DALE DRINNON: ABSMs redux

Dale started at IUPUI hoping for a degree in Biology before changing to Anthropology and as a result, has a very diverse background in Geology, Zoology, Paleontology, Anatomy, Archaeology, Psychology, Sociology, Literature, Latin, Popular Culture, Film criticism, Mythology and Folklore, and various individual human cultures especially mentioning those of the Pacific and the Americas.

He has a working knowledge of every human fossil find up until his graduation and every important Cryptozoological sighting up to that point. He has been an amateur along on archaeological excavations in Indiana as well as doing some local tracking of Bigfoot there. Now he is on the CFZ bloggo....

My personal opinion is that the vast majority of what Ivan Sanderson called ABSMs are Neanderthals, excepting the Sasquatch on a tentative assumption that those are different (and specifically deferring to Grover Krantz on that subject - as in fact Heuvelmans did also. Using this definition of hairy hominid reports follows Porshnev and Heuvelmans's usage and includes the hominid orang-pendeks or Batuts)

The ape types are not in the same category as far as I am concerned. Divergent big toe = NOT an "ABSM' in the generic sense. Which voids the term itself in that context, so I do not use the ter' any more.

The thing is that Neanderthals are possibly Homo sapiens, the same species as the rest of us, and that is a minority opinion but still held by many professional anthropologists.

So bottom line is, same species as us = NOT an unknown species = NOT an unknown ANIMAL.

And really there is no BIOLOGICAL difference between a man dressed in a fur coat and a human provided with one naturally. Same species, possibly the minor difference in the hirsuitism genes, which can be paralleled in different breeds of dogs, cats and laboratory rats.