NEW BOOK The Missing Bones Problem "Chapter 1"

An Introduction to the Missing Remains Debate:

Among the many questions posed in debates about cryptozoology, none has carried more weight, or been repeated more often than this one: If Bigfoot is real, why haven’t we found any bones? At first glance, it seems an irrefutable challenge. After all, every living thing eventually dies. And death, we are told, leaves a record: bones, tissue, DNA. The absence of such remains appears to be a self-evident contradiction to the idea of a large, unclassified North American primate. In skeptical circles, the phrase “no bones, no Bigfoot” has become more than a critique. It has become a rhetorical finish line.

But science, when operating correctly, is not driven by rhetorical convenience. It is driven by physical processes, repeatable patterns, and the capacity to test assumptions. And when we begin to interrogate this particular assumption, that physical remains ought to have been discovered by now, we find that it rests on a series of unstated premises, many of which do not hold up under scrutiny.

To understand this issue clearly, we must start by unpacking what this objection actually implies. When someone says that Bigfoot cannot exist because no body has been found, they are asserting the following chain of logic:

1. That all animal species, including rare ones, produce remains at a rate and in a manner detectable to science.

2. That those remains are likely to be found if the species exists in North America.

3. That the absence of remains in the public record constitutes a meaningful negative result, effectively disproving existence.

   
   

Each of these points appears reasonable, but only in the abstract. In practice, the picture is very different.

First, animal remains are not uniformly discoverable. The odds of discovering the remains of any specific animal, especially in remote wilderness, are far lower than most people assume. Even in well-studied ecosystems with large known animal populations, bodies are rarely encountered after natural death. As we will see throughout this book, many species such as bears, mountain lions, and moose, leave behind startlingly few recoverable remains, despite being tracked, studied, and photographed regularly.

Second, the ability to detect and identify those remains is influenced by numerous variables, including environmental conditions, biological decay rates, scavenger activity, and terrain accessibility. A dead organism is not simply deposited into the fossil record or into a field researcher’s hands (Haglund & Sorg, 2002). Its post-mortem fate is subject to ecological forces that actively destroy, obscure, scatter, or recycle organic material before it can be discovered. In short: death is not the beginning of discovery. It is often the beginning of disappearance.

Third, the absence of public documentation does not necessarily reflect the absence of remains. It may reflect failures in detection, collection, verification, or publication. In some cases, remains may have been discovered but not recognized for what they were. In others, partial findings may have been dismissed, suppressed, or misattributed due to lack of context, specimen quality, or institutional interest. History is filled with examples of delayed recognition, species described long after their remains were first unearthed or reported.

The point here is not to claim that Bigfoot exists. The point is to establish that the argument “we would have found it by now” relies on an overly simplistic view of nature, detection, and decay. It assumes that finding remains is the default outcome, rather than the statistical exception. It frames silence as evidence, rather than as a potentially misleading artifact of scale, biology, and process.

This problem, the expectation of discovery where the odds are overwhelmingly against it, is what we will refer to throughout this book as the Bone Paradox. It is not unique to Bigfoot. It affects how we interpret absence across a wide range of scientific disciplines. But in this case, it has had a particularly powerful distorting effect. It has led many to dismiss an entire category of inquiry not on the basis of evidence, but on the presumption of absence.

In truth, the absence of bones is not a paradox. It is a natural outcome of taphonomic processes, search biases, and the harsh realities of biological decomposition in wild environments. It only becomes a paradox when we expect those remains to persist, to surface, and to be recognized without delay. When we expect nature to archive its history for us.

This book will argue that such expectations are not only flawed, they are scientifically unsupportable. Through case studies, field data, forensic methodology, and comparative species analysis, we will demonstrate that the failure to find remains is not a reason to dismiss the phenomenon. It is a reason to rethink the conditions under which evidence survives, and to develop a more realistic understanding of what discovery actually looks like in the wild.

