Page 42 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - November 2013 Edition

Abominable Snowman A Bear? Is the Abominable varieties that have been reported. what region of DNA is being used." "That's one of the problems with the Molecular biologist Charlotte Lindqvist Snowman a Bear? word 'Yeti,'" Coleman said. "It's an umbrella expressed a similar sentiment. "I'd like to see term for three different varieties. There's the the data published and scrutinized," said small kind, there's a man-sized type, and then a Lindqvist, who is with the State University of Scientist has linked "Yeti" hair larger one that is known as Dzu-Teh. I must New York's University at Buffalo. She was part samples to DNA from an ancient assume what he's looking at are samples from of the team that extracted DNA from the ancient polar bear jawbone that Sykes used in his the larger-sized one that many of us in the field polar bear jaw. have speculated was a form of bear." genetic comparisons. If, as Sykes's findings suggest, the Dzu- "Before that happens, it makes little National Geographic Teh is indeed the same species of early polar sense to me to suggest any links between the bear that once roamed the Arctic, it is unlikely 120,000-year-old polar bear and a bear (or Yeti) A British scientist has linked supposed hair to have a white fur coat, as often shown in in the Himalayas," Lindqvist said in an email. samples from the legendary Yeti, or popular depictions of the Yeti, since it was one Sykes says he intends to publish his "Abominable Snowman," to a breed of ancient of the first polar bears to branch off from brown findings. "The project is still going on," he told Arctic bears that he says could have survived to bears. NBC News, "and the idea is to publish these the modern day—but other experts say the That, Coleman said, actually strengthens results in a scientific journal to bring it back into results need to be published before any Sykes's case that the larger Yeti is an ancient the realm of science." [] conclusions can be drawn. polar bear species. Bryan Sykes, a respected geneticist at "It's one of the myths of the Abominable Unique Conference for Oxford University in the U.K., this week Snowman and Yeti that they're white," Coleman Pre-historians reported the findings of a yearlong project that said. aimed to rigorously test hair and tissue samples "The native people actually describe that were claimed to have belonged to the them as brown and reddish-brown." by Alexander Baron elusive creature. "I put out a call for Yeti, Bigfoot, and Conceivable Sasquatch hairs in 2012, and I received a good response from all over the world," Sykes told Brian Regal, a science historian at Kean NBC News. University in New Jersey, called the possibility One of the most promising samples that of an unidentified bear species living in the Sykes received included hairs attributed to a Himalayas "exciting," but said it will be Yeti mummy in the northern Indian region of difficult to definitively connect the hairs to the Ladakh; the hairs were purportedly collected by Yeti of legend. a French mountaineer who was shown the "This is another disappointment for the corpse 40 years ago. Another sample was a cryptozoology community," Regal said. "Just single hair that was found about a decade ago in because [Sykes] showed that this particular Bhutan, some 800 miles (1,290 kilometers) DNA sample is from a bear doesn't necessarily away from Ladakh. mean that's what people have been seeing. They According to Sykes, the DNA from may have been seeing bears; they may have these two samples matched the genetic been seeing something else." signature of a polar bear jawbone that was Biologist Robert Rockwell, who has found in the Norwegian Arctic in 2004. studied polar bears, said he thinks it's Scientists say the jawbone could be up to conceivable that a bear species has managed to 120,000 years old. survive in the Himalayas unnoticed. Sykes's findings will be the focus of "It is possible, as Asiatic black bears, Bigfoot Files, a documentary series premiering brown bears, and even sun bears—or some odd on Britain's Channel 4 this Sunday. (A two-hour combination—conceivably could or could have London - Fancy something off-beat next special will air in the U.S. on Sunday, historically been in that general region. Since February? How about attending the First November 17, at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on the they are [bears], they too would share a lot of International Conference on the Nephilim and National Geographic Channel.) the DNA sequences found in the fossil cited," Crystal Skulls, in London? said Rockwell, who is at the American Museum This is probably not an event for Still Alive? of Natural History in New York. neophytes but if you have an interest in the "Could something like that be in that ancient world, old time religions and mysticism, Sykes said the fact that the hair samples were area and not be seen clearly or captured or it could be for you. What are crystal skulls, apart found so far apart, and relatively recently, collected? It is a huge area, much of which is from skulls made from crystal? Here is one with suggests the species that the hairs came from not densely populated, and except for some background courtesy of the British may still be alive. increasingly habituated individuals, most Museum. Our distant ancestors got up to all "I can't imagine we managed to get [bears] are pretty shy. And if there are not many sorts of things that seen through the mists of samples from the only two 'snow bears' in the of them, it is even more conceivable." time seem extraordinary or even bizarre. This Himalayas," he told the Associated Press. conference will probably result in no definitive Sykes speculated that the creature could Need for Peer Review answers but there will be an interesting turn out. be a new bear species, or perhaps a hybrid of The First International Conference on polar bears and brown bears. But Rockwell said he will need to see Sykes's the Nephilim and Crystal Skulls will be held on "The next thing is [to] go there and find results published in a peer-reviewed scientific Saturday, February 14 next year at the Chartered one," Sykes told the Associated Press. journal before he is convinced the hair samples Institute of Arbitrators just around the corner Loren Coleman, director of the indeed came from bears. from the British Museum. Full details can International Cryptozoology Museum in "The claim is based on a really small currently be found on Facebook. Portland, Maine, said Sykes's finding could be sample, and the DNA is likely degraded to some You can find some interesting the "number one story in cryptozoology"—the extent. Until the sequence data have been documentaries about the subject matter of this study of hidden, or unverified, animals—"for published, I am going to be rather skeptical," conference on YouTube. One caveat: interesting the decade." Rockwell said. does not necessarily mean true! Unless and until Coleman, who also appears in the "So many critters share so much of their someone invents a time machine, much of what upcoming documentary, said he thinks Sykes's DNA that getting 'matches' can be an artifact of we think we know about subjects like this must findings likely explain only one of the Yeti sampling and will certainly depend on precisely necessarily be speculative, however intelligent