I Heart Yeti from the NeatoShop
Darn you, science! First, it ruined the dinosaurs, and now, it's ruining the yeti.
According to Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes, hair samples discovered in the Himalaya mountains attributed to the cryptozoological beast actually belong to a real biological ho-hum animal: a polar bear/brown bear hybrid.
... using DNA analysis from two different hair samples — one from a strange animal shot by a hunter about 40 years ago in northern India's Ladakh region, and a second sample found in a Bhutan bamboo forest 10 years ago — geneticist Bryan Sykes of the University of Oxford claims to have linked those samples to the jawbone of an ancient polar bear found in Norway.
Sykes speculated that there could be a subspecies of the brown bear in the High Himalayas that is the descendant of the ancestor of the polar bear, or a recent hybridization between the brown bear and the descendant of the ancient polar bear.
Well, there is a silver lining in this discovery. For one, it suggests that the Yeti is quite real. Sykes told The Telegraph, "This is a species that hasn’t been recorded for 40,000 years. Now, we know one of these was walking around ten years ago. And what’s interesting is that we have found this type of animal at both ends of the Himalayas. If one were to go back, there would be others still there."