Yeti's foot found? Something new anyway.

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Yuriy Malofeyev, the Russian association of veterinary anatomists.

It's only a paw, and estimated to be several thousand years old...

Siberian scientists say they have a discovery on their hands which raises the possibility that the local legend of the yeti - the abominable snowman - is more than mere fiction.

According to Russian TV, the well-preserved furry limb of a mystery creature was found some 3,500 metres up in the permafrost of the Altay mountains, in Russia's remote Siberia region.

"I turned the limb over and examined the sole of the foot, and I thought it looked unsual," Sergey Semenov, the mountain-climber who made the find, said.

"So I decided to bring it back with me."

Scientific tests and X-rays show that the bones are several thousand years old, but attempts to identify the creature they belonged to remain inconclusive.

Continued.......BBC story.

Just when I thought the news couldn't get any weirder. I'll lay even odds its a bear. To actually be a side branch of the human tree it would have to be hundreds of thousands of years old.

Unless ofcourse it remains an undiscovered species, subsisting in the ice wastes where few humans could survive it might have only died out recently. Kind of fits the Yeti legend doesn't it. That would be remarkable but not at all impossible. Animals confined to small areas where fossils would be difficult to find, might have eluded our animal lists. Surviving only in folklore.

Perhaps there were Troll's before the internet came along.

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Silly roadkill! There's no Yeti!

*hides furry children*

 

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Well, yeah, looks like a bear paw, but who's to say that Yeti sightings aren't a rare species of bear? To be honest, If I saw a bear, I'd crap myself, so I don't think my recollection of the event would be that clear. If it was a strange looking bear, who knows what garbage I'd come out with?

 

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the bottom of a bear paw is a much smaller "palm" area than this. see the paw casting here:
http://www.nsummit.k12.ut.us/pages/yellowstone2002/day5.html

this could always be an old/mummified paw of an extinct species, or a mutated individual. Odd that only the paw was found.

 

Something else might have eaten it and thrown the paw to one side. Big cat perhaps or.....dare I say it........humans. Even if it was another hominid there is some evidence to support the idea that our early cro-magnon ancestors had cannibalistic tendencies. So another hominid might have been readily thrown in the cooking pot. Ofcourse, it could be anything. A whole bunch of large mammals went extinct a few thousand years ago. Mammoths are found in Siberia all the time. From the look of those sharp toe nails I'd guess it was a carnivore. That would explain the rarity of it. Carnivores are much scarcer than herbivores.

 

sad... if only the full body could be found....
but this discovery is nice nevertheless. A paw of 'an unknown species' bearing resemblance to a bear's?
Hey, wait a second..... Is it true that mammoths which are frozen dead retain all their (stiff, for sure) organs?

 

http://www.prehistorics.com/arctodus.htm



The last Sentence is rather interesting:

Arctodus was exceptionally long legged, and unlike modern bears, the toe bones of Arctodus articulate straight out in front so they were not pigeon-toed. This gave Arctodus a fast purposeful gait, and an increased ability to run down prey. This is a common physical characteristic of purely carnivorous animals such as lions, or wolves.

 

I see what you mean. Those legs go all the way to its body!

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Seriously though, that would be one hell of a killing machine. Could be our foots owner. A juvenile Arctodus. Giant short-faced bears might look ape like from a distance. That shortened snout is quite human like.

 

In comparison to a lucky rabbits foot
how lucky would a yetis foot on a tacky key chain be?
And how long before they're cheaply mass produced?