Those Yetis again!
The bones and fur of the bigfoot turned out to be the remains of bears
Natalia Pelezneva, Naked Science
Bigfoot, aka yeti, is a legendary creature that supposedly lives in some forest and high–altitude areas of the Earth. There is no convincing evidence of its existence, but this does not prevent collectors from giving considerable sums of money for the alleged remains of the yeti. A group of scientists led by biologist Charlotte Lindqvist studied nine samples of such remains from private collections and came to the conclusion that all the samples belonged to animals, mainly bears of different species.
At the disposal of scientists were hair, teeth, skins, bones and droppings, allegedly belonging to a snowman. Some of the samples were found back in the 1930s in the Tibetan Plateau, some were discovered later. For comparison, the researchers took 14 tissue samples of several species of bears, for example, the Tien Shan brown, Tibetan brown and black Himalayan. The scientists analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of the samples. This DNA in most multicellular organisms is inherited through the female line.
The analysis showed that eight samples of "yeti" belonged to bears of various species, and the ninth belonged to a dog. This work not only proved that the remains of the yeti turned out to be fakes: it supplemented the existing knowledge about bears living in the Himalayas. Scientists said that for the first time they deciphered the sequences of mitochondrial genomes of Ursus arctos isabellinus and Ursus thibetanus laniger species. Both animal species are relatively rare. Genome analysis will help to establish the degree of kinship between many species of Himalayan and Tibetan bears. According to the researchers, the Tien Shan brown bears Ursus arctos isabellinus were one of the first groups that separated from other brown bears about 650,000 years ago. Scientists suggest that glaciation could separate the species.
"Our results directly indicate that the biological foundations of the Yeti legend are connected with local bears. This study shows that genetics is able to solve other similar riddles," says Charlotte Lindquist.
The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Lan et al., Evolutionary history of enigmatic bears in the Tibetan Plateau–Himalaya region and the identity of the yeti), its summary is available on the website of the journal Science (So much for the abominable snowman. Study finds that ‘yeti’ DNA belongs to bears).
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