metrics for individual Gigantopithecus teeth (I think there may be some in this new paper by Zhang et al., but I haven't been able to access the supplementary information from off campus) and I'd like to have a look at Russell Ciochon et al.'s (1990) book Other Origins (which I'll have to get in hard copy through the library, the old-fashioned way).

I'm interested in Gigantopithecus both out of professional curiosity and because it's one of those topics (like the Nephilim) that is nicely situated at the intersection of science/pseudoscience.  That's what makes it interesting to write about on a blog: it's a legitimate area of scientific inquiry that matters to the "fringe."

There's no question that the strongest fringe appeal of Gigantopithecus is among Bigfoot enthusiasts, some of whom contend that Sasquatch and the giant ape are one and the same. I'm not really that into the Bigfoot phenomenon, but when you talk Gigantopithecus online you get attention from the Bigfoot crowd. So I'm learning a little bit about how that world works.

(Aside: In my opinion, Bigfoot fans are the soccer hooligans of the fringe world.  If you want to see some ridiculous displays of racist, sexist, homophobic, scatological, immature, ad hominem attacks, go and read some of the comments on Bigfoot forums like this one. I get discussed on there when I write something related to Bigfoot.  What a compliment. I can't even tell who is who or what exactly they're trying to say . . . anyway, moving on.)

Perusing one of the Bigfoot forums, I stumbled across this story about a possible "skunk ape" arm being investigated by Stacy Brown, Jr. Brown has apparently proclaimed himself to be the best Bigfoot researcher on the planet, so we should take his claims seriously, right?  The links in the story are no longer active, so I'll reproduce a quote and an image that is reportedly from Stacy Brown's  original announcement (you can get the same information from this video):

"We recieved a non-human primate arm this morning. FWC officials ruled out bear and human by the makeup of the bones. What kind of primate arm this is we dont know as of yet. Here is a photograph of the arm. We are in talks now with people to test the samples we send. We are hopeful this may be a skunk ape's arm."

That was on September 1 of 2014.  A week or so later, the verdict was returned: alligator limb.

Case closed, right?

Wrong!

A few weeks later, Robert Lindsay reported that the "alligator leg" story was actually a fabrication designed to cover up the discovery and sale of a possibly legitimate partial skeleton of a Bigfoot.  Lindsay alleges that

"Within one hour after taking possession of the arm, Brown received a phone call from a very wealthy Bigfoot enthusiast in Ohio. He wanted to get involved. Brown said no. The man asked how much would it take you to give up that arm. Brown quoted a very high figure – I can now reveal that that figure was $500,000. The man bit, unbelievably enough. The sale was made immediately, and incredibly, the entire $500K was wired into Stacy’s account, and the arm was in the mail just like that."

Lindsay goes on to say that Brown then went and bought an alligator arm from a taxidermist and "started putting out fake stories about how they were going to test the arm even though they didn’t even have possession of it anymore."  While the actual Bigfoot arm was in a mail truck, Lindsay alleges, Stacy Brown was covering his tracks and counting his money.

The reason I'm relating this tale is not because I care much about any of this nonsense, but because the story has so many of the elements of the accounts of "giant" skeletons discoveries from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Note these four similarities:

Appeal to Authority: First, there is an appeal to an authority to establish the credibility of the find.  How do we know we're onto something out of the ordinary?  Because an FWC (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) or FWS official said so! Interestingly, Lindsay also made an appeal to authority to bolster his counter-claim of conspiracy:

"I know someone who saw the arm with hair on it and was there when the FWS made that determination. In order to believe Stacy Brown’s insane story, we have to believe that a FWS biologist is so stupid that he cannot tell a reptile arm from a mammal arm."

Well . . . I doubt "stupid" is really the issue.  I would not expect every employee of a wildlife management service to have enough expertise in comparative anatomy to correctly identify a set of isolated limb bones. There are numerous documented examples of medical and anatomy professionals making mistakes in the past, identifying the bones of animals such as mastodons, salamanders, and turtles as those of giant humans. And I know from anecdotes that medical professionals of today don't have a great track record of being able to differentiate isolated human and animal bones from one another (and there's no reason to expect that of them - it's not part of their job or their training).  Anyway, the FWC/FWS person on the scene was actually not "stupid," but correct as quoted: the bones were not those of a human or a bear.

