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The two lucky winners of the CRYPTID CHRONICLES TUMBLR 200 CONTEST of 2012 were Gommetrik and Koshkavshliape who were both kind enough to share these awesome photos of themselves with their giveaway prizes and to provide a little background of how they became interested in cryptozoology and this blog!
Gommetrik shares: “I first found this Tumblr page after hearing a story from a friend that was eerily similar to that of the Enfield Horror. To show her what the creatures looked like from that particular story, I searched Tumblr (rather than google images, for some reason) and discovered that Cryptid Chronicles had made a post about it around the same time. Since then, I have been following the page. Cryptozoology has always been something of interest to me, from when I grew up with stories of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, to today where I am searching for a link between Chalkley Steelman Leeds (First mayor of Atlantic City, New Jersey) to the Leeds family that is connected to the Jersey Devil. (Not pictured above is a sticker of the Jersey Devil that was included in the package. Sydney has been a huge help in suggesting different books that I should read about the subject.) I see cryptozoology as a persistent branch of science that seeks to give complete explanations for strange occurrences. While it is not given as much credit as other branches of science, one must consider that several creatures that we know of today were once considered to by cryptids, such as the Okapi and a wide variety of animals from Australia. Simply because one cannot find something easily does not mean that it does not exist.”
Koshkavshliape shares: “Cryptid Chronicles is AWESOME for doing this amazing giveaway! The package came decorated completely with cryptid stickers, and the prizes inside were even better. I received a 54” plush anaconda, which I have named Andy, and who lives on my couch. He’s an excellent cuddler for watching TV! My other prize was a Kraken mouse pad, which not only I use, but my boyfriend tries to steal on occasion. I love my prizes! I’ve always been fascinated in some way with cryptozoology because the thought of elusive creatures in the wild we’ve only caught glimpses of is just amazing. I’m hugely interested in wildlife, so the possibility of there being these amazing creatures (whether really “wild” or not) who’ve managed to avoid mankind all these years really holds my interest. I love when new discoveries are made, and the possibility of finding concrete evidence of ANY cryptozoological creature is enough to keep me interested. I’d love to find out more about these creatures!”
I would like to again thank everyone for their participation in last year’s contest and in helping promote the wonderful world of cryptozoology! It’s so great to know there are so many people out there that are helping to celebrate Cryptozoology and this blog is dedicated to all of those worldwide fans and exists also to honour and show my endless support and gratitude toward the many biologists and other scientists, researchers, authors and investigators that have seriously contributed to this field.
There will be another giveaway again later this year, so stay tuned for that announcement!
And how about one more round of applause for this contest’s winners!
Thank you!
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com
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Mystery of Severed “Yeti” Finger from the Pangboche Hand Solved
Set high in a remote Himalayan mountain range stands the Pangboche Buddhist monastery.
During heavy snowstorms, it can be found only by travellers who listen for the monks’ ceremonial horns.
The walls are lined with traditional Nepalese paintings depicting the treacherous tracks to the monastery.
And among them are pictures of the legendary ape-like creature we refer to as the Yeti.
This might seem fanciful until you learn that, for many years, a shriveled hand (about the size of an adult human’s, with long, fat fingers and curling nails) was also on display in the monastery — and revered by the monks, who believed it protected them from bad luck.
A finger was taken from the monastery by Bigfoot researcher Peter Byrne and was smuggled out of the country, so the story goes, by beloved Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart, who hid it amid his wife’s lingerie. 
Jimmy Stewart and Yeti
The monstrous finger ended up in the possession of Dr. William Osman Hill, who had searched for the yeti in the 1950s on behalf of Texas millionaire Tom Slick; Hill later bequeathed the finger to the Royal College of Surgeons, where it has been for more than half a century. .
Turns out, it’s just a regular old human finger — albeit one with a very interesting history.
The yeti is said to be a muscular beast weighing between 200 and 400 pounds and covered with dark grayish or reddish-brown hair. As in the case of its North American counterpart, Bigfoot, most of the evidence of its existence comes from fuzzy sightings, oversize footprints in the snow, or the occasional strand of funny-looking hair.
The finger has generated controversy among Bigfoot and yeti believers for decades and, until relatively recently, when researchers at the Edinburgh Zoo performed DNA analysis on the mysterious digit, it was impossible to know for certain what kind of animal it belonged to.
