The Yeti is likely a real animal

steddyeddy

You guys have probably heard this by now but two hairs attributed two the Yeti, found hundreds of miles apart have yielded incredible DNA results. Both hairs were found to match a species of polar bear that was last seen raoming Norway between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago. The prints associated with these hairs were found at an altitude well above a normal bears range. This is an amazing result that could solve the Yeti mystery once and for all. Article below is from Time magazine.

The Yeti could be a real animal
And you thought the Abominable Snowman was just the stuff of myths.
The rumored Himalayan beast, also known as the Yeti, may in fact have been a real-life relative of the polar bear, according to a British scientist who found a DNA match between alleged Yetis and an ancient polar bear.
“I think this bear, which nobody has seen alive… may still be there and may have quite a lot of polar bear in it,” Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes told BBC.
Sykes conducted a DNA test on hairs from two unidentified animals that have contributed to the legend — one from a beast killed by hunters in northern India, and another individual hair found in a bamboo forest in Bhutan — and entered the genetic information into an animal DNA database. He found they had a 100 percent match with an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Norway that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago, when the polar bear and the closely-related brown bear were still diverging as species.
That means Asia’s Big Foot may be a descendant of the ancient polar-brown bear mutt, or a more recent creation of some inter-species mixing, Sykes told BBC.
But it’s definitely, probably, real.

Read more: http://science.time.com/2013/10/17/i-dont-think-youre-ready-for-this-yeti/#ixzz2irqtgttR

Mickeroo

Rather than prove the yeti is real that just proves they mistook bear fur for that of a mythical primate in my opnion. Pretty amazing if it turns out to be the thought to be extinct bear species rather than a result of interbreeding between polar and brown bears though!

steddyeddy

Mickeroo wrote: »

Rather than prove the yeti is real that just proves they mistook bear fur for that of a mythical primate in my opnion. Pretty amazing if it turns out to be the thought to be extinct bear species rather than a result of interbreeding between polar and brown bears though!

The yeti was always thought to be a bear by the locals. They said it was a more ancient and aggressive type of bear that lives at high altitude. They said that the creature runs on all fours and sometimes walks on two legs. It was westerners who came up with the abominable snowman theory. The hairs were found in the footprints and each came from the same species of animal which last found a sequence match 40,000-120,000 years ago. Already some skeptics are downplaying this but there's no downplaying the DNA evidence. Even if it is a hybrid brown bear + polar bear it's not a hybridization with an extant polar bear but one that should be dead 40,000 years. There's also the fact that the footprints were found at an altitude higher than those of the sloth, brown bear and blue bear.

Either way there is an unknown species of large animal roaming the Himalayas. I think it's a bit silly to be honest the way skeptics (in the last few days) have been saying "OK it is a new animal but not the yeti".

People have been reporting an animal and seeing animal footprints at a higher than normal altitude and the locals call it the Yeti. We now found DNA of a new bear which was found at a very high altitude and people are saying this must be a different creature than the yeti that was reported. In science we look for the simplest explanation. There was a legend of an unknown large animal in the Himalayas and we found DNA of an unknown large animal in the Himalayas. I think it's scientifically logical to assume that the two might be connected.

Galvasean

An unknown species of massive bear is huge news. Just because its not an ape doen't mean it's not the find of the century.

Adam Khor

I'm thinking... since this new bear is thought to be an "ancient polar bear" based on the genetic studies, and recently it was announced that polar bear origins were once again a mystery, could it be possible that the polar bear's origins lay in the Himalayas, and that only later did these proto-polar bears expand to the rest of the continent?

I mean, that's what happened with the woolly rhino...

Amazing find, anyways. Shows how there's still big stuff to be found.

eoinkoenig

I was reading about this just the other day.