Jumping to Conclusions: Second, it seems that it was important to Brown for whatever reason to announce the "find" prior to doing even basic investigation.  My guess is that the FWC/FWS person was called to the scene to rule out the possibility that the bones were human (and thus not the purview of law enforcement).  In my opinion, if you go from an on-the-scene FWC/FWS conclusion of "not human" to "let's announce to the world that we MAY have a Bigfoot arm," you're skipping over a few steps that you could've taken yourself to avoid some embarrassment. I'm no expert on reptile bones, but it seems to me the "is it from an alligator" question would be a natural one to ask, given that you're in Florida.  If you Google "alligator skeleton" you come up with some pretty good drawings and photos (here's the source of the taxidermy image).  It's not that tough to see the resemblance to the alligator, or to discern that the limb has very different proportions than the arm of any primate.

So what's the rush? As in many old accounts of "giants," the sensationalism of the claim comes through loud and clear. Announcing that you found something that turned out to be part of an alligator doesn't get you much attention. Announcing that you found something that COULD be Bigfoot does get you attention.  So if attention is what you want, it makes sense to go ahead and announce your "discovery" before it has time to come under any scrutiny. Searching on the phrase "Stacy Brown skunk ape arm" returns thousands of hits. I would guess that most of those are about the "discovery" story rather than the "oh sorry it's just an alligator" story.

Conflicting and Foggy Details: Some of the stories/postings about the arm say that Stacy Brown found it. Others say that it was found by someone else and reported to Stacy Brown's team, which then went to investigate. None of the stories that I saw provide much additional detail about the "discovery," which should be a red flag to anyone who is paying attention.  When even the basic details are absent and what's there doesn't line up, your story has problems from the get-go. Just as in accounts of "giants," however, the absence or inconsistency of details doesn't really seem bother those who just want the story to be true (e.g., Joe Taylor's 47" femur sculpture, the "eyewitness" account of a giant skeleton from New York).

Conspiracy to Hide Evidence.  Those familiar with the conspiracy thread woven through giantology will immediately find familiar the "evidence purloined by a mysterious outsider" component of this story. Once the evidence is swept away, we'll never really know what happened, will we? So there's still a possibility that the story could be true, isn't there?  Making evidence disappear actually helps those who like to tell tales that could be falsified by that evidence: if the alligator limb was still out there, it would make it much harder to insist that it was the arm of a Bigfoot. But saying it was purchased by some millionaire in Ohio both makes it seem more likely it was legitimate (why else would the man have paid half a million dollars for it?) and explains why you can't see it anymore. That's pretty convenient, just like the Smithsonian-evolutionist conspiracy to hide all the giant skeletons.

The Stacy Brown alligator limb story makes me wonder if we're in the midst of a Bigfoot "fad" that will, in retrospect, look a lot like the giants fad that reached its peak in the late 1800's.  I think many of the fundamental ingredients are there: public interest, lack of basic scientific acumen about the actual evidence, profit motivations, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.  We're clearly not in the 19th century, however, in terms of our communication infrastructure. The internet is both a faster and more democratic speader than traditional print media, and one would expect that those differences would have some significant effects on the patterns and processes of information spread, persistence, and error creation and transmission.  I think the rise of the internet probably underlies (and maybe even partially explains) the current re-emergence of the giants fad. Maybe the same could be said for Bigfoot.  Maybe I'll figure it out someday.  There's no rush:  I doubt that either giants or Bigfoot are going to disappear anytime soon. 

The large teeth of a creature that would become known as Gigantopithecus were first encountered by science in 1935 after several were purchased from a Hong Kong drugstore.  Those teeth -- without any other parts of the skeleton -- were interpreted by physical anthropologists working in Asia as the remains of a huge creature.  While there were differing opinions as to whether the teeth had belonged to gigantic apes or gigantic humans, Ralph von Koenigswald, Franz Weidenreich, and W. C. Pei all agreed that Gigantopithecus was enormous.  

Those large teeth still fuel discussions of what the anatomy of Gigantopithecus was like. Estimates of very large body size (1000 lbs . . . 1200 lbs . . . ) attract a quantity of attention from Bigfoot enthusiasts, Creationists, and other "fringe" theorists that far exceeds that paid to other fossil apes. But where do those estimates come from? As I discussed briefly in this post, all of our information about Gigantopithecus is based on isolated teeth and a handful of mandibles.  That's something to go on, but not a lot. The complicated nature of the relationships between body size and tooth size, problematic when the first teeth of Gigantopithecus were discovered in the 1930's, remains an analytical issue today.  