If it is indeed a Yeti finger, then the mysterious beast is even more man-like than anyone imagined. According to the researchers’ DNA analysis, the Yeti finger is human, perhaps from the corpse of a monk. But definitely human.
Rob Ogden of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland explained to BBC News: “We had to stitch it together. We had several fragments that we put into one big sequence, and then we matched that against the database and we found human DNA.” The researchers said that the result “wasn’t too surprising, but obviously slightly disappointing.”
It is not the first yeti claim to be debunked by science. In 1960 Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Mount Everest, searched for evidence of the beast and found a “scalp” that scientists later determined had been fashioned from the skin of a serow, a Himalayan animal similar to a goat.
Earlier this year a team of researchers in Russia claimed to have found “indisputable proof” of the yeti, though so far the evidence has fallen far short of the claims. If populations of yetis really exist, they, like Bigfoot, have somehow managed to avoid leaving any physical traces of their presence: bodies, bones, teeth, hair, or anything else.
Second Photo copyright by The Daily Mail, Yeti Everest Expedition in 1954, where a team of scientists managed to track several trails of giant footprints on their trek
You may also be interested in
Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide
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Hammer’s New Abominable Snowman Movie
Word has leaked out that the new reconstituted Hammer Films is working on doing something with their 1957 film, The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (which is also entitled, simply Abominable Snowman).
Late in March 2012, Hammer’s CEO Simon Oakes was quoted in Variety as saying they were “remaking Abominable Snowman in Nepal.”
Oakes told Indie Wire that they plan to explore some of the weird old films that made Hammer famous.
“We’re looking at a monster movie right now as Hammer did The Abominable Snowman and The Reptile, ” Oakes said, while clarifying these new films intent: “More rebooting than remaking.”
The “Tom Friend” character in the original film, was loosely and rather negatively based on a few news reports circulating of Tom Slick planning to search for the Abominable Snowmen in Nepal. The press items concentrated on the rifles the Slick expedition was bringing on their hunt for the Yeti, Slick spying on the Chinese and then the 1957 movie overdid that part of their characterization of “Tom Friend.”
Allegedly, the storyline for the 2013-2014 film is going to be a reworking of the 1957 film’s plot:
Doctor John Rollason, a botanist, is on a Himalayan expedition with his wife Helen, and assistant Peter Fox.
They have been staying at the monastery of Rong-ruk, high in the mountains, where the Lhama has shown them great kindness and granted every facility for their work.
But the Lhama is aware – through a mysterious power of mind transference – that a second expedition, led by a ruthless adventurer called Tom Friend is advancing towards the monastery. Rollason, too, is aware of this expedition – and its mission. He has kept secret from his wife his ambition to join it – and he politely disregards the warning of the Lhama when he tries to dissuade him from linking forces with Friend.
Friend’s party arrives. It consists of a tough ex-trapper, Ed Shelley, a Sherpa guide named Kusang and a likeable Scots photographer, McNee.
Helen quarrels bitterly with Rollason when she learns that he and Friend plan to climb into the high valleys in search of the mysterious half-beast , half-human monster known as the Yeti or Abominable Snowman. She denies its existence, but Friend shows them a strange silver flask containing an enormous human tooth – the tooth of a Yeti.
The Lhama confirms that the flask was stolen from the monastery many years ago but Rollason is not satisfied with the gentle monk’s deliberately misleading explanation of the tooth, and is convinced that the Yeti really exist when the Lhama eventually hints at ‘A race of super-intelligent Beings who will take over the world when humanity has destroyed itself’. The five men leave Helen and Fox at the monastery and set out for the high peaks, existing on food and supplies cached by Friend along the same route a year before.
After a long hard climb, the party discover the giant footprints of a Yeti.
At this point – almost it seems by an unseen influence – disaster strikes at the party. McNee’s leg is badly injured in one of Shelley’s bear traps and at the same time, Rollason discovers that Friend’s interest in the Yeti is only a commercial one.
The squabble between Friend and Rollason ends in an ugly fight and, not long after, the half-crazed McNee is killed in a fall and Kusang the guide flees in panic from the camp to make his way safely back to the monastery. But Friend is determined to carry on – especially when Ed Shelley actually succeeds in shooting a Yeti – a gigantic creature almost eleven feet high, but with a curiously wise and gentle expression even in death.
It is obvious to them that the other Yeti to revenge their slain comrade – and Friend persuades Shelley to act as live bait in an ice-cave rigged with a steel net to trap the invading creatures.
