>> NARRATOR: It's huge... (roar) ...it's hairy, and it's been hiding for centuries. (roar) >> KEN STORCH: I could see a creature of sorts standing, looking back at me. It was a dark shaped shadow. >> NARRATOR: But is the legend known as Bigfoot real? >> WILLIAM BARNES: I know they're real. Nobody can convince me differently. >> NARRATOR: Or is it a hoax? >> JEFF MELDRUM: I think the reported sightings are just the tip of the iceberg. >> NARRATOR: Could the facts be so provocative that even the government doesn't want you to know the truth? >> WILLIAM JEVNING: If there's any sort of a concerted cover-up at higher levels, we simply don't know at this point. >> NARRATOR: There are those who believe in the existence of a book. A book that contains the most highly guarded secrets of the United States of America. A book... whose very existence is known to only a select few. But if such a book exists, what would it contain? Secret locations? Secret programs? Secret experiments? Does there really exist <i>America's Book of Secrets?</i> >> NARRATOR: Flathead County, Montana. August 26, 2012. At 10:30 p.m., a teenage girl drives down U.S. Highway 93. Suddenly, she spots a mysterious ape-like figure emerging from the dark. It moves towards her, then steps right into the beams of her headlights. Unable to stop, the girl's car strikes the creature and knocks it to the ground. (shout) The vehicle behind her runs right over it. First responders quickly determine that the strange, mutilated corpse is a man named Randy Lee Tenley, dressed in the military issue camouflage-- or ghillie suit-- to look like Bigfoot. But why? >> RO SAHEBI: Randy Lee Tenley was set on creating convincing Bigfoot footage. He was determined to create a viral video and, when crossing the road, was tragically struck by a car. With the popularity of YouTube and viral videos, there has been a-a dramatic increase in hoaxing in the Bigfoot field. It's unfortunate that Randy Lee Tenley was killed. Some people are willing to go to extremes to create viral videos, in the quest to have that million hits drawn to your YouTube channel. That kind of traffic is worth thousands of dollars to the owner of the YouTube channel. (growling) >> NARRATOR: Could the real secret behind the Bigfoot legend be not that the beast truly exists, but that it's all an elaborate hoax perpetuated by a multimillion dollar industry? >> JEVNING: The Bigfoot business has actually grown exponentially over the years. Everybody's writing books. There's all kinds of radio shows. It's since become quite, um, a large business these days. The prospect of becoming rich and famous has always muddied the waters, uh, in terms of research, and-and it's especially pronounced today. >> SAHEBI: One of the biggest brands today in America is Bigfoot. We see it growing everywhere. There are entire communities built about the Bigfoot folklore. We have Bigfoot museums. We have Bigfoot roadside attractions. >> NARRATOR: Bigfoot is the subject of hundreds of television shows, both fiction and nonfiction. Bigfoot also serves as a popular TV pitchman, selling everything from monster trucks to sub sandwiches. >> SAHEBI: Corporate America has begun to embrace Bigfoot as a brand, and it's free to use. So it's not surprising that more and more people are putting Sasquatch in their product. Bigfoot is a big economy. >> MAN: The Abominable Snowman-- or as this creature is known in North America, Bigfoot. >> NARRATOR: The commercialism of the Bigfoot legend began in 1967... (screams) ...with the publication of the so-called Patterson-Gimlin film. Even though the creature seen in the 60-second clip is believed by some to be nothing more than a man wearing a costume, it commands tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees. In the years since, Bigfoot has also become a movie star. But why does the creature's popularity continue to grow? >> SAHEBI: There's nothing scarier to me than something that could be possibly real. <i>Jaws</i> made people scared to go into the water. Bigfoot makes people scared to go into their own backyard. >> EDUARDO SANCHEZ: My fascination with Bigfoot is based on the idea that there is something out there that we don't know and there is this semi-intelligent creature that has kind of kept out of, um, the public eye for so long. There's obviously something curious about what's been going on and all the credible eyewitness reports. >> NARRATOR: According to a recent poll, nearly 30% of all Americans believe that Bigfoot actually exists, a belief that is made stronger by the fact that there are over one million square miles of federally protected wilderness in the United States. Could this be what drives us to continue searching for the