With only samples of unidentified hair, footprints, the occasional videotape and thousands of reported sightings to support them, most people who study the Bigfoot/Sasquatch question all point to one large and officially extinct primate from Asia as the creature most likely to be the body under all that hair.

Giganto pithecus, a.k.a. "Giganto" in the Bigfooters’ Internet lingo, once was the world's largest primate when it inhabited the forests of China and India from as far back as 9 million years ago, with the youngest known remains dating back about 500,000 years.

Bigfoot researchers believe it's a version of this creature that followed, or possibly predated, man's migration from Asia over the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska and dispersed south throughout North America.

Giganto teeth and jaw fragments found in China and India have led scientists to calculate that the creature stood up to 9 feet tall, weighed more than 600 pounds and fed primarily on grass and seeds. However, with no other known Giganto remains for study, scientists can hypothesize little about its other physical traits, such as its foot size.

Yet Bigfooters believe the ape-like screech they attribute to their creature, as well as the hairy body and ability to walk upright, all help point to Giganto — and not Ray Wallace.

Family members say Wallace, who died last November in Washington, instigated the Bigfoot craze in 1958 by strapping on a pair of large wooden feet and tromping around his construction site in Humboldt County, where a news report in a local paper quickly coined the term "Bigfoot."

Wallace remained mum about the spoof, which family members claimed after his death.

Matthew Johnson, a Bigfoot researcher in Grants Pass who says he saw the creature during a family hike in 2000, acknowledges that Wallace probably faked much of his claims.

But reported sightings of similar creatures dating back to Native American times, plus reams of evidence of primate-like foot impressions throughout the country, indicate that Wallace could not be behind every encounter, Johnson says.

"Ray Wallace’s claims don’t account for hundreds of years of sightings," Johnson says. "Ray Wallace was not at the Oregon Caves when my family smelled the Bigfoot that I saw.

"Ray Wallace is dead, but Bigfoot is alive and well," Johnson says.

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com