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Yeti Bears Up Under Scrutiny

Posted by timothy on from the hey-hey-boo-boo dept.

Rambo Tribble writes "Bryan Sykes of Oxford University has discovered that hairs, ostensibly from the Yeti creature of the Himalayas, were '... genetically identical to polar bear.' What the professor is suggesting is that a rare hybrid of brown and polar bear may be the actual, elusive creature of legend."

6 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How hard can it be? by rally2xs · · Score: 5, Informative

    What's hard about it is that its in the Hymalyas, and from the sound of things, people that see it in the clear would say, "Oh, that's a bear" and people that have it come out of a snowstorm and try to eat them think its the abominable snowman...

  2. Re:Errr... wat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If it's "genetically identical" to a polar bear, well... doesn't that mean it's a polar bear?

    Prof Sykes found that he had a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago - a time when the polar bear and closely related brown bear were separating as different species.

    So it is a polar bear, just not a modern polar bear.

  3. Re:Hmmmm .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pizzly Bear

  4. Re:Hmmmm .... by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Polar/brown bear hybrids are rare... not undocumented

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly–polar_bear_hybrid

  5. Re:So is anyone shocked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    How to get modded "Insightful" on Slashdot, tip #56:

    Bash religion.

  6. Re:Errr... wat? by Will.Woodhull · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm blowing off some mod points to post this. Oh well. This is arguably more important than saying something is +1 Funny.

    Homology is a term related to convergent evolution. It means that appearance of structures in different species is similar, even though the genetic history-- the evolution-- is very different. The genetics are different. This study found that the genetics between a candidate yeti and an ancient polar bear were identical. By its very definition, homoplasy is not an applicable term.

    Stripping this post of connective verbiage that can be inferred, the take-away from this is that

    1. While adding fancy new words to your vocabulary is commendable,

    2. It is also necessary to actually learn what the new word means before using it.

    --
    Will