legendary beast? Can thousands of reported sightings, dating back more than a century, all be dismissed? Perhaps the real proof lies in eyewitness accounts. >> STORCH: I could see about 50 yards into the woods a creature of sorts standing, looking back at me. It was a dark shaped shadow. I could make the outline of a humanoid form. >> JEVNING: Less than 15 feet in front of me was this huge, manlike creature covered with hair, and I-I had a pretty good idea that this was about 800 pounds and about eight feet tall. I didn't know what to think. I froze. >> BARNES: Well, I thought it was a bear in the beginning until it got about 30 feet from the car. My heart was beating so hard that I could hear it in my ears. And actually, it was scary. Very strange. I mean, I know they're real. Nobody can convince me differently. >> NARRATOR: According to Bigfoot researchers, there are approximately 200 reported sightings of Bigfoot each year. But they believe an even greater number of encounters go unreported, as many are afraid to come forward for fear of ridicule. >> MELDRUM: I think that the reported sightings are just the tip of the iceberg. >> ANNA NEKARIS: I thought if people saw Bigfoot, they would tell people. But I have now had many e-mails claiming I was the only person they'd ever told because they feared being crazy. And that's a very large sample size of e-mails, so it's clear there's a lot of people in the world who don't tell. (sirens wailing) >> PAUL BARTHOLOMEW: Several police officers, uh, had to wait 20 years before they would even come forward with their sighting because they were afraid it would interfere with their work. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain by coming forward with their experience. >> DR. MICHAEL SCHERMER: I have spoken to many pro-Bigfoot people, and I absolutely believe that they believe. No question about it. I think they're just simply mistaken about what they believe and now we know enough about cognitive psychology to know how easy it is to self-deceive. We just need a body. Blurry photographs, grainy videos and stories about things that go bump in the night at 3:00 in the morning in your tent do not constitute evidence in science. >> NARRATOR: But proponents of Bigfoot argue that the evidence goes much further than blurry photographs and campfire stories. >> BARTHOLOMEW: This phenomena has a lot of tantalizing clues and evidence that would lead you to believe that it's a physical phenomena. We not only have eyewitness sightings but we also have physical things like footprints. We have hair samples that have been collected and haven't been classified. >> GARY: All right, I'm gonna set a shot. Let me know how you make out. >> NARRATOR: In recent years, Bigfoot hunters have been encouraged by new evidence and, using newly available GPS and night vision technology, they have stepped-up their search for the creature also known as Sasquatch. But is the animal they're looking for simply rare and reclusive? Or is it something that the U.S. government does not want them to find? (growl) >> NARRATOR: Upstate New York. November 3, 2012. In a remote location deep in the forests of the 6.1 million-acre Adirondack State Park, a team of six hunters prepares for the night's expedition. Their prey: the legendary creature many believe is the most elusive animal in America: Bigfoot. Led by investigator Steve Kulls, their mission is to gather evidence to prove that Bigfoot really exists. >> GARY: From the other previous missions that we've done, um, this seems to be the area that-- of most activity. All right, so we have a clear shot? All right, golden. Lock it down right there. Thank you. >> NARRATOR: The researchers quickly set up a sophisticated network of recording devices in an area they believe is inhabited by the creature who is also known as Sasquatch. >> STEVE KULLS: Time is 7:25 p.m. The date is November 3, 2012. We're on the, uh, Sasquatch Mission, Research Area 1, and, uh, we're good to go. >> NARRATOR: Unlike other Bigfoot hunters, this team believes the secret to catching the mysterious man-ape is to not chase it but lure it in. >> GARY: If we push after them, we're gonna scare them away. So if we can slowly just get them to come to us, then, you know, our work's done. >> KULLS: We're gonna do a DNA trap tonight. Primates have two ecstasy taste centers: first is salty, second one is sweet. We always like our candy, as primates. So if they eat the candy off the stick, the stick gets left behind-- we'll have a saliva sample on these sticks. So there you have the marriage of the technologies, DNA with photographic evidence, video evidence and audio evidence. >> NARRATOR: Steve Kulls and his crew have been conducting