Early life On , Krantz was born in
Salt Lake City to Carl Victor Emmanuel Krantz and Esther Maria (née Sanders) Krantz. His parents were devout
Mormons, and while Krantz tried to follow the basic Christian philosophy of behavior and morality, he was not active in the religion. Krantz was raised in
Rockford, Illinois until the age of 10, in 1942, when his family relocated back to Utah. In the 1970s, Krantz studied the fossil remains of
Ramapithecus, an extinct genus of primates then thought by many anthropologists to have been ancestral to humans, although Krantz helped prove this notion false. Krantz 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. 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, Krantz attempted to submit the last paper he wrote before his death, entitled "Neanderthal Continuity in View of Some Overlooked Data", but 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. led him to believe that this was an actual creature. He theorized that sightings were due to small pockets of surviving
gigantopithecines, 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. was largely ignored. 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."
Personal life . The posing was done at Krantz's request. Grover Krantz had one brother, Victor Krantz, who worked as a photographer at the
Smithsonian Institution. On March 3, 1987, Krantz debated
Duane Gish on creationism and evolution at Washington State University; the well-publicized three-hour debate was attended by more than 1000 people.
Death and skeleton On
Valentine's Day, , Krantz died in his
Port Angeles, Washington home from
pancreatic cancer after an eight-month battle with the disease. and Yahoo – as was his last request. She spent a year documenting his life's work on her podcast,
Wild Thing, and later wrote a children's book,
The Search for Sasquatch. ==See also==