Aw , shucks . Science goin’ off and ruining everything again for cryptozoologists . The latest blow comes from a UK geneticist who says whisker sample from an so-called Yeti , or Abominable Snowman , actually came from another — albeit real — creature from the N : an ancient hybrid between polar bears and brown bears .
The DNA analysis was lead by Oxford University professor Bryan Sykes . He study two different hair samples taken from two Himalayan beast , both identify by the local people as belong to Yetis . One came from an so-called Yeti mummy in the Native American region of Ladakh , at the Western edge of the Himalayas , and take by a Gallic mountaineer 40 twelvemonth ago . The other was a undivided hair notice ten years ago in Bhutan , 800 miles ( 1,300 km ) to the east .
Sykes took these sample and compare them to to a database of animal genome . He obtain a 100 % match with an ancient gelid bear jawbone plant in the Norwegian Arctic that ’s at least 40,000 year old , and probably around 120,000 years honest-to-goodness — a time when the arctic bear and closely related brown bear were separating as a different species . According to Sykes , these bear were not relate to modern Himalayan bear , but were direct posterity of the prehistoric animal .
Channel 4reports :
Of the various explanation , Professor Sykes believe that the most in all likelihood is that the animals are hybrids — crosses between glacial bear and brown bears ; the species are closely related and are acknowledge to interbreed where their district overlap .
Professor Sykes says : “ This is an exciting and completely unexpected result that gave us all a surprisal . There ’s more work to be done on interpret the upshot . I do n’t call back it mean there are ancient polar bears wandering around the Himalayas . But we can theorize on what the potential explanation might be . It could imply there is a sub mintage of chocolate-brown bear in the High Himalayas descended from the bear that was the ancestor of the Polar Bear . Or it could intend there has been more late hybridisation between the Brown Bear and the descendent of the ancient Polar Bear . ”
The determination have been submit for issue in a equal - reviewed scientific discipline diary , but they will soon be explained in “ Bigfoot Files , ” a documentary serial on Britain ’s Channel 4 telecasting net .
Related : The science of Yeti footprints|New “ footage ” of Bigfoot emerges
https://gizmodo.com/the-science-of-yeti-footprints-5985208
https://gizmodo.com/new-footage-of-bigfoot-emerges-1440199705
CryptozoologyEvolutionGeneticsScienceYetiZoology
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