How do we go from tooth size to body size?  Very carefully. Stanley Garn and Arthur Lewis discussed the matter in a 1958 paper in American Anthropologist titled "Tooth-Size, Body-Size and 'Giant' Fossil Man:"  

    "On the basis of morphology and size together, Von Koenigswald decided that the Hong Kong and Sangiran teeth and jaw fragments came from “giant apes.” However, Weidenreich later concluded that both the 1935-1939 Hong Kong [Gigantopithecus] teeth and the 1939-1941 Sangiran [Meganthropus] tooth-jaw fossils were the remains of true men, though extraordinarily large men, from the early Sino-Malaysian fauna (Weidenreich 1945:123-24). Finally, in his recent article, W. C. Pei reverted to the idea of a giant anthropoid and estimated that the “giant” ape of Luntsai stood “some twelve feet” high (Pei 1957:836).
    What is the evidence that these three sets of finds, separated from each other by space and time, all came from gigantic beings? How convincing is the evidence that big teeth necessarily indicate extraordinary stature? Lacking the postcranial skeletons, direct proof of body size does not exist. What remains is such indirect proof as can be gleaned from tooth-size relationships in man and apes. “This” admitted Franz Weidenreich . . . “is a very ticklish question. . . "

The question is "ticklish" because of the fact that tooth size, in addition to being related to body size, is also related to things like diet.  Similar-sized animals that eat different things emphasize different teeth. Animals that have to grind a lot of tough plant food tend to have cheek teeth (molars and premolars) with large grinding surfaces.  Animals whose diet consists of softer foods (like fruits) or involves lots of cutting and tearing (as in carnivores) typically don't have large chewing teeth relative to their body size because they don't need them (they're not selected for).

At the time Weidenreich wrote his 1945 monograph "Giant Early Man from Java and South China," the known fossil remains of Gigantopithecus consisted of just three teeth. Weidenreich's detailed comparative analysis of those teeth convinced him that Gigantopithecus was a hominid and a human ancestor. His discussion of the possible size of Gigantopithecus, while following from that conclusion, was cautious (pg. 111):

'In Gigantopithecus the length of the lower molar row is only twice that of modern man, not eight times, as in the lemur example. When the dimensions for the femur are calculated on the basis of the lemur ratio for the femur and the hominid ratio for the length of the molar row, the Gigantopithecus femur proves to be little longer than the femur of modern man and only slightly thicker. The same holds true for Meganthropus. Therefore, we can dismiss the body dimensions of the giant hominids, Gigantopithecus and Meganthropus, with the very general statement that they must have had large, heavy, and massive skulls, large strong trunks, but only slightly longer and stronger leg bones. No more precise statement can be made." 

Weidenreich died in 1948 and never got to see the Gigantopithecus mandibles that were discovered in the late 1950's. Consideration of those mandibles (and the growing number of isolated teeth available for study), led Elwyn Simons and Peter Ettel to argue in a 1970 article in Scientific American that Gigantopithecus was a large, herbivorous ape weighing as much as 600 lbs (272 kg) and standing about 9' (2.7 m) tall when upright. Simons and Ettel reconstructed Gigantopithecus with a posture and body plan like a gorilla. The body size estimate of Simons and Ettel was somewhat informal, based on a general appraisal of the size of jaw and assuming ​a proportional relationship between jaw size and body size.  

The 1980's saw the publication of studies that considered the allometry of tooth/body size relationships across primate taxa. A 1982 paper by Philip Gingerich et al. ("Allometric Scaling in the Dentition of Primates and Prediction of Body Weight From Tooth Size in Fossils") considered how tooth area scales to body weight among extant primates and used that information to estimate the weight of fossil primates. I have reproduced the figure from their paper that shows the logarithmic relationship and the regression formula based on that relationship.

While there is a general, positive relationship between tooth area and body weight among extant primates (which is a good thing for those of us interested in fossils), Gingerich et al.'s (1982) analysis makes it clear that there's a lot more going on than a simple, direct relationship.  What part of the relationship is based on geometry (bigger teeth as a result of bigger bodies) and what part is based on dietary adaptations (tooth size related to diet)? Good question.  Gingerich et al. (1982:99) concluded that

"Much remains to be learned about allometric scaling of tooth size and body weight in the dentition of primates and other mammals.  Our results demonstrate that there is a coherent pattern of differences in scaling at different tooth positions across the whole range of generalized primates.  We have not investigated how this general pattern might change if primates were subdivided into smaller taxonomic groups or into dietary guilds." 