Why Bone Preservation Fails in Nature

If the central objection to Bigfoot’s existence hinges on the assumption that remains would have been found, then we must explore what actually happens to biological material after death. Because for any species, known or unknown, the journey from corpse to scientific specimen is neither straightforward nor guaranteed. It depends on an intricate web of biological, environmental, and geological factors that overwhelmingly favor disappearance over preservation.

At the most fundamental level, organic remains are chemically unstable in the wild. Bone, despite its hardness, is a living composite material made of collagen and mineral salts. Once exposed to the elements, it begins to degrade. Collagen breaks down under the action of bacteria, fungi, and environmental acids, while the mineral components dissolve in waterlogged or acidic soils. If not protected from these influences, by burial, shelter, or rapid desiccation, bones decay, splinter, dissolve, and vanish.

In conifer-dominated temperate forests, like those found throughout the Pacific Northwest and Appalachia, the forest floor is blanketed in acidic leaf litter and topsoil. These acidic conditions accelerate the breakdown of bone material. Studies in forensic anthropology have shown that even large mammalian bones can disintegrate within a decade in such environments, particularly when moisture and biological activity are high (Tibbett & Carter, 2008). Surface remains do not simply lie undisturbed, waiting to be found. They are attacked from every angle by rain, microbes, roots, and even chemical processes in the soil itself.

Add to this the role of scavengers, and the situation becomes even more hostile to long-term preservation. A large carcass is not simply left to rot undisturbed. In most ecosystems, it will be visited within hours by opportunistic feeders. Coyotes, foxes, bears, vultures, insects, and rodents all play a part. Muscle and fat are consumed rapidly. Skin may be pulled away or chewed through. Bones are moved, cracked, gnawed, or dragged away from the site of death. Rodents routinely chew bone for calcium. Teeth marks and fracture patterns are common on any bone left above ground for more than a few weeks (Klippel & Synstelien, 2007). The result is that by the time a body reaches full skeletonization, it may already be widely scattered or partially consumed.

Topography compounds the issue. On sloped terrain, bones may roll, shift, or be carried downslope by rain, meltwater, or snowpack. In creek beds or river systems, they may be buried in sediment or carried miles from their point of origin. Soil creep and root expansion can displace or submerge shallow remains. In snow-dominant regions, melting patterns and seasonal runoff accelerate decomposition and relocation. It is not uncommon for remains to end up wedged in roots, buried in leaf litter, or camouflaged beneath fallen logs, indistinguishable from the forest floor unless directly disturbed.

Even in open landscapes like alpine meadows or deserts, visibility does not guarantee detection. UV exposure can bleach and fragment bones until they become brittle and break apart. Wind-blown soil and sediment can bury lightweight or small elements, while larger bones may fracture or sink into soft ground. Small animals and insects can carry away fragments. What remains after a season or two may bear little resemblance to the anatomical structure that existed at death.

But perhaps most crucially, the transition from remains to fossil, the process of long-term preservation in the geological record, is extraordinarily rare (Behrensmeyer & Kidwell, 1985). Fossilization requires specific environmental conditions: rapid burial, mineral-rich groundwater, low oxygen, and sedimentary stability. In North America, many of the regions associated with Bigfoot sightings such as steep ravines, upland conifer forests, wetlands, and remote mountainous terrain, do not support the kinds of depositional environments that favor fossil preservation. These are erosional, not depositional, landscapes. Bodies exposed here do not become fossils. They disappear.

Even well-documented modern species show remarkably low recovery rates for natural deaths. For instance, North American black bears, despite their large size and wide distribution, are almost never found dead in the wild unless killed by hunters or vehicles. Biologists and forest managers frequently note that bear carcasses are extraordinarily rare finds. Similar patterns apply to cougars, wolves, and moose which are all animals that live and die in remote, vegetated terrain. Despite extensive study, they leave behind few recoverable remains in unmanaged settings. Their deaths occur away from roads and trails, and their remains are rapidly absorbed back into the ecosystem.

If these known animals, with substantial populations and consistent monitoring, fail to leave behind discoverable remains, then it becomes unreasonable to expect that a hypothetical animal such as a rare, intelligent, and perhaps behaviorally secretive creature, would do better. The failure to recover Bigfoot bones is not anomalous. It is entirely consistent with what we observe in wildlife biology and taphonomy.

