Andy White Anthropology
  • Home
  • Research Interests
    • Complexity Science
    • Prehistoric Social Networks
    • Eastern Woodlands Prehistory
    • Ancient Giants
  • Blog
  • Work in Progress
    • The Kirk Project >
      • Kirk 3D Models list
      • Kirk 3D Models embedded
      • Kirk 2D images >
        • Indiana
        • Kentucky
        • Michigan
        • Ontario
      • Kirk Project Datasets
    • Computational Modeling >
      • FN3D_V3
    • Radiocarbon Compilation
    • Fake Hercules Swords
    • Wild Carolina >
      • Plants >
        • Mosses
        • Ferns
        • Conifers
        • Flowering Plants >
          • Grasses
          • Trees
          • Other Flowering Plants
      • Animals >
        • Birds
        • Mammals
        • Crustaceans
        • Insects
        • Arachnids
        • Millipedes and Centipedes
        • Reptiles and Amphibians
      • Fungi
  • Annotated Publications
    • Journal Articles
    • Technical Reports
    • Doctoral Dissertation
  • Bibliography
  • Data

Is Bigfooting a Century Behind Giants? The Example of Stacy Brown's Alligator Limb

12/13/2015

2 Comments

 
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):
PictureAlleged "primate arm" reported by Stacy Brown, Jr. It's from an alligator.
"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.

PictureImage of an alligator skeleton from a taxidermy website.
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. 

2 Comments
Scott Hamilton
12/13/2015 11:45:45 am

If you want to keep your faith in humanity, avoid Lindsay's non-Bigfoot blog posts. The man is an incredible racist and just an all-around terrible person.

Reply
Bob Jase
12/13/2015 01:19:01 pm

Damned Smithsonian - planting all those gators to eat dead bigfoots & confuse the evidence!

Reply



Leave a Reply.


    All views expressed in my blog posts are my own. The views of those that comment are their own. That's how it works.

    I reserve the right to take down comments that I deem to be defamatory or harassing. 

    Andy White

    Follow me on Twitter: @Andrew_A_White

    Email me: andy.white.zpm@gmail.com

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner


    Picture

    Sick of the woo?  Want to help keep honest and open dialogue about pseudo-archaeology on the internet? Please consider contributing to Woo War Two.
    Picture

    Follow updates on posts related to giants on the Modern Mythology of Giants page on Facebook.

    Archives

    January 2023
    January 2022
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    March 2021
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    3D Models
    AAA
    Adena
    Afrocentrism
    Agent Based Modeling
    Agent-based Modeling
    Aircraft
    Alabama
    Aliens
    Ancient Artifact Preservation Society
    Androgynous Fish Gods
    ANTH 227
    ANTH 291
    ANTH 322
    Anthropology History
    Anunnaki
    Appalachia
    Archaeology
    Ardipithecus
    Art
    Atlantis
    Australia
    Australopithecines
    Aviation History
    Bigfoot
    Birds
    Boas
    Book Of Mormon
    Broad River Archaeological Field School
    Bronze Age
    Caribou
    Carolina Bays
    Ceramics
    China
    Clovis
    Complexity
    Copper Culture
    Cotton Mather
    COVID-19
    Creationism
    Croatia
    Crow
    Demography
    Denisovans
    Diffusionism
    DINAA
    Dinosaurs
    Dirt Dance Floor
    Double Rows Of Teeth
    Dragonflies
    Early Archaic
    Early Woodland
    Earthworks
    Eastern Woodlands
    Eastern Woodlands Household Archaeology Data Project
    Education
    Egypt
    Europe
    Evolution
    Ewhadp
    Fake Hercules Swords
    Fetal Head Molding
    Field School
    Film
    Florida
    Forbidden Archaeology
    Forbidden History
    Four Field Anthropology
    Four-field Anthropology
    France
    Genetics
    Genus Homo
    Geology
    Geometry
    Geophysics
    Georgia
    Giants
    Giants Of Olden Times
    Gigantism
    Gigantopithecus
    Graham Hancock
    Grand Valley State
    Great Lakes
    Hollow Earth
    Homo Erectus
    Hunter Gatherers
    Hunter-gatherers
    Illinois
    India
    Indiana
    Indonesia
    Iowa
    Iraq
    Israel
    Jim Vieira
    Jobs
    Kensington Rune Stone
    Kentucky
    Kirk Project
    Late Archaic
    Lemuria
    Lithic Raw Materials
    Lithics
    Lizard Man
    Lomekwi
    Lost Continents
    Mack
    Mammoths
    Mastodons
    Maya
    Megafauna
    Megaliths
    Mesolithic
    Michigan
    Middle Archaic
    Middle Pleistocene
    Middle Woodland
    Midwest
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    Mississippian
    Missouri
    Modeling
    Morphometric
    Mound Builder Myth
    Mu
    Music
    Nazis
    Neandertals
    Near East
    Nephilim
    Nevada
    New Mexico
    Newspapers
    New York
    North Carolina
    Oahspe
    Oak Island
    Obstetrics
    Ohio
    Ohio Valley
    Oldowan
    Olmec
    Open Data
    Paleoindian
    Paleolithic
    Pilumgate
    Pleistocene
    Pliocene
    Pre Clovis
    Pre-Clovis
    Prehistoric Families
    Pseudo Science
    Pseudo-science
    Radiocarbon
    Reality Check
    Rome
    Russia
    SAA
    Sardinia
    SCIAA
    Science
    Scientific Racism
    Sculpture
    SEAC
    Search For The Lost Giants
    Sexual Dimorphism
    Sitchin
    Social Complexity
    Social Networks
    Solutrean Hypothesis
    South Africa
    South America
    South Carolina
    Southeast
    Stone Holes
    Subsistence
    Swordgate
    Teaching
    Technology
    Teeth
    Television
    Tennessee
    Texas
    Topper
    Travel
    Travel Diaries
    Vaccines
    Washington
    Whatzit
    White Supremacists
    Wisconsin
    Woo War Two
    World War I
    World War II
    Writing
    Younger Dryas

    RSS Feed

    Picture
Proudly powered by Weebly