What this means is that the hunt for extant large primates has now
become academically acceptable. There has been a number of samples
taken over the years and perhaps we can now get such samples
investigated properly. Until now it has fallen on the discoverers to
champion their case and this has been horribly unsatisfactory.
On top of all this, known sightings are not been investigated
properly. A forensic team has a chance to locate shed hair and that
could quickly make all the difference.
It is not as if we lack individual sightings. The gross figure is
presently in excess of ten thousand. There is enough to organize a
police response as standard procedure. This secures the area and
identifies tracks if possible. More important the publicity allows
witnesses to react by calling after the event for what will most
certainly be a once in a lifetime event.
If this effort can be sustained, then evidence will naturally be
policed into the data base.
Genetics has shown us that the Neanderthal stock was absorbed into
the burgeoning human stock simply because the human life way produced
much large populations. It also confirms that the barbaric life way
conserved breeding women as a matter of course.
I do not think that the bigfoot could ever be so absorbed, but that
they also live in a completely different biological niche has allowed
them to remain separate from us.
Scientists deploy
genetics in search for bigfoot
CHRIS WICKHAM, REUTERS
FIRST POSTED: TUESDAY,
MAY 22, 2012 10:28 AM EDT | UPDATED: TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012
10:39 AM EDT
Oxford University and
Switzerland’s Lausanne Museum of Zoology will analyze alleged
bigfoot remains. (Shutterstock)
LONDON -- Scientists
are turning to genetic testing to see if they can prove the existence
of the elusive hairy humanoid known across the world as bigfoot, yeti
and sasquatch.
A joint project
between Oxford University and Switzerland’s Lausanne Museum of
Zoology will examine organic remains that some say belong to the
creature that has been spotted in remote areas for decades.
“It’s an area that
any serious academic ventures into with a deal of trepidation ...
It’s full of eccentric and downright misleading reports,” said
Bryan Sykes at Oxford’s Wolfson College.
But the team would
take a systematic approach and use the latest advances in genetic
testing, he added.
“There have been
DNA tests done on alleged yetis and other such things but since then
the testing techniques, particularly on hair, have improved a lot due
to advances in forensic science,” he told Reuters.
Modern testing
could get valid results from a fragment of a shaft of hair said
Sykes, who is leading the project with Michel Sartori, director of
the Lausanne museum.
Ever since a 1951
expedition to Mount Everest returned with photographs of giant
footprints in the snow, there has been speculation about giant
Himalayan creatures, unknown to science.
There have been
eyewitness reports of the ’yeti’ or ’migoi’ in the Himalayas,
’bigfoot’ or ’sasquatch’ in America, ’almasty’ in the
Caucasus mountains and ’orang pendek’ in Sumatra.
Tests up to now have
usually concluded that alleged yeti remains were actually human, he
said. But that could have been the result of contamination. “There
has been no systematic review of this material.”
The project will focus
on Lausanne’s archive of remains assembled by Bernard Heuvelmans,
who investigated reported yeti sightings from 1950 up to his death in
2001.
Other institutions and
individuals will also be asked to send in details of any possible
yeti material. Samples will be subjected to “rigorous genetic
analysis”, and the results published in peer-reviewed science
journals.
Aside from the yeti
question, Sykes said he hoped the project would add to the growing
body of knowledge on the interaction between humanity’s ancestors.
“In the last two
years it has become clear that there was considerable inter-breeding
between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals ... about 2 to 4 percent of the
DNA of each individual European is Neanderthal,” he said.
One hypothesis is that
yetis are surviving Neanderthals. The joint project will take DNA
samples from areas where there have been alleged sightings to see
whether the Neanderthal DNA traces are stronger in the local
population.
As for the project’s
chances of success? “The answer is, of course, I don’t know,”
said Sykes. “It’s unlikely but on the other hand if we don’t
examine it we won’t know.”
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