This point cannot be overstated: preservation is a fluke. Discovery is an even rarer fluke. It occurs only when decomposition is halted, visibility is high, and someone happens to be looking in the right place at the right time. In the absence of those conditions, remains degrade, disappear, or are misidentified.

And this is before considering the social and scientific variables, like how remains are reported, how seriously they are taken, and whether they are correctly interpreted. Those issues will be addressed in later chapters. For now, it is enough to establish this foundational truth: nature is not in the habit of preserving evidence. It is in the business of eliminating it.

In the debate over missing remains, this understanding changes everything. It shifts the burden of proof away from the assumption that bones should be found and toward a more realistic model, one that accounts for ecological destruction, burial bias, and the realities of field recovery. What it reveals is not a mystery, but a system: a system in which death does not produce certainty, but rather accelerates the erasure of presence.

When the Known Disappear: What Documented Species Teach Us About Missing Remains

While the absence of Bigfoot remains has long been treated as an anomaly demanding explanation, the broader ecological reality reveals a different picture: even well-documented, extensively studied species often vanish without leaving a trace. This is not rare. It is routine. Across multiple disciplines, from forensic recovery to wildlife management to paleontology, evidence routinely goes missing, overlooked, or is never recovered in the first place.

In the field of wilderness search and rescue (SAR), there are hundreds of documented cases where missing persons go unrecovered for months, years, or indefinitely, even within known search zones. Chapter 13 explores some of these cases, including the disappearance of Geraldine Largay on the Appalachian Trail, whose remains were missed by professional searchers for over two years despite being only two miles off trail. Her body was ultimately found by accident. This case, and many like it, illustrate a key principle: terrain, vegetation, and environmental interference routinely defeat even well-coordinated searches.

SAR professionals are trained to expect this. The larger and more rugged the area, the less likely recovery becomes. In steep, vegetated terrain, the odds of a complete recovery drop dramatically. Human remains, like animal remains, are subject to the same pressures; scavenging, weather, terrain, and time. Without reliable last-known-location data or targeted intelligence, the odds of finding a single set of remains in a large forested environment approach zero over time.

This pattern holds true in wildlife biology as well. Large mammals die in the wild all the time, but their remains are seldom found. For example, mountain lions have vast territories and generally avoid human interaction. When they die, it is usually in inaccessible terrain. Field biologists and park rangers often go decades without encountering a naturally deceased cougar. Instead, most known specimens come from hunter harvests, roadkill, or tagged animals tracked via telemetry. Natural mortality rarely leads to recovery.

Black bears, another widespread and well-studied species, provide an even more striking example. Bears are large, heavy-bodied animals that leave distinct tracks and have well-documented behaviors. Yet, as noted in Chapter 4, the number of bears found dead in the wild without human cause is vanishingly small. Wildlife officers consistently report that bears seem to “vanish into the forest” when they die (Rogers, 1974). Despite population density estimates in the tens of thousands across multiple states, naturally deceased bears are almost never encountered by hikers, hunters, or scientists unless there is some secondary reason to search, such as GPS tracking or known injury.

The case is the same for moose, elk, and wolves in northern and alpine ecosystems. Though these animals are the focus of ongoing research and conservation efforts, researchers still struggle to find carcasses in unmanaged environments. Collars, tagging, and telemetry have made monitoring easier, but recovery of untagged individuals remains rare. This suggests a general rule: presence is not a guarantee of post-mortem visibility, even for species that are not cryptic or controversial.

The same pattern repeats in forensic contexts. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, international recovery teams using cadaver dogs, aerial imaging, and ground-penetrating radar still failed to locate hundreds of presumed victims (Schultz & Martin, 2012). Many were buried under debris or sediment. Others were swept out to sea or buried by terrain movement. Despite massive efforts, substantial numbers of individuals were never recovered, demonstrating the limits of even high-tech, large-scale recovery missions (Sampson, 2024.