Sasquatch hunts for over five years, and though they've never captured irrefutable evidence of the creature, he's certain that they've had some close encounters. >> KULLS: Remember I was taking a shot and we kept hearing something moving and I was turning the camera? Well, the first shot you see the eye. I-It was... I think it was walking sideways 'cause you got one eye. >> MIKE: Yeah. >> KULLS: And it was back between a couple of trees. And then when I took the second picture, it was closer. So it was pretty freaky. >> NARRATOR: They attempt to bait Bigfoot into their "technology trap" by mimicking the sounds it is believed to make when communicating with others of its kind. >> KULLS: What we're gonna do now is make some noise, knock some trees and then wait, listen and see if we get anything walking around us, making some calls back, some tree knocks back, whatever. (knocking) That's a good idea. (indistinct chatter) We got 'em out there. As long as they're out there, they've got a chance at filming it. (distant tree knock) (distant tree knock) >> KULLS: Go. >> GARY (over walkie): We have something that's... it's-it's almost right in front of us. We can... It's going back and forth here. (distant tree knock) >> KULLS: That's what they do. (whoop, distant tree knock) >> KULLS: Gary, did you just make a tree knock? >> GARY: No, I heard that. Right before I just made a whoop, there was another knock. >> STACY (over walkie): We got it on the parabolic. >> KULLS: Are we recording the parabolic? >> STACY: Yep, yep. >> KULLS: Yeah. >> NARRATOR: Although the U.S. government does not officially acknowledge the existence of Bigfoot, new laws regarding its safety and survival have appeared on both the state and county level. For example, while it is legal to shoot a Bigfoot in Texas, it's not allowed in Skamania County, Washington, or Whitehall, New York. A curious contradiction? Or are these laws evidence of a more secret agenda? >> KULLS: There's a lot of talk about people shooting a Sasquatch-- is it legal? Is it illegal? As an investigator who's had to work with laws before, I would vent it as kind of a gray area. It depends a lot on states. It's not necessarily a federal law, 'cause in some cases a state law could supersede a federal law. So it's really hard to say what would be legal and what wouldn't be. There's been statements by the government in New York recently that said that Sasquatch would be protected. >> NEKARIS: If anyone did prove their existence, they would fall under the normal laws regulating protected species. They probably are extremely rare, and therefore even more so these laws should be instigated if one or more species of these cryptic hominoids were found. >> NARRATOR: On June 10, 1982, Paul Freeman, a U.S. Forestry Service employee, did what no other government employee has ever done: he went public with his sighting of a Sasquatch. (brush crunching) >> MELDRUM: Because his encounter occurred while on official business for the National Forest Service, they had to address the issue. On the one hand, they acknowledged that there had been other reports of such sightings, such encounters in that region and footprints found. They'd, however, brought a Border Patrol tracker in to evaluate the evidence, and he was very critical of the footprint evidence and essentially dismissed it as being a hoax. >> NARRATOR: Dr. Jeff Meldrum is a professor of anthropology at Idaho State University and is a leading expert on foot locomotion in apes and hominids. >> MELDRUM: Now, I've familiarized myself with his report, and on every point that he took exception, it was some point of deviation from the expected morphology of a human trackway, and deviating in exactly the way I would predict, given the distinctions of the Sasquatch foot. I don't doubt Mr. Hardin's skill as a man-tracker, but when it came to evaluating Sasquatch tracks, he did not have the wherewithal to evaluate them accurately. >> NARRATOR: When Dr. Meldrum visited the site, he was stunned by what he discovered in the strange 15-inch footprints. >> MELDRUM: It really literally set me back on my heels. As I knelt down and I could see the remarkable detail-- even the ridge pattern on the sole of the foot preserved in some places-- I could see the-the slippage and-and gripping of the toes. Very obvious toe animation. These were things that-- given my background, my specialized training in the evolution of human bipedalism-- literally jumped out. And as the realization set in, the hair literally stood up on the back of my neck. My gosh, this creature walked by here. >> NARRATOR: Dr. Meldrum determined that the tracks had not only been made by a living creature but that they appeared to be those of an