So much for the folklore of the abominable snowman — a new study has discovered the DNA of the fearsome "yeti" of Nepal and Tibet belongs to local bears.
In a study led by evolutionary biologist Charlotte Lindqvist of the State University of New York in Buffalo, Science Magazine reported researchers studied the DNA from nine supposed yeti remains — including some obtained when Lindqvist worked with a U.K. production crew on the 2016 documentary "Yeti or Not?"
Of the nine yeti samples, eight turned out to be from bears native to the area, the researchers reported in "Proceedings of the Royal Society B," Science Magazine reported.
The other sample came from a dog.
The samples included a tooth and some hair collected on the Tibetan Plateau in the late 1930s, as well as a sample of scat from Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner's museum in the Tyrolean Alps, the magazine reported. More recent samples included hair collected in Nepal by a nomadic herdsman and a leg bone found by a spiritual healer in a cave in Tibet.
The researchers also analyzed samples recently collected from several subspecies of bears native to the area — testing 24 samples in all, the magazine reported.
Similar studies of hair samples supposedly related to North America's big hairy hominid — the sasquatch known as Bigfoot — have revealed those fibers came from bears, horses, dogs, and a variety of other creatures — even a human, Science Magazine reported.
"It's great that we now know these bears' place in the maternal family tree," Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved with the work, told the magazine.
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