But the trap fails. Shelley opens fire but Friend has loaded his gun with blanks – his greed has been too strong even for friendship – and Shelley dies horribly…
Weather conditions are now appalling. Menaced by a blizzard and terrorised by the strange and unearthly powers of the Yeti, even the rugged Friend is ready to pull out – taking the dead Yeti with them on a sled.
But the Yeti are relentlessly closing in – separating the two men by their uncanny powers. Demented with panic, Friend tries to shoot down the Yeti as they come for him, but his gunfire only starts an avalanche that buries him forever in the frozen wasteland.
From his refuge in the cave, Rollason watches as the huge, dim shapes of the yeti gently pick up the bodies of their comrade and depart.At the monastery, Helen and fox realise that the expedition has failed as Kusang staggers into the courtyard.
They set out with a relief party to rescue Rollason and the others and Helen is overjoyed when she finds her husband is still alive. Wearily they help him back to the monastery and it is here that Rollason shows he understands the mysterious mission of the Yeti – and the need to protect them from civilisation until their time comes to rule the world.
Questioned by the Lhama, the scientist tells him that he and his dead companions have found nothing…
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 4th, 2012 for Cryptomundo cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/2012-absm/
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Are Lake Illiamna Monsters Getting Rattled?
Is the Illiamna Volcano getting ready to rumble again? It did on March 7th. Will a full-scale eruption occur soon? On Wednesday, March 7, 2012, the Alaska Volcano Observatory issued an alert that they were closely monitoring Iliamna Volcano, 130 miles from Anchorage on the lower west side of Cook Inlet, following a period of increased seismic activity. That was before a moderate earthquake struck the upper Cook Inlet region in the wee hours of Thursday morning, March 8th, that many residents of Alaska’s largest city may have woken up to.
“Over the past three months, there have been several episodes of increased earthquake activity at Iliamna Volcano,” the AVO said. “One of these episodes is currently ongoing, and is characterized by numerous small earthquakes. This increase in earthquake activity may be related to movement of magma at depth, and additional observations including an airborne gas sampling and observation flight are being planned.”
Despite the warning, the alert level for the 10,016-foot volcano remained at “Green,” meaning that no eruptive activity or potential for imminent eruption was evident. Iliamna has no record of eruptions, though it has gone through similar periods of increased seismicity in the past. The AVO notes that an incident in 1996-97 was similar, though it didn’t result in an eruption.
The alert was issued prior to a magnitude-4.1 earthquake Thursday morning that may have woken some Southcentral Alaska residents. It was located less than 40 miles from Kenai, Soldotna, and Anchorage.
Mount Iliamna is a glacier-carved stratovolcano located approximately 215 km (134 mi) southwest of Anchorage on the west side of lower Cook Inlet. Holocene eruptive activity from Iliamna is little known, but radiocarbon dating seems to indicate at least a few eruptions, all before the European settlement of Alaska. However, fumaroles located at about 2,740 m (8,990 ft) elevation on the eastern flank produce nearly constant plumes of condensate and minor amounts of sulfurous gases. These plumes are quite vigorous and have resulted in numerous pilot reports and early historical accounts of “eruptions” at Iliamna Volcano.
The Iliamna Lake Monsters (previously posted and discussed here) are cryptids that allegedly live in Iliamna Lake in Alaska, near the Illiamna Volcano. Due to the lake’s remote location and vast size, little exploration has been done to investigate the sightings (although one person who did was Tom Slick). It has been hypothesized they could be many animals, including giant sturgeons, seals, whales, and other large fish. The length of the creature varies by sighting from ten feet to thirty feet. There is no physical evidence to prove the existence of the creatures. It may be a previously unknown giant fish or even an undiscovered whale. However, if it is a whale (unusual beluga?), it might be seen much more often when it comes up for air. But then, if there are no people around, they aren’t seen often.
The Discovery Channel featured the Hillstrand brothers, Johnathan and Andy, from the Deadliest Catch, trying to catch the alleged monster, in addition to Caddy. After viewing footage filmed at Nushagak Bay by fisherman Kelly Nash in 2009, they talked to cryptozoologist Paul Leblond, who suggested the creature was a Cadborosaurus. In the end, the brothers possibly found the creature, and tried to catch it with a fishing pole. The creature broke the line and disappeared below to the depths of the lake. They described the creature as a big fish at least 12 to 15 ft long, with a white stripe on its back.