enormous bipedal ape. >> MELDRUM: We quickly made some casts showing the interaction of the foot with the soil, showing very dramatic evidence of a mid-tarsal break or a mid-foot flexibility, which proved to be so significant in inferring a model of the distinctions of the anatomy of the Sasquatch foot. So it was a very impressive first exposure, and we were able to glean a lot of information from this extraordinary footprint find. >> NARRATOR: Could these strange footprints be the strongest evidence yet that Bigfoot really exists? >> NEKARIS: There's even a science now that you can name a species from its prints. There are plenty of fakes out there, but there are some that do seem to be real. And the ones that are real are very impressive. >> NARRATOR: Studying the foot structure further, Dr. Meldrum theorizes that without a mid-tarsal break, the creature would walk with a gliding motion, similar to that reported by eyewitnesses. >> MAN: I see this very tall, dark-haired creature swiftly, quickly walking from one tree to the next tree... >> MELDRUM: One of the things that many eyewitnesses note when viewing a Sasquatch walking is the remarkable smoothness of their gait. They lack that characteristic bobbing of the head that is the result of us literally vaulting over a relatively stiff extended leg. >> STORCH: It was a very fluid motion of the muscles. It was poetry in motion. >> BARNES: Fluid. I mean, when it walked up the side of the hill, I mean, it was just graceful. It was like nobody could do what it could do when it walked. And it didn't walk like an ape and it didn't walk like a man. It was like more of... in-between, I guess you could say. >> NARRATOR: Are the numerous eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot further evidence that the legendary beast really does exist? Or could the government be secretly covering up physical evidence left behind? >> NARRATOR: Steve Kulls, a.k.a. the Squatch Detective, and his team of investigators are several hours into their hunt for Bigfoot in upstate New York. They've heard some tree knocks and mysterious footsteps, and now believe Bigfoot may be circling their camp. >> KULLS: So they're moving around us. They're walking around. So the whole idea is to keep getting 'em closer and keep getting 'em to go to the technology. (walkie beeps) Go. Roger that. Start making a turn in. (vehicle passing) >> GARY: The car went down the road. >> KULLS: Roger that. They're spooked. >> MIKE: They can't see it. I don't know where it is. >> NARRATOR: Sensing the mysterious creature in their midst has been frightened off, the team gathers to analyze what they've observed. >> GARY: We basically had some activity in front of us. We had a, uh... a tree knock while you guys were over there. We saw what looked like to be some eye shine, but it was pretty far off. With his I.R. in his camera, we couldn't see that far. >> MIKE: Which is right outside of the capability of my light. >> KULLS: It'd be something to see a shadow or some eye shine off the I.R. moving around in there. Combine that with the pictures. >> MIKE: We saw something out there, yeah. >> GARY: Yeah, we don't know what it was. When the car started coming down the road, it seemed like it pushed it back toward us a little bit, but then... >> MIKE: It seemed to have moved all around us and then it was shh and then it just got quiet. >> KULLS: Well, tonight we started some tree knocking, did some vocalizations, and we'd gotten a few knocks in return. Now, whether it was a deer, we can't rule out. Maybe even a bear. We'll go through the audio. We'll go through the video. Other than that, that's what we got. >> NARRATOR: Reports and home videos of Sasquatch sightings come from all over America. And although these reports go back hundreds of years, the public didn't pay much attention to them until a series of events occurred in 1958 in Bluff Creek, California. >> JEVNING: That area was opened up to logging for the first time. A bulldozer operator by the name of Jerry Crew cast some 16-inch footprints that he found along his equipment one day, and this got into the Eureka, California, newspaper. >> NARRATOR: Bluff Creek locals had been calling the creatures "Big Apes" ever since the 1920s, but when Jerry Crew told<i> The</i> <i>Humboldt Times</i> that the footprints he found must have been made by an animal with a really "big foot," the term "Bigfoot" was coined. >> BARTHOLOMEW: The Bigfoot phenomena can be tracked back to ancient times from the Algonquin and the Iroquois legends of the giant men of the mountains. And these sightings go right on through into the 1800s, in which these creatures were called "Wild Men" or "Strange Bears." So we have a very rich history of