As short a time ago as, say, 15 years a hardcopy of the photo in question would have been available to scrutiny by photographic experts to tell if it was doctored or not. Even if the news item of a sighting ran in the back page of a newspaper it was a more credible source than internet images from who knows what origin.
Now every blurb about anything floats around gaining myth and innuendo with no basis most of the time. Even though many of us like-minded folks like to discuss these things remember that there are people that love to make fun, verbally degrade and perpetrate hoaxes just because they can. I don't understand what they get out of coming to sites like this and attacking everything with skeptism and negativeness.
The events that hold credability are ones where you find a couple guys who decide where they're going to go on a last minute whim, park, walk 5 miles off the dirt road which is already 30 miles from the nearest habitation, make a sighting or find 500 clear tracks with dermal ridges and the obvious change in toe placement between steps.
That's a credible event because no one, not even they knew where they were going to end up. How is this important? No one could hoax them by knowing where they were going to be later. The likelyhood of anyone faking tracks in the middle of nowhere just hoping someone would find them requires a weak mind. The easy to fake wooden shoe tracks are very obvious to ascertain as phoney since they do not move. Unlike the living foot which animates its movement relative to the terrain for foot and toe placement the wooden tracks are the same without normal variation.
It is easy to measure the compression of the soil for weight applied. Certainly if a track was made from compression of weight on the order of 800 lbs. we know it's not old Goober at 165 lbs hoaxing. Dermal ridges are the identifying features of the skin on the toes as are fingerprints on fingers. This is about impossible to fake along with articulated toes.
The placement of the ankle realtive to the foot is apparent in tracks is seen by experts in physiology. An ankle and foot mechanism needed to bear the weight apparent in these animals shows in the heel and ball of the foot in impressions. It' sfundamentally different than humans' and Cooter and Gomer don't have a clue how to fake that.
The answer is than nobody can make fakes good enough to fool experts. And the likelyhood that everyone for hundreds of years made up the same fantasy is stretching what we can believe. To believe such is to imagine that a secret society of hoax perpetrators have played tricks on humanity all over the worlds for generations.
Ah what a perverted bunch they must be secretly laughing that the largest conspiracy known to humankind has perpetuated for centuries undetected for just the opportunity to fake someone out. Yeah right!
[edit on 10/4/06 by Cruizer]
[edit on 10/4/06 by Cruizer]
[edit on 10/4/06 by Cruizer]
