Researchers will visit the Upper Peninsula next month to search for evidence of the hairy manlike creature known as "Bigfoot" or "Sasquatch."
The expedition will center in eastern Marquette County, following the most recent Bigfoot eyewitness account, said Matthew Moneymaker of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.
"We'll be looking for evidence supporting a presence. ... We hope to meet local people who might have seen a Sasquatch or heard of someone else who had an encounter," Moneymaker told the Daily Press of Escanaba.
Most experts consider the Bigfoot legend to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes, but there are a number of authors and researchers who think the stories could be true.
Among all U.P. counties, Marquette County has logged the most reported Bigfoot sightings with four, Moneymaker said. Bigfoot encounters also have been reported in Ontonagon, Baraga, Dickinson, Luce and Schoolcraft counties.
In all but three of 30 expeditions in the United States and Canada, BFRO investigators have either glimpsed Bigfoot or gotten close enough to hear the creature, Moneymaker said.
Dr. Grover Krantz, a scientist specializing in cryptozoology, believes Bigfoot is a "gigantopithecus," a branch of primitive man believed to have existed 3 million years ago.
But mainstream scientists tend to dismiss the study as pseudoscience because of unreliable eyewitness accounts and a lack of solid physical evidence.