The Best of Ellijay, Blue Ridge & Jasper Funpaper issue 7 | Page 41

When we started this paper one year
ago, our first big story was an interview with Steven Monk, Director of
Georgia Bigfoot Society. That story was
so popular that we are still getting
comments about it. So we thought
what better way to help celebrate the
start of The Best of EBRJ's second year,
then to do another big foot story. Here
you have a new update on what's new
with Sasquatch followed by the original
story!

When is a Bigfoot not a Bigfoot?
Story & Pictures by K. Steven Monk, Director of
Georgia Bigfoot Society Jasper, Georgia.

W

hen he's considered by science to
be something else. Meet Homo
Sapiens Cognatus. That is the scientific name for Sasquatch that has been
assigned to it by ZooBank, an organization
that is responsible for assigning Latin
names to newly recognized species.
I am often asked by people who are curious about the research I do on the
Sasquatch, what would I do if I were ever
to come face to face with a Sasquatch.
My response has always been, "Whatever
he wanted me to do." Knowing what I
know about the Sasquatch, that is not so
much a humorous jest as it is a statement

of respect for these incredible beings. They have survived for thousands of years, living their lives
apart from ours in an environment
that we hairless humans are ill
equipped to survive in. The wilderness is their home, not ours, and
whenever we venture into it we
should show them the same degree
of respect that we ourselves would
expect if a stranger were to come
into our home.
While the statement I made
above is not so much a description
of what the Sasquatch beings are as
it is merely a funny line, a recent report by geneticists researching the DNA
of the Sasquatch most certainly is. For the
past five years Dr. Melba Ketchum of DNA
Diagnostics in Texas and her team of experts, using over 100 samples of
Sasquatch tissue collected in the field by
numerous researchers from across the
country, have conducted a DNA study not
only on what the Sasquatch is, but where
he may have come from as well, at least
on an evolutionary scale. Using the samples collected in this study, Dr. Ketchum
and her team were able to trace three
complete genomes in the Sasquatch that
reveal that the specie originated about
15,000 years ago as a cross between a
human female and an unknown primate
male whose nuclear DNA contains unknown human elements. Essentially, what
this means in layman terms is that the
Sasquatch is a human hybrid cross, like
us, but different, and in ways that science
has yet to understand.
And just what are some of the ways in
which the Sasquatch may be different
from