A leading British geneticist may have solved the mystery of the Yeti legend after genetic testing matched samples from two unidentified species to an ancient polar bear, CNN reported.
Bryan Sykes, a professor of human genetics at Oxford University, put out a worldwide call last year for people to submit hair or other tissue from "cryptids," or previously undescribed species, and collected more than 30 samples for analysis.
Sykes, whose findings will be explained further in the "Bigfoot Files" documentary series, concentrated on two samples, both of which came from the Himalayas but were found about 800 miles apart.
One of the samples was attributed to a Yeti mummy in the northern Indian region of Ladakh, purportedly taken by a French mountaineer who was shown the corpse 40 years ago, according to NBC News.
"It was from the mummified body that was shot 40 years ago by a local hunter," Sykes told NBC News. "He kept it because he did not think it was a bear from its behavior. To him it was a Yeti."
Testing found a 100 percent match between the two samples and a polar bear jawbone from Svalbard, the northernmost part of Norway, that dates back between 40,000 and 120,000 years, according to a news release from Channel 4.
"There's more work to be done on interpreting the results," Sykes said. "I don't think it means there are ancient polar bears wandering around the Himalayas. But we can speculate on what the possible explanation might be. It could mean there is a subspecies of brown bear in the High Himalayas descended from the bear that was the ancestor of the polar bear.
"Or it could mean there has been more recent hybridization between the brown bear and the descendant of the ancient polar bear," he said.
No one living in the Himalayas doubts that the Yeti or Abominable Snowman exists, Sykes told NBC News.
As to why they are so seldom sighted.
"It's a very frequent question. The answer is that they are very rare," Sykes said. "The distances over which they roam are enormous and often heavily wooded, so they cannot be seen by satellite. And certainly in the Pacific Northwest, in the case of Sasquatch, they are thought to be shy."
The samples may or may not belong to Yetis; Sykes is only certain that the DNA matches.
"One of the reasons I felt confident enough to go into this madcap area is I do not have to form an opinion. I have got the hairs and I have tested the hairs," he said. "I cannot vouch for their authenticity, but there were witnesses, and the DNA cannot be made up or rigged. Those results are absolutely firm."
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