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Grover Sanders Krantz (November 5, 1931 – February 14, 2002) was an American anthropologist and cryptozoology; he was one of few scientists not only to research Bigfoot, but also to express his belief in the animal's existence. Throughout his professional career, Krantz authored more than 60 academic articles and 10 books on human evolution, and conducted field research in Europe, China, and Java.
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 fringe science, costing him research grants and promotions, and delaying his tenure at the university. Further, his articles on the subject were rejected by peer-reviewed scholarly journals. However, Krantz was tenacious in his work and was often drawn to controversial subjects, such as the Kennewick Man remains, arguing for their preservation and study. 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.
In the 1970s, Krantz studied the fossil remains of Ramapithecus, an extinct genus of primates then thought by many anthropologists to be ancestral to humans, although Krantz helped prove this notion false. 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. In 1968, he named the hunting that Ashley Montagu had earlier described involving the human pursuit hunting of animals persistence hunting.
He 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. His professional work was diverse, including research on the development of Paleolithic stone tools, Neanderthal taxonomy and culture, the Quaternary extinction event, sea level changes, and the evidence of sex in the human fossil record.Krantz, Grover S. "The Fossil Record of Sex." In: Sexual Dimorphism in Homo Sapiens: A Question of Size, ed. Roberta L. Hall (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp. 85–105.
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. 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 Act has no more applicability to this skeleton than it would if an early Chinese expedition had left one of its members there." In 2001 he attempted to submit the last paper he wrote before his death, titled "Neanderthal Continuity in View of Some Overlooked Data," although 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.
Krantz's studies of Bigfoot, which he called "Sasquatch," (an Anglicization of the Halkomelem word sásq’ets (, meaning "wild man")Bright, William (2004). Native American Place Names of the United States. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 422. led him to believe that this was an actual creature. He theorized that sightings were due to small pockets of surviving Gigantopithecus, 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.)
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. 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. Krantz then tried to have his paper, titled "A Species Named from Footprints," published in an academic journal although it was rejected by reviewers.
After seeing footage stills of the Patterson–Gimlin film which appeared on the February 1968 cover of Argosy, Krantz was skeptical, believing the film to be an elaborate hoax, saying "it looked to me like someone wearing a gorilla suit" and "I gave Sasquatch only a 10 percent chance of being real." After years of skepticism, Krantz finally became convinced of Bigfoot's existence after analyzing the "Cripplefoot" 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. While in Bossburg, he also met John Willison Green and the two remained friends until Krantz's death.
The Cripplefoot tracks, left in snow, purportedly showed microscopic dermal ridges (fingerprints) and injuries tentatively identified as clubfoot by primatologist John Napier. 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." 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." To his disappointment, a subsequent 1983 article in the journal Cryptozoology, titled "Anatomy and Dermatoglyphics of Three Sasquatch Footprints," was largely ignored.
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 2.44 m (8 ft) tall and weighing roughly 363 kg (800 lb). 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." This culminated in Krantz's first publication on the subject of Bigfoot, with his article "Sasquatch Handprints" appearing in the journal North American Research Notes in 1971.
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."
He, Peter Byrne, René Dahinden, and John Green have been dubbed the “Four Horsemen of Sasquatchery”.
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. She spent a year documenting his life's work on her podcast, Wild Thing, and later a children's book, The Search for Sasquatch.
Among his works on Sasquatch are:
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