Russia, even after the break up of the Soviet Union, is a really very big place with lots of open space. Lots. Plenty of places for, among other things, Yetis to hide in.

Just a little over a year ago, a joint Russian/American expedition to Azassky cave in Siberia’s Kemerovo region documented footprints and hair along with presumed territorial markers and a possible sleeping area.

Well those hair samples have been tested and the results are in

From the Daily Mail

Sasquatch in Siberia? Hair found in Russian cave ‘belonged to unknown mammal closely related to man’
Hair did not belong to any known animal from the region such as a bear, wolf, or goat
Mysterious mammal more closely related to man than to monkeys

By Will Stewart In Moscow

Astonishing claims were made in Russia today that DNA tests on suspected ‘Yeti hair’ reveals the existence of ‘an unknown mammal closely related to man’.

The ‘tests’ were conducted on samples of hair found in a Siberian cave during an international expedition last year.

‘We had ten samples of hair to study, and have concluded that they belong to mammal, but not a human,’ said Professor Valentin Sapunov, of the Russian State Hydrometeorological Institute.

Nor did the hair belong to any known animal from the region such as a bear, wolf, or goat, he claimed.

Analysis was conducted in the Russia and US and ‘agreed the hair came from a human-like creature which is not a Homo sapien yet is more closely related to man than a monkey’, said the Siberian Times, citing claims made on a regional government website in Russia in the area where the hair samples were allegedly found.

It stated that long-awaited scientific tests were conducted on their hair at two institutions in Russia and one in Idaho in the US.

‘All three world level universities have finished DNA analysis of the hair and said that the hair belongs to a creature which is closer by its biological parameters to Homo sapiens than a monkey. The Yeti’s DNA is evidently less than one per cent different to that of a human.’

Yeti region: The hair was found in Kemerovo which is a notorious yeti sighting spot

The tests were undertaken on hair found one year ago in the Azasskaya Cave in the Mourt Shoriya area of Kemerovo region in Siberia, it was alleged.

The 2011 expedition to the remote cave complex in Kemerovo when the alleged Yeti hair was found was led by Dr Igor Birtsev, seen as Russia’s leading advocate of the existence of the abominable snowman.

There is more to the article at the Daily Mail

Just as a matter of Interest for the historically minded:

STILL AT LARGE – A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE YETI

The first accounts of Yetis emerged before the 19th century from Buddhists who believed that the creature inhabited the Himalayas.

They depicted the mysterious beast as having similarities to an ape and carrying a large stone as a weapon while making a whistling sound.

Popular interest in the creature gathered pace in the early 20th century as tourists began making their own trips to the region to try and capture the Yeti. They reported seeing strange markings in the snow.

The Daily Mail led a trip called the Snowman Expedition in 1954 to Everest. During the trip mountaineering leader John Angelo Jackson photographed ancient paintings of yetis and large footprints in the snow.

A number of hair samples were also found that were believed to have come from a Yeti scalp.
British mountaineer Don Whillans claimed to have witnessed a creature when scaling Annapurna in 1970.

There has been debate among proponents of Bigfoot/Yeti that DNA evidence should suffice as proof. Well, for them maybe the proof is in and it belongs to Russia. First Sputnik, and now this. Personally, though I contribute to a website of a skeptical nature, I favor the the existence of Bigfoot among the cryptids for several reasons, but do not accept that a DNA sample is proof of anything other than something we have not examined DNA from before has possibly been found. Unfortunately, at least the hair sample in the video was clearly contaminated as it was being handled bare handed by a human, so there will be traces of human DNA in the sample. According to the article there were ten samples, so hopefully this was just done for the photo op and the others were recovered cleanly, but the logical jump from DNA test to Yeti still skips a few steps in my thinking, and that is just not science.

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