No Abominable Snowman After All?

Todd Wood points in the direction of this story about the Yeti, or abominable snowman.  Alan Boyle of NBC Science writes:

After a yearlong quest, a British geneticist says he has matched the DNA from hairs attributed to Himalayan Yetis, also known as "Abominable Snowmen," to a breed of Arctic bear that lived tens of thousands of years ago. Other researchers say that might be as good an explanation as any.

The claim is being made by Oxford University's Bryan Sykes, already well-known for his research on human ancestry. Sykes says his findings suggest that sightings of the legendary Yeti may actually represent observations of a previously unknown creature in the Himalayas — perhaps a hybrid of polar bears and brown bears.

Sykes told NBC News that his aim is to bring the Yeti out of the realm of myth and fantasy. "All my colleagues think I'm taking a risk in doing this, but I'm curious, and I am in a position to actually do something to answer the questions," he said.

Outside experts didn't reject Sykes' conclusion out of hand. Tom Gilbert, professor of paleogenomics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, told The Associated Press that Sykes' research provided a "reasonable explanation" for past Yeti sightings.

Based on the interview in the story, Sykes appears to believe that these animals exist and that the reason that they have not been found is that they are few and far between with enormous home ranges. This sounds a tad too convenient. Oddly, the new findings don't seem to have deflated his enthusiasm any.

I think that he is off the mark, anyway. As I wrote sometime back, as nearly as I can tell, the earliest stories of these huge creatures are from China and India.   I believe that their source is the extinct ape Gigantopithecus. This ape consisted of three species and the genus ranged very widely, from India to China and northern Vietnam. The largest species, G. blacki stood almost ten feet tall and is estimated to have weighed over 1100 pounds.   Put simply, if you found the fossilized remains, you would come away thinking there was a very, very large animal on the loose. Given the comparative lack of understanding of what a fossil was and how old these animals were when they were alive, it is quite conceivable, even believable that stories would have arisen about them.The earliest Gigantopithecus remains date to around 10 million years ago but G. bilaspurensis lived as recently as 100 k years ago, coeval with late archaic Homo sapiens.  When people came to the New World (from the Amur River area of China) through the Bering Strait, they brought the stories with them, which is why you get stories of Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. 

I have no evidence for this, only, as Mr. Spock would say, an hypothesis "which just happens to fit the facts." 

Jeff Meldrum on Taking Sasquatch Seriously

Jeff Meldrum, associate professor of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University is presenting a talk in Montpelier, Idaho on June 2 called “Sasquatch on the Oregon Trail.” He writes:

Ancient tribal artists of the Intermountain West were not overt in their depiction of these creatures, but cryptic petroglyphs from the red sandstone cliffs of Wyoming to the basalt columns of the Snake River Plain depict footprints and caricatures of the wildman of the woods. Modern tribal artists, such as Willie Preacher of Fort Hall, depict traditional stories with oil and canvas.

Once the pioneers arrived in Oregon’s verdant Willamette Valley flanked by the Cascade and Coastal ranges, or the mountain-surrounded gold fields of northern California, they would hear more stories of mountain devils and giant hairy man-like monsters. It would be a century later before footprint casts and films and photos would introduce the world to the Pacific Northwest’s wildman of the woods – Bigfoot or sasquatch; yet an additional half century before science would begin to consider the evidence seriously.

Ah, the power of the local story...it doesn't matter that there is not and has never been a shred of physical evidence of these creatures anywhere on the planet in recent memory. If these creatures were shot at by Lewis and Clark and chased by the Shoshone Indians, we would have remains. We do not. If they had any time depth to the region, we would have remains. We do not. Remember the big rubber suit from last year?

These are nothing but stories that have migrated east from fossil sightings of Gigantopithecus in China and Vietnam. There hasn't been anything around like this for five hundred thousand years.

----------------
Now playing: Billy Joel - Prelude/Angry Young Man
via FoxyTunes

What Gigantopithecus Ate

A story in PhysOrg reports on research done on the diet of Gigantopithecus blacki, the immense primate that lived during the late Miocene in southern China and Vietnam. They write:

Drs. ZHAO LingXia, ZHANG LiZhao and WU XinZhi, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Achttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifademy of Sciences, and ZHANG FuSong from Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, analyze enamel stable carbon isotope values of G. blacki and the associated mammalian megafauna from two sites in South China, and find that this giant ape and other large mammals solely fed on C3 biomass, and lived in forest habitats, as reported in the journal of Chinese Science Bulletin, 2011(56), No.33:3590-3595.

C3 biomass sources are more primitive than C4, which include the canes and more open-field grains. This is not a surprise, just confirmation of what we suspected.

This was a truly unusual and majestic ape, standing some eight to ten feet tall. There were two species, G. bilasporensis and G. blacki, the latter of which lasted until around 300 k years ago. It is this form that is likely the impetus behind the Sasquatch and abominable snowman stories. Here is an artist' sketch, based on accumulated jaws and teeth.





----------------
Now playing: The Alan Parsons Project - The Fall Of The House Of Usher: IV. Pavane
via FoxyTunes