The last great cryptozoology news from the homeland of the Yeti – of the discovery of the Giant Panda in 1936 – may have more in common with what we are going to be learning scientifically about one type of Abominable Snowmen than anyone could have guessed.
Be prepared for Yeti studies to be rocked by Bryan Sykes’ Oxford University DNA research findings. Reportedly, as will be revealed on a British Channel 4 three-part documentary beginning its broadcast this coming Sunday, the genetics has shown there may be a bear in the mix of some of the larger Yeti accounts.
Professor Sykes found that he had a 100 per cent match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back at least 40,000 years – and probably around 120,000 years. Sykes will be following up his studies with a new book scheduled for next year.
Yahoo News had more details on the origins of the sample:
In the early 1970s, a French mountaineer trekking through the rugged Ladakh region (at the western edge of the Himalayas) encountered a hunter who had saved the remains of a bizarre, bear-like animal — about the size of a human being — that he had recently shot. The mountaineer saved a sample of the hair, which he later passed to Sykes.
Sykes found the Ladakh hair sample especially intriguing. “The fact that the hunter … thought this one was in some way unusual and was frightened of it, makes me wonder if this species of bear might behave differently,” he told The Telegraph. “Maybe it is more aggressive, more dangerous or is more bipedal than other bears.”
Sykes began by comparing that hair sample, and the 10-year-old sample from Bhutan, against a database of collected animal DNA. “In the Himalayas, I found the usual sorts of bears and other creatures amongst the collection,” said Sykes, as quoted in Phys.org.
“But the particularly interesting ones are the ones whose genetic fingerprints are linked not to the brown bears or any other modern bears, [but] to an ancient polar bear.”
That polar bear lived in Norway between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago, and its DNA is a 100-percent match with the recent hair samples from Ladakh and Bhutan. “This is a species that hasn’t been recorded for 40,000 years,” Sykes said. “Now, we know one of these was walking around 10 years ago.”
Of course, there is many items that I foresee being mistakenly shared via the media and the way that news like this will be interpreted by the general public.
There will be the natural confusion about Yetis being “white,” when the native peoples say they are brown-reddish brown. When people hear the word “polar bear” from the media, the public will create mental images of “white bears,” even though “ancient polar bears” genetically linked to brown bears may have been brown. This will need to be sorted out.
People will make the mistake thinking the Sykes results explain all “Yeti” accounts, when it is clear there are several kinds of Yetis.
For decades, Cryptozoologists have pointed to three kinds of Yetis – a small Yeti, a human-sized Yeti, and a quite large bear-like Yeti. Bernard Heuvelmans, Ivan T. Sanderson, as well as modern researchers, including me, Mark A. Hall, and Patrick Huyghe called this variety the Dzu-Teh. It appears now Dr. Sykes has confirmed there may be a new unknown species or a hybrid bear behind some of the Yeti cases.
I was interviewed for the documentary regarding hair samples from the Tom Slick expeditions, but they are not the ones analyzed, as the bear aligned examples.
The findings are exciting news for cryptozoology.
Congratulations to Dr. Bryan Sykes and his team worldwide.
(BTW, yes, the giant panda is a bear too.)