Would an eruption of the Illiamna Volcano increase activity of the nearby lake and other watery cryptids?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 9th, 2012 for Cryptomundo
Source: cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/illiamna/
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
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THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED, WINNERS HAVE BEEN POSTED HERE!
★★★ CRYPTID CHRONICLES TUMBLR 200 CONTEST! ★★★
Welcome to the 200th Post Giveaway Contest at Cryptid Chronicles!
To show my appreciation for my Tumblr followers and in honour of supporting biologists, researchers and investigators that have helped us on this journey, i’m gifting some really interesting books and neat items to a few lucky cryptid fans participating in this giveaway!
Reblog this post to have a chance at winning one of 9 cryptid-related gifts including four Cryptozoology Books (Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology By Loren Coleman, In Search of Ogopogo: Sacred Creature of the Okanagan Waters By Arlene Gaal, Big Bird! Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters By Ken Gerhard and Tasmanian Tiger: The Tragic Tale of How the World Lost Its Most Mysterious Predator By David Owen), a 54” Plush Snake Anaconda, a Mongolian Death Worm Tote Bag, Mongolian Death Worm DVD, a Chupacabra Mug or a Kraken Attack Mousepad!
Help give Cryptid Chronicles a signal boost and you could be one of 3 Winners!
• Grand Prize Winner - First Choice of 3 items!!!!
• Second Prize Winner - Second Choice of 2 items!!!
• Third Prize Winner - Third Choice of 2 items!!
RULES:
1. Follow me on Tumblr http://cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com (All current followers are automatically entered once)
2. Reblog this post (You can reblog up to 20 times to maximize your chance of winning since each reblog counts as an entry and gives you a greater chance to win, but please do not reblog this post over 20 times)
and *** keep tags intact ***.
3. Follow me on Twitter (OPTIONAL, but counts as an entry! Tweet me @cryptidfans and tag your tweet #cryptidfanscontest so you’re entered. Existing twitter followers are automatically entered as a separate entry)
4. You must have your ask-box open.
5. If you are chosen, you have 3 days (72 hours) to respond with your full name and clear mailing details before I chose another name. All personal information remains strictly private.
6. The winner will be drawn randomly using a generator to pick the winner.
7. I will ship worldwide.
8. Giveaway ends when we reach our 199th post, winner will be announced on 200th post! I will be notifying followers where we are at every 25th post increment until we get there to help you keep track.
9. If you have unfollowed at time of 199th post, your previous entry(s) will not count.
10. Addendum: Likes do not count. Only re-blogs of this post count, not reblogs of any other posts.
11. Reblogging and deleting does not count and will disqualify you.
12. As of 3/17/2012, please only re-blog once per day, you have plenty of time!
13. If you win, you must post a pic to your tumblr of the gifts you’ve won once you receive them (preferably including yourself in the photo with a big WINNING smile, but including yourself is NOT necessary, just a pic of the items posted to your blog is totally fine!)
Disclaimer: This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by Tumblr or the authors of the books being given away or producers/manufacturers of the other items. This is just a fun way to support cryptozoology!
If you have any questions, send me a message!
Have fun and thank you for showing your support! Follow the rules! AND GOOD LUCCKKKK.
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Trinity Alps giant salamander
(Top Photo:) Asian folktales talk of giant salamanders so big they attacked boats and the humans in them.
The Trinity Alps wilderness is the second largest designated wilderness area in California spanning three national forests and covering 517,000 acres. The Trinity Alps are home to an abundance of wildlife including reports of a Giant Salamander which have trickled in for more than seven decades.
The first modern documented sighting came during the 1920’s when Frank L. Griffith, while hunting deer near the head of the New River, reported that he spotted five Giant Salamanders at the bottom of the lake ranging from 5 to 9 feet in length. Mr. Griffith further reported that he was able to catch one of these Giant Salamanders on a hook, but was unable to pull it out of the water, forcing him to let the creature go.
In 1948, after hearing Frank Griffith’s tale, biologist Thomas L. Rodgers made four different yet equally unsuccessful trips to the Trinity Alps in search of the Giant Salamander. Rodgers speculated that these Giant Salamanders may be an abnormally large group of Dicamptodon, or Pacific Giant Salamander, isolated from the more common version which only reaches approximately 1 foot in length. He also noted that they could be a relict population of Megalobatrachus, a form of Giant Salamander which inhabits the fast moving mountain streams of Japan and China and can grow to lengths of 5 or 6 feet.