As far as I can tell, that remains at least somewhat true today (I have yet to make a concerted effort to get into the current literature on tooth/body size scaling . . . hopefully I can get around to it soon).  Although we clearly know more about tooth/body size relationships than we used to, the estimation of primate body size from isolated teeth remains problematic.  While there are general relationships, they're not necessarily proportional. A big tooth doesn't necessarily mean a proportionally giant creature.

The large tooth from Denisova Cave is good example of how "big" is still equated with "giant" in the absence of other evidence.  According to this 2010 paper, the Denisovan tooth (probably a second molar) is the largest human tooth ever discovered. Because of its size (and because there aren't any other Denisovan fossils that can tell us something directly about body size), it has been interpreted by the fringe as evidence of giants (I wrote a little about it here). The tooth reportedly measures 13.1 mm by 14.7 mm, giving an area estimate of 192.5 square mm. Notably, it is smaller than the corresponding teeth of some austalopithecines (who were smaller in body size than humans but had a very tough diet, and, hence, big chewing teeth).  If I plug that area into the Gingerich et al. (1982) regression shown above (yes, I know it was based on areas of first molars, not second molars, but bear with me for the sake of general comparisons)  I get a body mass estimate of about 200 lbs (91 kg).  

Two hundred pounds: is that a giant? It's surely above average for humans today, but it's really a stretch to call a 200-lb individual a "giant."  Even allowing for that 200 lbs to be an underestimate (because it's based on a second molar rather than a first molar), how do we know that the the large tooth size isn't somehow related to the evolutionary history and/or diet of Denisovan populations? There are just a few teeth to go on - that's it. Just like with Gigantopithecus, I think we've really got to be aware that we're effectively blindfolded on the issue of body size until we've got some decent postcrania to look at.

As a final note, I think it's fascinating that Weidenreich saw the East and South Asian fossil record as supporting the idea that body size decrease through time was a major trend in human evolution. That is, of course, opposite of what the African record from the last 4 million years or so has now demonstrated. Weidenreich was wrong, but he was no lightweight and no dummy.  He based his ideas on the direct evidence that he had: fossils.  We'll never know what he what he would have thought of the decidedly un-human Gigantopithecus mandibles that were discovered just a few years after his death, but I would bet a large sum of money that he would not have stuck with the "giant phase of Man" idea that he outlined in his 1945 monograph.  Accepting that new evidence can falsify a hypotheses is part of doing science. 

Weidenreich's published ideas about also give the lie to the fringe/Creationist notion that 20th century academics have conspired and are continuing to conspire to suppress the "truth" about giants in the past. Or maybe someone just forgot to send Weidenreich his conspiracy brochure. I guess that's possible, since I have yet to receive mine, either.

Next up:  The history of body size estimates of Gigantopithecus.

References
​
Garn, Stanley M., and Arthur B. Lewis. 1958. Tooth-Size, Body-Size and “Giant” Fossil Man.  American Anthropologist 60(5):874-880.  

Gingerich, Philip D., B. Holly Smith, and Karen Rosenberg.  1982.  Allometric Scaling in the Dentition of Primates and Prediction of Body Weight From Tooth Size in Fossils.  American Journal of Physical Anthropology 58:81-100.
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Simons, Elwyn L., and Peter C. Ettel. 1970. Gigantopithecus. Scientific American (January 1, 1970).

Weidenreich, Franz. 1945. Giant Early Man from Java and South China. Anthropological papers of the AMNH, Volume 40, Part 1.

I've occasionally been accused by those on the "fringe" side of being too hard on them and too easy on mainstream scholars and skeptics. I don't really think that's true. I think I call BS when I see it. I attribute the perception of unfairness to a couple of different factors.  First, I'm probably a little more careful about my choice of words when I'm discussing the work of those who are genuinely interested in answering a question or solving a problem (rather than just selling books). That's much more common among mainstream scholars.  Second, I think "fringe" theorists tend to be more sensitive to criticism because they're not used to having their ideas openly challenged on the basis of evidence.  Sometimes, unfortunately, scrutiny hurts their feelings. Third, some "fringe" theorists probably assume that I'm part of some wide-ranging conspiracy to suppress their ideas.

If I'm part of a conspiracy, I have yet to be told about it.  Maybe someday "they" will let me in on the secret and I can start writing blog posts on a laptop with a fully functional keyboard and a working battery, maybe even while not at home watching kids on evenings and weekends. Just think how effective I could be if I could work without also being responsible for wiping noses, stopping couch wrestling, and pretending to eat imaginary pasta.

