Untimely Yeti Footprints found in Siberia

Siberian Yeti foot print (© Photo: «Vesti.Ru»)

We use the word "untimely" because usually Yeti news in the Shoria region falls in late September and early October. This timing usually funnels right into the tourism season starting with Yeti Day on November 11th. Of course this does not dis-qualify the great research (read our Kemerovo news coverage) being done in the region, we are only asserting that the Yeti is not usually on the minds of the population and media until Yeti Day begins to approach.

Below is an article from the Voice of Russia. 

Do yetis exist after all?

Maria Domnitskaya

Jun 19, 2012 18:31 Moscow Time

Fresh footprints of a yeti have recently been found in the region of Gornaya Shoria in Siberia. This picturesque mountainous area is sometimes dubbed a “Siberian Switzerland”.

A group of Italian scientists plans to visit Gornaya Shoria to look for more evidence that yetis really exist.

This is not the first time that footprints which are believed to belong to these mysterious creatures have been discovered in this region. Some local residents claim that they have seen yetis with their own eyes. As a rule, yetis’ footprints are found in the vicinity of the Azasskaya Cave and the Karatag Mountain.

Yetis’ footprints are bigger than those of humans – they can reach 45 cms in length. That’s why yetis are also called “Bigfoot”.

Gornaya Shoria has already become to be associated with claims of evidence that yetis exist. Every year, the tourist season in the local mountains opens with a celebration of ‘Yeti Day’, when tourists can find yeti souvenirs all over Shoria.

Local hunters call Bigfoot “the spirit of the taiga”.

In October 2011, a delegation of US, Canadian, Swedish, Estonian and Russian scientists explored the Azasskaya Cave. They didn’t find a yeti, but discovered a large footprint and small samples of hair inside it.

The hairs were up to 8 cms long, curly, gray along the whole length except at the root which was black.

The hair samples were taken to St. Petersburg and thoroughly examined at a local zoological institute. It turned out that they were identical to which was thought to be yetis’ hairs found earlier in California in the US, as well as outside St. Petersburg and in the Ural Mountains in Russia.

One of the members of the expedition, a member of St. Petersburg and New York academies, Valentin Sapunov says:

“These hairs are very similar to the other hairs which were found in 4 different parts of the world and are believed to be yeti hairs. The results from the tests conducted by the scientists indicate that these hair samples are very likely to belong to creatures of one and the same species. A scientific mistake would be highly unlikely.”

However, only genetic testing can prove or disprove that yetis are related to the Homo Sapiens. An attempt made by Russian scientists to examine the DNA of yetis’ hair samples found near St. Petersburg and in the Urals was unsuccessful due to lack of appropriate equipment. But when US scientists announced that the results of their testing apparently proved that the DNA of the yeti’s hair from California was in no way different to that of the Homo Sapiens, very few people actually believed them.

At present, Russian scientists are trying to extract DNA from the hair samples believed to be those of a yeti, which were found in the Azasskaya Cave.

In the meantime, a well-known genetic Professor Bryan Sykes from Oxford University is concluding his own tests. Using equipment of the latest generation, Professor Sykes is trying to prove that yetis really exist. As a sample, he uses what is believed to be yeti remains, which are held at the Museum of Zoology in the Swiss city of Lausanne.

Professor Sykes has posted a request on the museum website, which asks everyone, who may possess what they believe to be yeti remains, to send them to Professor Sykes for testing.

He promises to announce the results of the testing in December.

Kemerovo Gov Offers 30K Reward for Finding Siberian Yeti

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to report on the economy/financial side of Bigfoot news. The actual reward is 1 million rubles, which is roughly equal to over $31,000. Below, is a great article with a companion video embedded below.

We should mention that the Governor offers to have Tea with the Yeti. This is not the first time he has offered 1 million rubels and a tea party with the Yeti. The governor said the same thing last year in our post, "Tea party with the Yeti?"



And don't miss our previous Kemerovo Siberian Yeti coverage. We covered most of the main stream stuff, plus some exclusives to Bigfoot Lunch Club.

Bigfoot Hunters Detect Signs of the Hairy Beast in Siberia
Officials Host Conference, Offer Reward; 'We Need to Sit Down With Him, Drink Some Tea'

By ALAN CULLISON
October 25th 2011

TASHTAGOL, Russia—Stooping to the damp floor of a darkened cave, Anatoly Fokin picked some thin filaments from a muddy footprint. "I found some hair, some real hair," he said, pulling the strands apart. "And here there are more—maybe it was a girl."

Mr. Fokin crept further into the chill, followed by a horde of television crews and photographers. Cameras illuminated more footprints and a bed of dried brush in a recess of the cavern. "This is unusual and good evidence," said Mr. Fokin, who dropped his full-time work as an architect to spend more time on hunts like this one. "A Yeti has been here."

Throughout the world, lore persists about wild hairy creatures walking upright through woods. In the U.S. they are called Bigfoot and Sasquatch, in Russia the Snow Person and Forest Creature. Tibet spawned the names Yeti and Abominable Snowman.

Dismissed as myth by scientists, Yetis are mainly the province of enthusiasts, and in Russia they've gotten an unexpected boost from the government. Siberian officials this month sponsored nature lovers, scientists and foreigners who claim they have socialized with Bigfoots to attend an International Scientific-Practical Conference on Hominology.

Hominology, a still-unrecognized branch of biology that studies hairy upright walking creatures, is championed by a handful of Russian devotees who hope to spark a revolution in evolutionary theory by contacting one of the many tribes of Bigfoots they say are living undetected in woods around the world, including in North America and Russia.

