BBC News: Pangboche Finger is Human, not Yeti

DNA tests support Pangboche finger is human

If you stayed up late last night (or actually early this morning)  you could hear the conclusion of the DNA test on the Pangboche Finger. As we announced yesterday on our post BBC Radio 4: Full Results of Pangboche Yeti Finger Test the Pangboche Finger was an artifact that was stolen from the Pangboche Monastery and believed to belong to a Yeti.

Below is an Excerpt from the a BBC article that followed the broadcast of the Radio show. The article confirms the results that support the finger is, indeed, human.

Yeti expeditionProfessor Hill's notes recorded that the finger had been brought to him by Peter Byrne, a former explorer and mountaineer. 

Mr Byrne is now 85, and living in the United States, I discovered. When he recently visited London, I arranged to meet him. 

He did indeed bring the yeti's finger to London, he explained. His story began in 1958, when he was a member of an expedition sent to the Himalayas, to look for evidence of the legendary Abominable Snowman. 

"We found ourselves one day camped at a temple called Pangboche," Mr Byrne told me. 

Peter Byrne was photographed in 1958/9 with the head lama at Pangboche monastery

"The temple had a number of Sherpa custodians. I heard one of them speaking Nepalese, which I speak.  

"He told me that they had in the temple the hand of a yeti which had been there for many years. 

"It looked like a large human hand. It was covered with crusted black, broken skin. 

"It was very oily from the candles and the oil lamps in the temple. The fingers were hooked and curled." 

"Osmond Hill said, 'You have got to get this hand. We've got to see it. We want to examine it.' But I had already asked the lamas there if I could have the hand and they said no, it would bring bad luck, disaster to the temple if it was taken away."Prof Hill and Mr Slick asked Mr Byrne to go back and at least try to get one finger with permission from the temple's custodians. 

The plan was to replace the missing finger with a human finger. Prof Hill then brought out a brown paper bag and tipped out a human hand onto the table."It was several months old and dried. I never asked him where he got it from."Returning to the temple, he gave a donation in return for the finger, and then wired the human finger onto the relic. 

The expedition sponsor Tom Slick helped ensure the finger would reach London safely with the help of his friend, the Hollywood actor James Stewart and his wife Gloria who were in India at the time. 

They were to meet in the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, said Mr Byrne.Continue reading the main story"They were a little bit worried about customs, so Gloria hid it in her lingerie case and they got out of India no trouble." 

"They arrived at Heathrow, but the lingerie case was missing," 

A few days later, a customs official returned the case to the Hollywood couple, reassuring Gloria that a British customs officer would "never open a lady's lingerie case." 

The finger was handed over to Prof Hill after which, Mr Byrne explained, he lost contact with him. 

DNA testBut could this finger really have come from a yeti? 

The Royal College of Surgeons granted a request for a DNA test to be carried out on a tiny sliver of the finger. 

The finger is of human origin, according to Dr Rob Jones, senior scientist at the Zoological Society of Scotland. 

"We have got a very, very strong match to a number of existing reference sequences on human DNA databases. 

"It's very similar to existing human sequences from China and that region of Asia but we don't have enough resolution to be confident of a racial identification."

Src: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16264752 

Want to listen to the conclusion? Matthew Hill presents Yeti's Finger on BBC Radio 4.