This also applies to battlefield archaeology and mass grave investigations. In many historical conflicts, including the World Wars and more recent ethnic cleansing events, remains of thousands of victims have never been found, even when locations were known or broadly identified (Lillesand, Kiefer, & Chipman, 2015). Terrain modification, time, biological activity, and the limitations of human searchers all contributed to partial or failed recoveries.

In paleontology, the bias is even stronger. As discussed in Chapter 6, fossilization requires very specific conditions, most of which do not exist in mountainous, forested, or acidic environments. This is why the fossil record disproportionately favors lowland floodplains, lakebeds, and limestone caves. The vast majority of species that ever lived left no fossil trace at all. For primates in particular, the fossil record is notoriously incomplete (Fleagle, 2013). Many entire genera are known only from a single jawbone, molar, or partial skull. Their existence is accepted not because their remains are common, but because one specimen happened to survive long enough to be discovered.

A key example is Homo floresiensis, a small-bodied hominin whose remains were found in Liang Bua cave on the island of Flores. Despite living relatively recently (estimated to have survived until ~50,000 years ago), it left no record outside a single cave site. Had the remains not been preserved in a stable microenvironment, we might never have known this species existed (Brown et al., 2004). If it had died in an acidic forest or in open terrain, there would be nothing to study today. Its discovery was not inevitable. It was a taphonomic fluke.

Similarly, the coelacanth was thought to be extinct for 65 million years until one was caught off the coast of South Africa in 1938 (Smith, 1939). This “Lazarus taxon” had evaded scientific notice not because it was mythical, but because it inhabited deep coastal waters far from standard research zones. Its eventual discovery did not invalidate the skepticism, it simply reframed it. The fish had been there all along. Science just hadn’t been looking in the right place.

These examples point toward a consistent, well-supported reality: remains are routinely lost, scattered, overlooked, or destroyed; even in the case of real, known, and studied species. The absence of bones, therefore, cannot be taken as conclusive. It can suggest difficulty. It can invite caution. But it cannot stand alone as a disproof.

This is especially true when applied to the case of Bigfoot. If such a species exists, it likely does so in low population numbers, in rugged terrain, and in behavioral conditions that minimize exposure to human detection. Add to that the natural biases in preservation, the limitations of our search strategies, and the rarity of post-mortem recovery, and the lack of remains becomes not a mystery, but a predictable outcome.

The mistake is not in asking where the bones are. It is in assuming that we should have found them by now. What documented species teach us is that we are not as good at finding bones as we think. If science routinely fails to recover remains from species it tracks, studies, and regulates, then it should be no surprise that unrecognized species leave no convenient evidence trail.

Reinterpreting Absence as Ecological Reality

What the missing bones tell us is not that something is wrong with the data, but that something is wrong with our assumptions. The idea that remains should be discoverable by default assumes a world where biological material resists decay, where ecosystems leave archives, and where detection is straightforward. This is not the world we inhabit.

In reality, the evidence of life is often erased as efficiently as it is created. Bones degrade. Bodies vanish. Forests consume their dead, and mountains hide their remains. Detection is a matter of probability, not certainty. Even for known species, with populations that span thousands of square miles, natural deaths leave almost no recoverable trace unless specific and rare conditions align.

The “no bones, no Bigfoot” argument persists not because it is well-supported by data, but because it is comfortable. It offers closure. It allows scientific institutions to maintain clarity in the face of ambiguity. But science is not undermined by ambiguity. It is strengthened by investigating it with discipline, humility, and methodological care.

This chapter reframes the missing bones not as a failure of evidence, but as an artifact of expectation. The absence of remains is neither proof, nor disproof. It is a neutral result, whose meaning depends entirely on context: environmental, biological, and historical.

The following chapters will dive deeper into the forces behind the context of decomposition, dispersal, search failure, taphonomic bias, and technological limits. But this first chapter lays the groundwork: if we are to take the question of undiscovered species seriously, we must stop treating absence as a conclusion. We must start treating it as a pattern. One we already understand. One we just haven’t applied to the case at hand.

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