Yeti foot discovered in Siberian Mountain (merged)

[alsih2o]

yeti?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3175926.stm

 

[Eternalknight]

Interetsting.

 

[der_kluge]

Yeti foot discovered in Siberian Mountain

Didn't see this anywhere on here, and thought some might find it interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3175926.stm

 

[Gnome Berzerker]

The X-ray looks like that of a human's foot & ankle (not that I've ever seen a different animals').

Did Yeti step in bubblegum before he bought the farm?

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

I always did think the Asian variants, the yeti (Abominable Snowman)/almas (Russian Wildman)/yeh ren (Chinese Wildman) had much better cases for them than sasquatch, etc. The foot looks similar to an ape's, I think, with the big toe (or little toe?) off to the side a bit, like a gorilla's. Although the X-ray looks more human, the toe in that doesn't look to splay off at all. Also unusual to me is that all the toes appear to be the same size, whereas in humans, the big toe is larger.

The theory which I buy into is the one Bernard Heuvelmans had late in his life, which is that the almas/yeh ren/yeti are survivals of the mainland Asiatic orangutans (they used to live on the mainland way back in the day).

Minor gripes with the media:

The area's wrong. The Altai Mts. are mostly in Mongolia. The tail end of them overlaps into Russia, but it's Kazakhstan, not Siberia.

They always get the names wrong! In the Altais, it's almasty, not yeti. Yeti is strictly in Nepal. Grr! But really, only someone who's anally retentive like me would get worked up about that.

At least they didn't call it Bigfoot. God, I loathe that term.

If I really wanted to be anal, the Siberian wildman is the chuchunaa.

 

[s/LaSH]

Certainly looks interesting... the photo of the foot appears to have claws rather than flattened nails, which makes me wonder whether it's even homonid in origin. Then again, I'm no paleoanthropologist.

Cryptozoology is always cool. I remember reading accounts of a late-19th century Siberian (or thereabouts) expedition that captured a 'hairy woman' out in the wilds who, um, eventually had children; apparently her descendants were quite distinctive and many years later they could still use their awesome jaw muscles to lift people off the ground. I don't know how accurate the story is, but it was interpreted to suggest the existance of neanderthaler in the region.

And then there's the rumours I've heard that there were neanderthaler on the Canary Islands until the Spanish got there a few hundred years ago...

Certainly makes ya think, though.

 

[d20Dwarf]

You know what's really hilarious, is that upon first reading it I thought, wow, they found something! Because they said it had a size 36 shoe. Then I realized that in England, that's not really big at all.

 

[Largomad]

Certainly looks interesting... the photo of the foot appears to have claws rather than flattened nails, which makes me wonder whether it's even homonid in origin. Then again, I'm no paleoanthropologist.

[snip for brevity].

And then there's the rumours I've heard that there were neanderthaler on the Canary Islands until the Spanish got there a few hundred years ago...

Certainly makes ya think, though.

The Canarian inhabitats were called "Guanches" and they had cultural and racial similarlities with the north-african people of the bereberes before juan de Bethencourt conquered the lands for Castillian.

Altough the neardenthaler are a recurrent topic, the spaniard antrophologists deny that origin quite firmly, but who knows

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Cryptozoology is always cool. I remember reading accounts of a late-19th century Siberian (or thereabouts) expedition that captured a 'hairy woman' out in the wilds who, um, eventually had children; apparently her descendants were quite distinctive and many years later they could still use their awesome jaw muscles to lift people off the ground. I don't know how accurate the story is, but it was interpreted to suggest the existance of neanderthaler in the region.

Ahh, the story of Zana. It may be pretty darn accurate - I have a book with a photograph of a Russian anthropologist checking out the skulls of one of her "children", and it is a bit more prognathous (?) than a person...the brow's a bit large, too.

And then there's the rumours I've heard that there were neanderthaler on the Canary Islands until the Spanish got there a few hundred years ago..

Really? I've never heard that, but it's interesting... some well-known hypertrichotics have come from the Canaries. I've never heard about full neanderthals, but I wouldn't doubt there were descendants of them (which may exist, if they interbred with man in olden days). I wonder if, as the majority of hypertrichotics tend to be of Hispanic descent, whether they can mostly all trace their ancestry back to the Canaries. That would be food for thought.

Another thing of interest in regards to both these ideas... is the story of Theodore Petrof or "Jojo the Dogfaced Boy". P.T. Barnum, when exhibiting him, claimed that he was captured wild in a forest in Russia... take that as you will, being that it's a statement from a notorious huckster, but I wonder if there's something to a hypertrichosis/wildman connection. Possibly some sort of periodically recurring atavism, with hypertrichosis being a partial throwback and once in a great while, a full atavism like the hypertrichotic and deformed Julia Pastrana or possibly Zana?

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

The Canarian inhabitats were called "Guanches" and they had cultural and racial similarlities with the north-african people of the bereberes before juan de Bethencourt conquered the lands for Castillian.

Altough the neardenthaler are a recurrent topic, the spaniard antrophologists deny that origin quite firmly, but who knows

I also recall hearing that were, at least formerly, theories that the Basques of Spain/France were descended from neanderthals as well. Something about smaller stature and slightly different bone structure, along with that funky language not clearly related to any other in Europe.