In 1951 Herpetologist George S. Myers wrote a piece in the Scientific Journal which stated that he thought the link between the Trinity Alps Giant Salamander and the Asian Megalobatrachus made sense. Myers went on to recall his encounter with a Giant Salamander captured in the Sacramento River in 1939. Myers was contacted by a commercial fisherman who found the creature entangled in one of his catfish nets. Myers was able to carefully study the specimen for nearly 30 minutes and noted that it was a different color than the Japanese and Chinese species. It was a dark brown color not a slate grey color found in the Asian Giant Salamander, it also had dull yellow spots, where as those known Giant Salamanders do not have these spots. Myers writes:
The animal was a fine Megalobatrachus, in perfect condition… It was between 25 and 30 inches in length…The source of the specimen is, of course, unknown. Its strange coloration even suggested the possibility of a native Californian Megalobatrachus, which would not be surprising, but no other captures have been reported.
Several years after Myers report was published animal handler Vern Harden of Pioneer California claimed to have seen a dozen Giant Salamanders in a remote Trinity Alps lake known as Hubbard Lake. Similar to Frank Griffith’s first report, Harden claims that he managed to hook one of the creatures but was unable to pull it up, having to release it due to an oncoming snowstorm, estimating the creature to be about 8 feet long before turning it loose. Harden’s claims made it to the ears of explorer and naturalist Father Hubbard, a Jesuit scholar to which Hubbard Lake was named after. Father Hubbard noted that the whole thing sounded fantastic and perhaps Harden ought to write fiction, however, based on his examination of the growing body of eyewitness reports, there may be something more to the reports of Giant Salamanders.
During 1958 and 1959, it is believed that both Father Hubbard and his brother Captain John D. Hubbard were associated with expeditions in search of the Giant Salamanders. In 1960 Father Hubbard stated that he had established the existence of huge amphibians in the Trinity region, unfortunately for us and the rest of the cryptozoological world no record of the Hubbard expeditions can be located to this day and some speculate that they may have never even taken place.
Following Father Hubbard’s statement renowned Bigfoot hunter Tom Slick joined the leagues of Giant Salamander seekers in 1960. He told the members of his Pacific Northwest Expedition, who primarily focused on Bigfoot research, to seek out a live specimen of Giant Salamander. These instructions did not sit well with some of Slick’s hired Bigfoot Hunters who felt searching for the Giant Salamander was a waste of time that took them away from more important studies. In the end Slick and his team came back empty handed.
That same year, on September 1st 1960, three zoology professors, Robert C. Stebbins of the University of California Berkeley, Tom Rodgers of Chico State College and Nathan Cohen of Modesto Junior College formed there own Giant Salamander expedition. Tom Rogers, the same Tom Rogers who lead several unsuccessful expeditions in 1948, would later note that the team was accompanied by ten laymen who would sometimes mistake sunken logs or tree branches as Giant Salamanders.
The team was able to collect almost a dozen Pacific Giant Salamanders, Dicamptodons, but the largest was only 11 ½ inches long, a far cry from the reported 8 foot length associated with the mysterious Trinity Alps Giant Salamander. Rogers, who was deeply skeptical from the beginning, hoped that this evidence, or lack there of, would put to rest any rumors about Giant Salamanders in the Trinity Mountains.
Rogers’ official 1962 debunking of the Giant Salamander seemed to end most zoological interest in the creature, that is until 1997 when the Kyle Mizokami Trinity Alps Giant Salamanders Expedition was established. Mizokami, a Japanese American writer, put aside his research on American Indian legends, including Bigfoot, to hunt for The Trinity Alps Giant Salamander. As with similar ventures, including that of Tom Slick, Mizokami returned with no evidence to support the existence of a Giant Salamander living in the Trinity Mountians.
Kyle Mizokami’s expedition was the last mainstream project to research and seek out proof of the Trinity Alps Giant Salamander and to this day no physical evidence has been found to support the existence of such a creature. It has been noted that these Giant Salamanders may be related to the Megalobatrachus of Japan and China which belongs to the family Cryptobrachus. The largest known North American salamander belongs to this same family and is known as the Hellbender. The Hellbender can grow to 22 inches long, much smaller than the reported size of the Trinity Alps Giant Salamander.
