|The Melba Ketchum Paper is being reviewed, what do other academics think?|
We pulled out some of Dr. Kokjohn's questions, but also provided the email from Dr. Kokjohn so you can see the questions in context.
- What happened to the original founder species?
- The Hybrids are abundant, yet the founder species is extinct?
- How could a hypothetical species so close to modern humans to interbreed and produce viable, fertile offspring not share homology to the same entities in their extended family?
- Where did the sequences not in GenBank originate?
Dr. Kokjohn's Letter:
Guy –Dr. Kokjohn added, "I am not impressed with the data I have seen, but from that I draw no conclusions regarding the existence or non-existence of Bigfoot."
Unfortunately, this pdf does not include supplementary data, so it is really hard to figure out how much of this I wish to deem reliable. The authors will have to grant reviewers the ability to view the sequences and run their own analyses at some point. Under the circumstances, I can’t say any of it is convincing evidence of a new species.
The authors proffer quite an interesting story; a male from an unknown species mates with a human female to ultimately establish a new hybrid species. But, based on the fact that they report finding 16 distinct human mitochondrial haplotypes in North America alone, such events must have occurred rather frequently and freely. Then I have to ask, what happened to the original founder species? NONE of them survive, but the hybrids are still extant? You would still think that out there somewhere would be some individuals harboring maternal mitochondrial DNA from the original species. That every one of them had only pure human mtDNA suggests a quite unique segregation followed and was maintained after the founding events, a minimum of 16 separate times. And all that human mtDNA remained unchanged no less. It is also hard to understand what they are asserting when telling the reader that sequences have no homology to extant apes, Neanderthal or other extinct species. Human sequences are amazingly close to Neanderthals, so nearly identical it was a challenge to tease them apart. How can there be no sequence similarity with the putative Sasquatch samples and/or what do they mean by that? How could a hypothetical species so close to modern humans to interbreed and produce viable, fertile offspring not share homology to the same entities in their extended family? Where did the sequences not in GenBank originate? None of this makes much sense to me and maybe they will see fit to explain it all carefully some day.
I just do not know, Guy. It is possible my colleague was able to get the ancillary data, so maybe she will have more to add.
So, the good news seems to be that samples are remarkably abundant, suggesting that independent corroboration should be possible soon. All I can add is that if it was me who held solid evidence of a new species and a remarkable pattern of origin, I would be breaking down the doors of any mainstream scientists I thought might be able to verify my data. I would want that Nobel prize far more than another appearance on Coast-to-Coast AM. So verification should be coming soon, right?
It should be noted we reached out to Dr. Melba Ketchum to see if she had any insight to any of these questions; we gave her ample time to respond and she did not have a comment at the time of this post.