the Bigfoot phenomena in the United States and throughout the world. >> NEKARIS: You even see paintings in Native American cave art of creatures that look like a Sasquatch. There are very nice recordings of these creatures in settlers' diaries moving out to the western United States. For me, they're so believable because those people hadn't seen television. They didn't have any conception of what this thing was, and they all are described in the same way. >> NARRATOR: The search for Sasquatch in America is primarily a private enterprise. No U.S. government agency has ever acknowledged looking for the mysterious hominid, but could there be agents inside the government hiding evidence of its existence? The former President of the Pacific Coast Sasquatch Investigation Team and the author of three books on Bigfoot believes the answer is yes. >> JEVNING: There's quite a range of stories, and-and it does appear that there's some, uh, some serious things going on at high levels. >> NARRATOR: According to Jevning, one of the most suspicious incidents occurred in 1995, when two of Jevning's fellow investigators came across some tracks on an access road near Mount St. Helens in Washington state. >> JEVNING: They knew instantly they weren't bear tracks. The size obviously was a giveaway. On the way out, they encountered a Forest Service supervisor, and they told him where to find the tracks. Then they went to pick me up. So from the time they found the tracks to the time I arrived on the scene with them spanned about four hours. We went into the location, tracks were gone. And I could tell the road had been misted. In other words, they wiped the tracks out without making it look like they'd been done, and I couldn't figure out why in the world they would want to destroy the tracks. >> NARRATOR: But if the existence of Bigfoot is being covered up by government officials, who would be doing it? >> JEVNING: In these incidents with the cover-ups, it was Forest Service personnel. At least they were wearing Forest Service uniforms. If there's any sort of a concerted cover-up at higher levels, we simply don't know at this point. >> MELDRUM: One of my closest colleagues, John Mionczynski, is a wildlife consultant. He was working for the Fish & Game in the state of Wyoming, and his job was threatened because of his involvement in an investigation of footprints and-and an encounter. And so for 28 years, he was silent on the subject. >> NARRATOR: Are there really forces within the U.S. government that are trying to keep the existence of Bigfoot a secret? If so, why? >> KULLS: I can understand why the government may not want these things to come forward as-as a legitimate, bona fide creature. And that's because the government wants to protect our logging industry, which-- if this creature is proven to exist-- definitely will have an environmental impact on the logging industry. >> JEVNING: You hear it often said "follow the money." >> NARRATOR: Could this really be the answer? That if Bigfoot was proven to exist, its classification as an endangered species would have devastating consequences for the American economy? Consider this: in 1990, when the spotted owl was put under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the Pacific Northwest timber industry nearly went bankrupt overnight. >> JEVNING: It essentially killed that industry. Those communities up and down the coast have never been the same since then. They never recovered from that financial loss. >> NARRATOR: But if the existence of Bigfoot is being covered up by the government, could there be an even more secret motivation? And what kind of creature might it actually be? A missing link? A hybrid human? Or could Bigfoot be from a different world altogether? >> NARRATOR: Edinburgh, Scotland. July 13, 2011. At the annual TEDGlobal conference, hundreds of attendees from over 30 countries gather to hear evolutionary geneticist Svante Paabo expand on his theory that modern man and Neanderthal interbred somewhere in the Middle East between 37,000 and 86,000 years ago. His findings indicate that all non-African humans have about 2.5% of Neanderthal DNA and concluded that there may be future discoveries of DNA from other hominids. Could one of these so-called "other hominids" be the creature we call Bigfoot? >> NEKARIS: Maybe modern humans are fascinated with Bigfoot because deep within our evolutionary lineage we always lived side by side with other primates and we're just missing something within our evolutionary roots and we want to-to see these creatures living side by side with us. I'm not really sure, but it really touches something deep within people, and it's hard to explain why it should be so deep. >> BARTHOLOMEW: Even if the footprint evidence, the hair samples, the credible eyewitness-- even if you got rid of all that, there's still an interest in why do we see monsters. This is a global phenomena. It seems to be part of our psyche. There is sort of an intoxication with this phenomena and the-the monster reports. >> NARRATOR: For others like Steve Kulls, the search for Bigfoot is a quest for the truth. Kulls used to be a skeptic but now dedicates his skill as a private investigator to try and prove to the world that Sasquatch exists. >> KULLS: I really went into this believing that this was gonna be a complete flub. And then when I started interviewing the witnesses, I could see physical body reactions happening that, as a trained interviewer, I knew meant they were telling the truth. They had seen something. I mean, when people's jugular veins distend, they get goose bumps, they get short of breath, you can see they actually encountered something they believe is real. >> NARRATOR: In 2012, a consortium of Bigfoot researchers, engineers and scientists announced the Falcon Project, a revolutionary new approach to finding Bigfoot. The Falcon Project is a high-tech aerial reconnaissance balloon that will take the search for Sasquatch 8,000 feet up into the sky. >> BARNES: The higher we're up, the better we can see straight down in between the trees. That's the whole purpose, is looking down in between the trees, trying to find these creatures in the heavy forest. It can hover, it can spin, it can do 45 miles an hour, it can stop on a dime. We don't even know how close we can get to these creatures. >> NARRATOR: The Falcon Project has commissioned an HD camera with secret night vision technology to capture evidence from afar. The airship will also be using CO2 detectors invented by the military to analyze the forest air for signs of life. But could the Falcon Project finally discover the truth about Bigfoot? >> MELDRUM: The Falcon Project really poses a real prospect at success. I mean, we've investigated so many other different ways of trying to get after this question, this challenge, and it literally is like searching for the proverbial moving needle in a haystack. >> BARNES: Today's technology is capable of doing this. We'll keep going, and we won't stop. >> NARRATOR: While some continue to scour the Earth for Bigfoot, others wonder if we should be looking for it not in the forests but in an altogether different place. >> LINDA MOULTON HOWE: In the, uh, early 1990s, I had one solid case in Snohomish, Washington, where an eyewitness sees a silver disc cause trees to move as if there were wind on a clear, absolutely sky-blue day. And a beam comes down and in the beam is a huge eight-foot, reddish-brown, hairy primate standing in front of him. And this creature disappeared in a flash of light. The fact that they are seen to come and appear, that might explain why you could have them in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, all over. Maybe Sasquatch is a non-human genetic construct to do work on this planet not comprehensible to humans. >> NARRATOR: While it's uncertain if a living, breathing Bigfoot will ever be found, it is safe to say the one place it really does exist is in our popular culture. Bigfoot is an industry generating millions of dollars in revenue each year. And perhaps for that reason alone, the search and every scrap of evidence gathered must be taken very seriously. >> SAHEBI: This is in our own backyards right here in America. It's our personal boogeyman, and a lot of people have seen it. >> NARRATOR: Will the truth about Bigfoot forever be hidden? Is there too much at stake to reveal it to be true? Or is the secret part of an even bigger conspiracy? One that, if exposed, threatens to challenge everything we believe about mankind's origins? Perhaps all will be revealed not when we find Bigfoot but when it finds us. (roar) >> NARRATOR: Montauk, Long Island, New York. July 12, 2008. Summer beachgoers are horrified to see a grotesque and unrecognizable carcass that has washed ashore. >> RUEHL: A photograph was taken. Unfortunately someone grabbed the carcass, and then it ultimately vanished. So the only evidence we have of-of this creature is the photo. It certainly looks like it's possibly a hybrid entity. This could be created by genetic technology. There's the Plum Island Animal Medical Center nearby. Perhaps this was an entity that had been created there and then escaped. >> NARRATOR: The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is widely believed to be a place where the U.S. government conducts secret experiments on animals. Access to the island is highly restricted, and armed guards monitor the facility 24 hours a day. But