A new collaboration between Oxford University
and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology will use the latest genetic techniques to
investigate organic remains that some have claimed belong to the ‘Yeti’ and
other ‘lost’ hominid species.
The
Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project invites institutions and individuals
with collections of cryptozoological material to submit details of the samples
they hold, and then on request submit the samples themselves, particularly hair
shafts, for rigorous genetic analysis. The results will then be published in
peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Ever
since Eric Shipton’s 1951 Everest expedition returned with photographs of giant
footprints in the snow there has been speculation that the Himalayas may be
home to large creatures ‘unknown to science’. Since then, there have been many
eye-witness reports of such creatures from several remote regions of the world.
They are variously known as the ‘yeti’ or ‘migoi’ in the Himalaya, ‘bigfoot’ or ‘sasquatch’ in America, ‘almasty’ in the Caucasus mountains, and ‘orang pendek’ in Sumatra,
as well as others.
Professor
Bryan Sykes, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, who will lead the project
with Michel Sartori, director of the Lausanne Museum of Zoology, said: “Theories
as to their species identification vary from surviving collateral hominid
species, such as Homo neanderthalensis
or Homo floresiensis, to
large primates like Gigantopithecus
widely thought to be extinct, to as yet unstudied primate species or local
subspecies of black and brown bears.
“Mainstream
science remains unconvinced by these reports both through lack of testable
evidence and the scope for fraudulent claims. However, recent advances in the
techniques of genetic analysis of organic remains provide a mechanism for genus
and species identification that is unbiased, unambiguous, and impervious to
falsification.”
These
techniques were not available to biologists like Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, whose
1955 book Sur la Piste des Betes Ignorees (translated into English as On
the Track of Unknown Animals) helped foster widespread public interest in
the subject. Between 1950 and 2001, the year of his death, Dr Heuvelmans, as
well as investigating numerous claims, assembled a considerable archive that is
now curated by the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne,
Switzerland.
Professor
Sykes said: “It is possible that a scientific examination of these neglected
specimens could tell us more about how Neanderthals and other early hominids
interacted and spread around the world.”