With government help, that day may be drawing near. Siberian officials issued a press release saying the three-day event this month turned up "irrefutable evidence" that such a creature—known to locals as a Snow Person—has been squatting in a Kemerovo cave 2,000 miles east of Moscow. Field trips into the surrounding mountains also turned up what they said were telltale signs of Yeti wanderings, such as bent and twisted branches, and underbrush that served as a bed.

Local officials say they will now make efforts to contact the beast, who hasn't yet been photographed. They will also begin funding a permanent center for Bigfoot research at Siberia's Kemerovo State University.

Kemerovo Gov. Aman Tuleyev is offering a one million ruble, or about $31,500, reward to anyone who finds a Yeti, telling Russian television, "We need to sit down with him, drink some tea and talk about life." Russian heavyweight boxing champion Nikolai Valuyev, who at nearly 7 feet tall is known as the "Beast from the East," made a foray into the woods last month to look for the creature, but came out saying he only found broken branches and footprints.

Officials say they would also like to drum up some tourism for Kemerovo, a poverty-stricken region known more for its coal mine accidents than alpine beauty. But Vladimir Makuta, the top official of Tashtagol, says he is a genuine believer in "a kind of forest spirit" who has been aiding and undermining hunters in the woods.

The very existence of a Yeti is looked upon askance by mainstream scientists, who say all the upright-walking mammals have long ago been discovered and categorized.

They dismiss evidence compiled by Yeti hunters as a mass of unverified sightings, fuzzy photographs and film clips, and footprints that have been planted by hucksters.

Lately, Bigfoot sightings have been on the rise in the U.S. Once confined to the Pacific Northwest and Appalachia, today they have spread as far as Texas, Florida and New England, says Brian Regal, a Bigfoot debunker and assistant professor of history of science at Kean University in New Jersey.

"Meeting Bigfoot has become the encounter du jour," says Mr. Regal, a native of New Jersey. "You can't spit over here without someone saying there's a monster living in the woods."

That has also made Bigfoot searching a growing business, in the same way UFO-ology became a trade since the 1950s, Mr. Regal says. Today the Internet hosts a range of websites devoted to Bigfoot happenings, while tour guides offer excursions in search of the creature.

Russia's own Bigfoot industry has been a laggard. An early enthusiast was Soviet historian Boris Porshnev, who believed Bigfoots in Russia were a relict strain of leftover Neanderthals or cavemen.

With government funding, Mr. Porshnev launched a Soviet Snowperson Commission that after 1958 trudged through the Pamir Mountains of modern-day Tajikistan and the Caucasus region. The group turned up no snowmen, only alleged footprints whose outlines they cast in plaster.

"They were addicted to this subject in the 1950s and 1960s and blew through a whole program," says Oleg Pugachuyov, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Zoological Institute in St. Petersburg. "They never found any real evidence. It was a myth."

But former colleagues of the late Mr. Porshnev still hold a candle for him, along with a collection of plaster casts at the International Center of Hominology in Moscow. Igor Burtsev, the center's director, says that with government support he is hoping he can establish synergy with Yeti hunters in the U.S., whom he visited last year and who "are far ahead of Russia in research."

Mr. Burtsev has visited conferences and gone on hunts in the U.S., staying for a week in rural Michigan, where Robin Lynne, 48, says she has been feeding a family of Bigfoots outside her home for two years.

Hosted by the regional government, Ms. Lynne flew to Siberia for the conference this month, where a tour bus with police escort drove participants to a hunting lodge in the piney outback. There, Ms. Lynne described how the Bigfoots bang on her door, bring her sticks as presents and drink water from a bucket in the yard when the weather is warm. "They love the bucket," she told the group.

Also attending was Jeff Meldrum, an associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University.

Mr. Meldrum, who believes Bigfoot may exist, says he favors a "scientific approach" to the subject.

During the trip to the cave, he worried that the footprints they found were only for a right foot, none from a left. They also seemed to be stamped too perfectly, he said.

"I'd like to see progress," he said. "But some of this makes me suspicious."

SRC: The Wall Street Journal, page A1

More Pictures from the Kemerovo Siberian Yeti Conference

Igor Burtsev (center standing) at the kick-off press conference. The 7ft. tall boxing champ Nikolai "beast from the east" Valuev is sitting on the panel (far right.)

As promised here are more pictures from the Kemerovo Yeti Conference provided by Ron Morehead. Morehead is best known for his audio recordings of Sasquatch vocalization, known as The Sierra Sounds. The Sierra Sounds Volume #1 "Bigfoot Recordings" is self-described as a selection of audio clips captured by Morehead, that reveal very clear Bigfoot vocalizations captured on a crisp night at a remote wilderness camp.

Ron Morehead was specifically tapped by Igor Burtsev, director of the International Centre of Hominology in Tashtagol and head of the 'Yeti institute' at Kemerovo State University, to join the expedition. Along with Igor Burtsev and Ron Moreheead, attendees included scientist from 7 different countries gathering in Kemerovo region 3,000 miles – and four time zones – east of Moscow.

The conference took place earlier this month (October, 2011)and produced several headlines that included the words "95% Certainty and Indisputable Proof" of the existence of Yeti.

Below are pictures from the expedition including a picture of the "nest" that was reported as one of the indisputable proofs.

Interesting ten foot tree branch formations on the way to the Kemerovo cave.

A closer look of the tree branch formations suggest these braches became intertwined early on and continued to become woven by nature.

Directly out side the Kemerovo cave

Inside the cave looking out.

Dr. Jeff Meldrum taking a closer look at the Yeti nest, reported as evidence from the expedition.

A cropped version of the above photo with the brightness adjusted for easier viewing (click to enlarge)

This is the size of the crew that was on the expedition taking a lunch break.