Grover Krantz

Template:Short description Template:Infobox scientist Grover Sanders Krantz (November 5, 1931 – February 14, 2002) was an American anthropologist and cryptozoologist; he was one of the few scientists who have not only researched Bigfoot, but also expressed a belief in the animal's existence. Throughout his professional career, Krantz authored more than 60 academic articles and 10 books on human evolution,<ref name="Tyler">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Telegraph">Template:Cite news</ref> and conducted field research in Europe, China, and Java.<ref name="Carlson">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Coleman">Template:Cite news</ref>

Outside of Krantz's formal studies in evolutionary anthropology and primatology, his cryptozoological research on Bigfoot drew heavy criticism from his colleagues due to being considered fringe science, costing him research grants and promotions, and delaying his tenure at the university.<ref name="Tyler"/><ref name="Paulson"/> Further, his articles on the subject were rejected by peer-reviewed scholarly journals.<ref name="Paulson">Template:Cite news</ref>

Krantz was tenacious in his work, however, and was often drawn to other controversial subjects, such as the Kennewick Man remains, arguing for their preservation and study.<ref name="Rahner"/> He has been described as having been the "only scientist" and "lone professional" to seriously consider Bigfoot in his time, in a field largely dominated by amateur naturalists.<ref name="Regal2008">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Barcott">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Biography

Early life

On Template:Start date and age, Krantz was born in Salt Lake City to Carl Victor Emmanuel Krantz and Esther Maria (née Sanders) Krantz.<ref name="Chou&Kerrins2012">Template:Citation</ref> His parents were devout Mormons, and while Krantz tried to follow the basic Christian philosophy of behavior and morality, he was not active in the religion.<ref name="Regal2008"/><ref name="Regal2009">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Krantz was raised in Rockford, Illinois until the age of 10, in 1942, when his family relocated back to Utah.<ref name="Coleman"/>

Education

Beginning in 1949, Krantz attended the University of Utah for a year before joining the Air National Guard, where he served as a desert survival instructor at Clovis, New Mexico from 1951 to 1952.<ref name="Chou&Kerrins2012"/>

In 1952, Krantz transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed a Bachelor of Science degree in 1955 and a Master's degree in 1958.<ref name="Regal2009"/>

In 1971, Krantz obtained his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Minnesota, with the submission of his doctoral dissertation, entitled The Origins of Man.<ref name="Regal2009"/>

Career

In the early 1960s, Krantz worked as a technician at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley, California before acquiring a full-time teaching position at Washington State University, where he taught from 1968 until his retirement in 1998.<ref name="Carlson"/><ref name="Coleman"/><ref name="Rahner"/> He was a popular professor despite giving notoriously difficult exams, and often ate lunch with students and talked about anthropology, unified field theory in physics, military history, and current events.<ref name="Tyler"/><ref name="Carlson"/>

After his death, a scholarship named after Krantz was established at the University to promote "interest in the fields of physical/biological anthropology, linguistic archaeology, and/or human demography".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In the 1970s, Krantz studied the fossil remains of Ramapithecus, an extinct genus of primates then thought by many anthropologists to have been ancestral to humans, although Krantz helped prove this notion false.<ref name="Paulson"/>

Krantz's research on Homo erectus was extensive, including studies of phonemic speech and theoretical hunting patterns, and argued that this led to many of the anatomical differences between H. erectus and modern humans.<ref name="p471"/>

In 1968, Krantz named the hunting that Ashley Montagu had earlier described involving the human pursuit hunting of animals persistence hunting.<ref name="p471">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Krantz also wrote an influential paper on the emergence of humans in prehistoric Europe and the development of Indo-European languages, and was the first researcher to explain the function of the mastoid process.<ref name="Tyler" />

Krantz's professional work was diverse, including research on the development of Paleolithic stone tools, Neanderthal taxonomy and culture, the Quaternary extinction event, sea level changes.<ref name="Coleman" />

In 1982, Krantz published a notable paper on the evidence of sex in the human fossil record.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1996, Krantz was drawn into the Kennewick Man controversy, arguing both in academia and in court that direct lineage to extant human populations could not be demonstrated.<ref name="Rahner">Template:Cite news</ref> In an interview appearing in The New Yorker, Krantz stated his view that "this skeleton cannot be racially or culturally associated with any existing American Indian group" and: "The Native Repatriation ActTemplate:Sic has no more applicability to this skeleton than it would if an early Chinese expedition had left one of its members there."<ref name="Preston">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

In 2001, Krantz attempted to submit the last paper he wrote before his death, entitled "Neanderthal Continuity in View of Some Overlooked Data", but it was rejected by the peer-reviewed journal Current Anthropology, with then-editor Benjamin Orlove stating that it did not make enough reference to the most current research.<ref name="Regal2009"/>