​The fact is, professionals get things wrong also. Today's "whoops" comes from Paolo Viscardi, a natural history curator at the Grant Museum of Zoology in London.  This "Ask a Biologist" page includes Viscardi's answer to the question "Were there ever giant humans?, which includes the following:

​"Next I would say that there were Pleistocene apes called Gigantopithecus that stood about 10 feet tall. Their remains are very similar to those of humans, particularly when the skull is damaged. Mammoth and elephant skulls are also remarkably humanoid in appearance when they are damaged."

The appeal to the remains of Gigantopithecus is as unfortunate as it is wrong.

While there was a genus of ape (that we call Gigantopithecus) that existed in South and East Asia during the Pleistocene, we only know of these creatures through a few mandibles and teeth.  No-one has ever found a Gigantipthecus skull or any other part of the skeleton. Just teeth and mandibles. So how could we say the remains of a Gigantopithecus look like those of a giant human?  We can't, because we've never seen them.

The teeth and mandibles of Gigantopithecus are large.  Those teeth and mandibles form the sole basis of our estimates of body size. Big teeth and jaws mean a big primate, right?  Well, sort of. The problem is that there is a lot of variation among primates in the relationship between tooth size and body size (I touched on this subject in this post about why the original owner of the large Denisovan tooth wasn't necessarily a giant).  Tooth size alone doesn't necessarily tell us much because tooth size is related to diet. Relatively small-bodied australopithecines had large grinding teeth because they had a diet that included a lot of tough, low quality foods that needed to be heavily masticated.  The teeth and jaws of robust australopithecines (which were also small-bodied compared to modern humans) were even larger and were accompanied by a skull and chewing muscles that were clearly designed to produce and resist massive chewing forces.

So how do we estimate the body size of Gigantopithecus?  If you model the size relationship between teeth and body based on something like a gorilla (a primate with a relatively soft, fruit-based diet and small chewing teeth) you get a very large primate. If you use a model more like a robust australopithecine (a primate with a relatively tough diet and large chewing teeth), body size estimates are smaller.  Gigantopithecus was large, but I don't think we'll know how large until someone finds some postcranial bones. I'm sure they're out there somewhere. When I have the opportunity to talk about Gigantopithecus in my classes, I show pretty pictures of Liuzhou in China (image source) hoping they will inspire someone to go out and look.  Finding some Gigantopithecus bones other than teeth and jaws would be sweet.

Anyway, the figure of a 10' tall ape is repeated often. Maybe Gigantopithecus was that large, and maybe it wasn't. Bigfoot enthusiasts love a big Gigantopithecus, as do some advocates of the idea that humans have "degenerated" in size over time. There is zero evidence that Gigantopithecus is a human ancestor, and, in fact, we don't even know that it was a biped.  As with body size, ideas about whether Gigantopithecus walked upright on two legs are based on a few jaws and teeth. Anthropologist Grover Krantz's celebrated reconstruction of a Gigantopithecus skull, beloved by Bigfoot enthusiasts, was based on the same tooth and mandible fragments as all of our other interpretations. Krantz extrapolated a bipedal posture for Gigantopithecus based on the morphology of the mandible.  Not a lot to go on there, but I guess that doesn't matter much if you already know the answer. (See this post for more discussion.)

The academic imagineering was further amplified recently when Jeff Meldrum and Idaho State University produced a "full-size" skeleton of Bigfoot to help the History Channel create more schlock programming for its already crowded schedule of crap.  

"Meldrum borrowed from the physical looks of extinct animals such as the Gigantopithecus blacki — an ancient ape that was twice the size of apes today — and the Neanderthal — a species of human that is said to have became extinct 40,000 years ago."

So this "Bigfoot skeleton" is based partially on the "looks of extinct animals such as the Gigantopithethecus blacki"? Oh my.  If you've read this far, you know that we really don't know much about what those extinct animals actually did look like. We've got some teeth and mandibles - that's it. From those meager remains, wishful thinkers (including academics) have built up several real-looking reconstructions that will probably be cited for years to come as actual evidence. That's why Viscardi's statement ("Their remains are very similar to those of humans, particularly when the skull is damaged") is so unfortunate: he's reinforcing the incorrect notion that all of this business about the giant, bipedal Gigantopithecus is fact, established based on the existence of skeletons and skulls.

That's just not true.

Maybe Gigantopithecus was a 10' tall biped. But maybe it wasn't. What we don't know about Gigantopithecus far outweighs what we do know. That vacuum of knowledge is what allows all kinds of notions (not all of which can be correct) to survive. Some of those notions will be killed off when actual postcranial remains are found. In the meantime, I hope that academics will take care to convey to the public what we actually do and do not know about this creature.