could there really be a secret connection between the strange creature found on the beach at Montauk and Bigfoot? >> RUEHL: We are now at that stage where we can carry out the type of genetic technology that could create such a hybrid entity. Sponsored by private industry, perhaps by government agencies or the military. They can have both a positive and negative result. They could result in finding ways to make humans healthier. On the other hand, they might be designed to create an entity-- part human, part wolf-- that would be a super soldier. (roar) It's reported that Joseph Stalin authorized experimentation to create a hybrid human-ape. >> NARRATOR: Could Bigfoot actually be an animal that was created in a government lab? Or is it something even more mysterious: a strange, still unproven creature known as a cryptid? >> NEKARIS: A cryptid species is defined as something that's very well-known in local beliefs, something where people can describe the-the locomotion, the movement patterns, how the animal looks, but it just may not be seen or it may not be captured on film. >> KULLS: There has been so many animals and creatures that were just rumored to exist. The giant octopus, the giant squid, the panda, the gorilla-- all these creatures existed as cryptids and eventually science would find them. >> NARRATOR: Could Bigfoot be America's biggest and most secretive cryptid? >> JEVNING: If there was an <i>America's Book of Secrets</i> regarding Bigfoot, it would say monsters are real and they inhabit our forests. >> NARRATOR: But if Bigfoot is proven to be real, what kind of creature is it? An animal? Or perhaps a human ancestor? >> MELDRUM: There are actually quite a number of interpretations of what Bigfoot may actually be. Personally, from my perspective as a physical anthropologist, I perceive this as an undiscovered species of-of very large ape, possibly a prehuman ancestor. >> NEKARIS: People really are trying to work out what it is. They think either it's a large ape, or they think it's some sort of a human creature. Sometimes people believe it's a primate mated with a human, so a hybrid between primates and humans. (roar) >> NARRATOR: Denisova, Siberia, 2010. Researchers unearth a finger bone from deep inside a cave. The DNA is analyzed and discovered to be a female from a member of the human evolutionary family previously unknown to modern man. They name the new primate<i> Homo</i> <i>denisova</i> and estimate that it roamed the Earth during the Stone Age, some 20,000 years ago. >> NEKARIS: This was really revolutionary because it told us that we can have populations of humans occurring in the same area but that were different species. And so just from a finger bone, we can see that Neanderthals and another species were living side by side with modern humans. >> MELDRUM: What was also very fascinating is that the only other associated skeletal element was a-a molar tooth, which in its dimensions was considerably larger than any modern human or even Neanderthal tooth, which is exactly what we have proposed for the Sasquatch, based on eyewitness descriptions of the facial proportions. The discovery of<i> denisova</i> also was startling because it was so unexpected, and it came literally out of the blue. >> NEKARIS: Finding the Denisovan woman just shows us that just a tiny bone can yield a whole new species. And so it does give some optimism to finding Bigfoot, because all it might take is one tiny specimen and that can yield a whole new species. >> MELDRUM: I get a sense that the scientific community is somewhat warming up to the very real possibility that there are relic hominoids about. <i>Homo floresiensis--</i> or "the Hobbit"-- from Indonesia, when that was discovered, it was quite interesting that the discoverers acknowledged that there were native traditions of such small, hairy people living up in the forest and that in fact some European colonists had even reported encounters in recorded history. >> NEKARIS: Unlike Bigfoot being very big, the<i> Homo floresiensis</i> is very small. And so it does just go to show that it just takes finding one creature in one space in time, one serendipitous moment. And what the people who doubt finding Bigfoot say, "We just need one skull. We just need one finger bone. We just need one specimen, and then I will believe." And that could happen. >> NARRATOR: Could finding just one bone turn America into a nation of Bigfoot believers? Or is it possible that once we finally find Bigfoot, mankind will find proof of something even greater, the facts behind our own secret origins? <font color="#FFFF00">Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00">A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font>