Bigfoot research

Krantz's specialty as an anthropologist included all aspects of human evolution, but he was best known outside of academia as the first serious researcher to devote his professional energies to the scientific study of Bigfoot, beginning in 1963.<ref name="Regal2009"/> Because his cryptozoology research was ignored by mainstream scientists, despite his academic credentials, in a bid to find an audience Krantz published numerous books aimed at casual readers and also frequently appeared in television documentaries, including Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, In Search of..., and Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.<ref name="Regal2009"/>

Krantz's studies of Bigfoot, which he called "Sasquatch" (an Anglicization of the Halkomelem word sásq’ets (Template:IPA, meaning "wild man"),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> led him to believe that this was an actual creature. He theorized that sightings were due to small pockets of surviving gigantopithecines, with the progenitor population having migrated across the Bering land bridge, which was later used by humans to enter North America. Gigantopithecus lived alongside humans but is thought to have gone extinct 100,000 years ago in eastern Asia, while the Bering land bridge existed between 135,000 to 70,000 years BP.<ref name="Christmas">Template:Cite news</ref>

In January 1985, Krantz tried to formally name Bigfoot by presenting a paper at the meeting of the International Society of Cryptozoology held in Sussex, England, assigning it the binomen Gigantopithecus blacki, although this was not permitted by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature because G. blacki was an existing taxon and because the creature was lacking a holotype.<ref name="Regal2009"/><ref name="Meldrum2007">Template:Cite journal</ref> Krantz argued that his plaster casts were suitable holotypes, later suggesting G. canadensis as a name, with the caveat that were Sasquatch found to be a member of the Homininae clade, the genus name could be Gigantanthropus in place of Gigantopithecus.<ref name="Regal2008"/><ref name="Meldrum2007"/> Krantz then tried to have his paper, entitled "A Species Named from Footprints", published in an academic journal, but it was rejected by the reviewers.<ref name="Regal2009"/>

After seeing footage stills of the Patterson–Gimlin film that appeared on the February 1968 cover of Argosy, Krantz was skeptical, believing the film to be an elaborate hoax: "It looked to me like someone wearing a gorilla suit."<ref name="Regal2008"/> and "I gave Sasquatch only a 10 percent chance of being real."<ref name="Barcott"/> The following year, however, after years of skepticism, Krantz finally became convinced of Bigfoot's existence after analyzing the "Cripplefoot" plaster casts gathered at Bossburg, Washington in December 1969. Krantz later studied the Patterson–Gimlin film in full, and after taking notice of the creature's peculiar gait and purported anatomical features, such as flexing leg muscles, he changed his mind and became an advocate of its authenticity.<ref name="Regal2008"/> While in Bossburg, he also met the journalist John Willison Green, and the two remained friends until Krantz's death.Template:Citation needed

The Cripplefoot tracks, left in snow, purportedly showed microscopic dermal ridges (fingerprints) and injuries tentatively identified as clubfoot by primatologist John Napier.<ref name="Regal2008"/> Krantz asked Dutch professor A.G. de Wilde of the University of Groningen to examine the prints, who concluded that they were "not from some dead object with ridges in it, but come from a living object able to spread its toes".<ref name="Regal2009"/> Krantz also attempted to have both the FBI and Scotland Yard study the dermal ridge patterns, and was told by renowned fingerprint expert John Berry, an editor of the journal Fingerprint Whorld, that Scotland Yard had concluded the prints were "probably real".<ref name="Regal2009"/> To his disappointment, a subsequent 1983 article in the journal Cryptozoology, entitled "Anatomy and Dermatoglyphics of Three Sasquatch Footprints",<ref name="Krantz1983">Template:Cite journal</ref> was largely ignored.<ref name="Regal2009"/>

After constructing biomechanical models of the Cripplefoot casts by calculating their distance, leverage, weight dynamics, and distribution, and comparing the data to the track's heel, ankle, and toe base, Krantz concluded that the footprints had been left by an animal about Template:Height tall and weighing roughly Template:Convert.<ref name="Regal2009"/> The morphological detail in the cast, particularly impressions of the thenar eminence muscle, also helped convince Krantz, who argued that a hoax "would require someone quite familiar with the anatomy of the human hand to make the connection between a non-opposable thumb and an absence of the thenar eminence".<ref name="Regal2008"/><ref name="Barcott"/><ref name="Regal2009"/> This culminated in Krantz's first publication on the subject of Bigfoot,<ref name="Regal2009"/> with his article "Sasquatch Handprints" appearing in the journal North American Research Notes in 1971.<ref name="Krantz1971">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Shortly before his death, Krantz also examined the Skookum cast. He did not publicly endorse its authenticity, saying in an interview with Outside magazine: "I don't know what it is. I'm baffled. Elk. Sasquatch. That's the choice."<ref name="Barcott"/>

