A Russian regional government claimed it’s found proof of the existence of the Yeti or “Abominable Snowman.” The Telegraph lays down the story (which has been picked up by dozens of other sources):
The Russian coal-mining region of Kemerovo said in a statement on its website that footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the yeti were found on the research trip to its remote mountains.
“During the expedition to the Azasskaya cave, conference participants gathered indisputable proof that the Shoria mountains are inhabited by the ‘Snow Man’,” the Kemerovo region administration said.
The expedition was organised after Kemerovo’s governor invited researchers from the United States, Canada, and several other countries to share their research and stories of encounters with the creature at a conference.
“They found his footprints, his supposed bed, and various markers with which the yeti marks his territory,” the statement said. The collected “artifacts” will be analysed in a special laboratory, it said.
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Needless to say, this sounds only slightly more credible than Bigfoot in a freezer. Kemerovo founded a Yeti institute in March of this year, and it certainly seems interesting that such a headline-getting event occurred so soon after the institute’s founding.
While the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, is said to reside in the Himalayas, that term is also used to refer to the “Snow Man” — technically not really a Yeti — said to reside in Siberia. Similar hair-covered larger-than-human hominids have been reported in many regions all over the world. The North American Bigfoot or Sasquatch in the Pacific Northwest (as well as the Sierras, the Santa Cruz mountains, and Georgia), the Skunk Ape in Florida, the Almas in the Caucasus and Mongolia, and the Yowie in Australia are all said to be related to the Yeti.
The Chinese recently mounted an expedition to search for the Yeti in the central Chinese province of Hubei, and a British team recently searched for the related Mande-barung in Northern India.