The search is on for Bigfoot

Researchers will visit Michigan's Upper Peninsula next month to search for evidence of the legendary creature known as "Bigfoot" or "Sasquatch".

The expedition will centre in eastern Marquette County, said Matthew Moneymaker of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organisation. The Upper Peninsula is the part of Michigan between lakes Superior and Michigan.

"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 some authors and researchers think the stories could be true.

In all but three of 30 expeditions in the United States and Canada, BFRO investigators have either glimpsed Bigfoot or got close enough to hear the creature, Moneymaker said.

Dr Grover Krantz, a scientist specialising in cryptozoology, believes Bigfoot is a "gigantopithecus," a branch of primitive man believed to have existed three 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. - Sapa-AP