Krantz, Peter Byrne, René Dahinden, and John Green have been dubbed the "Four Horsemen of Sasquatchery". As of 2023, all four individuals have passed away.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Personal life

File:Grover Krantz & Clyde skeletons.jpg

Skeletons of Grover Krantz and his dog, Clyde, at the Smithsonian Museum. They are wired into the same position as the other photo, at Krantz's request.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Grover Krantz had one brother, Victor Krantz, who worked as a photographer at the Smithsonian Institution.<ref name="Carlson"/>

Krantz was married four times and divorced three times. His first wife was Patricia Howland, whom he married in 1953; he was later married to Joan Brandson in 1959. In 1964, he married his third wife, Evelyn Einstein, who was an adopted daughter of Hans Albert Einstein, a son of Albert Einstein.<ref name="Chou&Kerrins2012"/> He married his fourth wife, Diane Horton, on November 5, 1982.<ref name="Tyler"/>

Krantz had a stepson, Dural Horton.<ref name="Tyler"/>

Krantz was a road enthusiast and frequently took road trips, traveling to all 48 continental states.<ref name="Tyler"/>

In 1984, Krantz received high scores on the Miller Analogies Test and was subsequently accepted into the high IQ society Intertel, which accepts anyone scoring in the top 1% on an IQ test.<ref name="Chou&Kerrins2012"/> He was also a member of Mensa, which sets the bar at the top 2%.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On March 3, 1987, Krantz debated Duane Gish on creationism and evolution at Washington State University; the well-publicized three-hour debate was attended by more than 1000 people.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Death and skeleton

On Valentine's Day, Template:Start date and age, Krantz died in his Port Angeles, Washington home from pancreatic cancer after an eight-month battle with the disease.<ref name="Telegraph"/><ref name="Carlson"/><ref name="Coleman"/><ref name="Rahner"/> At his request, no funeral was held.<ref name="Carlson"/><ref name="Coleman"/> Instead, his body was shipped to the body farm at the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, where scientists study human decay rates to aid in forensic investigations.<ref name="Carlson"/>

In 2003, Krantz's skeleton arrived at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and was laid to rest in a green cabinet, alongside the bones of his four favorite Irish Wolfhounds – Clyde, Icky, Leica,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Yahoo – as was his last request.<ref>See "Epilogue" by Dave Hunt of the Smithsonian in Only A Dog.</ref><ref name="Carlson"/>

In 2009, Krantz's skeleton was painstakingly articulated and, along with the skeleton of one of his dogs, included on display in the Smithsonian's "Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake" exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History. His bones have also been used to teach forensics and advanced osteology to George Washington University students.<ref name="Carlson"/>

After his death, an editor at NPR named Laura Krantz saw the obituary in the Washington Post and realized that Grover was a relative of hers; he was her grandfather's cousin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She spent a year documenting his life's work on her podcast, Wild Thing, and later wrote a children's book, The Search for Sasquatch.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• Evelyn Einstein
• Laura Krantz

Bibliography

Non-Sasquatch works include:

• Climatic Races and Descent Groups (North Quincy, MA: Christopher Publishing House, 1980. Template:ISBN)
• The Process of Human Evolution (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1981. Template:ISBN)
• Geographical Development of European Languages (New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 1988. Template:ISBN)
• Only A Dog (Hong Kong: William Meacham, 2008. Template:ISBN)
• Numerous scholarly papers, published in Current Anthropology, American Anthropologist, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, American Journal of Archaeology, American Antiquity, and other journals

Among his works on Sasquatch are:

• The Scientist Looks at the Sasquatch (Moscow: University Press of Idaho, 1977, with anthropologist Roderick Sprague (eds.). Template:ISBN)
• The Scientist Looks at the Sasquatch II (Moscow: University Press of Idaho, 1979, with Roderick Sprague (eds.). Template:ISBN)
• The Sasquatch and Other Unknown Hominoids (Calgary: Western Publishing, 1984, with archaeologist Vladimir Markotić (eds.). Template:ISBN)
• Big Footprints: A Scientific Inquiry Into the Reality of Sasquatch (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1992. Template:ISBN)
• Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence (Surrey, BC: Hancock House, 1999. Template:ISBN)
• Numerous scholarly papers, published in Northwest Anthropological Research Notes, Cryptozoology, and other journals