New Bigfoot footage was shown to reporters yesterday in Dallas, Tex. Above, a Bigfoot statue in Washington. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Alleged Bigfoot footage was shown to reporters in Dallas, Tex., yesterday by a group who claims to have performed an extensive study on the creature. The Sasquatch Genome Project say they have been collecting specimens of Bigfoot DNA for five years, and yesterday they finally showed off their "never-before-seen, high definition video of Bigfoot subjects inhabiting the forests of North America."

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The Sasquatch Genome Project, led by Melba Ketchum, a veterinarian, showed short, grainy video clips to reporters, including night-vision footage that shows a creature so far from the camera that it could easily be a human in a Chewbacca suit. In footage allegedly taken in Kentucky in 2005, a female Sasquatch slumbers in the woods. It seems somewhat surprising, given the fact that the group says there are thousands of Sasquatch in the wild, that this is the best footage they could get. Perhaps they're holding back the better Bigfoot footage for the future documentary that the group says they are planning.

In the Sasquatch Genome Project's study [PDF], the group says they've collected hundreds of blood, hair and saliva samples from 34 different Bigfoot locations around North America and sent the samples to labs around the country for analysis. The group says they spent $500,000 on the study, a sum donated by Adrian Erickson, a Bigfoot enthusiast.

"They didn't know what they were testing," Ketchum told the Daily News, regarding the samples her team sent to labs. "I have one email from a tester saying 'what have you done, discovered a new species?'"

Ketchum told the Daily News that the samples they sent around to labs did turn out to be human. Parts of the DNA, however, belonged to a completely unknown species, Ketchum said.

"They're a type of people, they're a human-hybrid, we believe," Ketchum told ABC affiliate WFAA. "And all of the DNA evidence points to that."

At least one lab listed in the study, a lab run by New York University, said they did not actually receive any samples from Ketchum.

The journal in which the study was published, DeNovo, is of questionable legitimacy, to put it generously. The Sasquatch Genome Project owns the journal, which was created in order to publish the Bigfoot study. The media contact listed in a press release for the study, a Michigan woman whose name appears in various outlets as Robin Lynne or Robin Lynn Pfeifer, claims to live among Sasquatch and feed them blueberry bagels.

Todd R. Disotell, a professor at NYU's Department of Anthropology who has disproven yeti and chupacabra samples in the past, told ABC that the Sasquatch Genome Project study is "a joke."

"[Ketchum] is a laughing stock of people that are of a community that are already kind of wacko," Disotell said. "This was not reported in any scientific way whatsoever. It's complete junk science, and then she misinterprets it. She hasn't published in peer-reviewed papers on this stuff. I don't know how this got put together," he said.

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