The Evidence
As stated above no physical evidence to support the existence of the Trinity Alps Giant Salamander has been found to date.
The Sightings
During the 1920’s Frank L. Griffith reports seeing 5 Giant Salamanders ranging from 5 to 9 feet in length in the Trinity Alps’ New River.
In 1939 Thomas L. Rodgers reportedly had the opportunity to study a Giant Salamander caught in the Sacramento River. No other specimens could be located however and the creature is still considered to not exist by modern science.
In the 1940’s Vern Harden of Pioneer California claimed that he saw nearly a dozen Giant Salamanders in the remote Hubbard Lake.
Sources:
Loren Coleman’s biography of Tom Slick, “Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology”, documents his quests for the Abominable Snowmen, Loch Ness Monsters, Sumatran rhinos, Bigfoot, and Orang Pendek, and – yes – the darker, maybe black Trinity Alps’ Giant Salamanders. One of Slick’s favorite quests was for those Giant Salamanders because he was able to bring along his sons.
Further reading: Cryptozoology A To Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature
By Loren Coleman, Jerome Clark
Page Scan: Cryptobranchid Salamanders from the Paleocene and Miocene of Saskatchewan.
The Pangboche Hand is an artifact stolen from a Buddhist monastery in Pangboche, Nepal. Supporters contend that the hand is from a Yeti, a scientifically unrecognized animal purported to live in the Himalayan mountains. Critics argue the artifact is a fraud.
1 Discovery by outsiders
2 Tests and analyses
3 Replica hand
4 DNA Results
Discovery by outsiders
Oil businessman and adventurer Tom Slick first heard accounts of the possible existence of a “Yeti hand” held as a ritual artifact in the monastery at Pangboche during one of his first “Abominable Snowman” treks in 1957. The Slick expeditions were the first to bring photographs of the hand back to the West.
During later Tom Slick-sponsored expeditions in and around the Himalayas, his associates gathered more information on the “Pangboche hand,” and an effort to further examine it was planned. In 1959 Peter Byrne, a member of Slick’s expedition that year, reportedly stole pieces of the artifact after the monks who owned it refused to allow its removal for study.
Byrne claimed to have replaced the stolen bone fragments with human bones, rewrapping the hand to disguise his theft.
Byrne smuggled the bones from Nepal into India, after which actor James Stewart allegedly smuggled the hand out of the country in his luggage.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman rediscovered this story while writing Tom Slick’s biography in the 1980s. Coleman confirmed details of the incidents with written materials in the Slick archives, interviews with Byrne, and correspondence with Stewart. Byrne later confirmed the Pangboche hand story via a letter from Stewart that Byrne published in a general book on Nepalese wildlife.
During the highly-publicized 1960 World Book expedition, which had many goals including gathering intelligence on Chinese rocket launchings, Sir Edmund Hillary and Marlin Perkins took a sidetrip in Nepal to investigate the hand. Hillary was unaware of the possibility that he was looking at a combination of the original material and the human bones placed there by Byrne. Hillary determined the artifact was a hoax.
Tests and analyses
London University primatologist William Charles Osman Hill conducted a physical examination of the pieces that Byrne supplied. His first findings were that it was hominid, and later in 1960 he decided that the Pangboche fragments were a closer match with a Neanderthal.
In 1991, in conjunction with Coleman’s research, it was discovered that the Slick expedition consultant, an American anthropologist by the name of George Agogino, had retained samples of the alleged Yeti hand. The NBC program Unsolved Mysteries obtained samples and determined they were similar to human tissue, but were not human, and could only verify they were “near human.” After the broadcast of the program, the entire hand was stolen from the Pangboche monastery, and reportedly disappeared into a private collection via the illegal underground in the sale of antiquities. George Agogino, before his death on September 11, 2000, transferred his important files on the Pangboche Yeti hand to Loren Coleman.
Replica hand
In 2010 Weta Workshops produced a replica skull and hand based on photos of the missing hand and skull. Adventurer Mike Allsop will take the replica to Pangboche in 2011.
DNA Results
On 27 December 2011 it was announced that a finger belonging to the hand contained human DNA, following tests carried out in Edinburgh.
Source: Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangboche_Hand
Note: Photo 4, A finger from the Pangboche Hand was smuggled out of Nepal in 1958/9 and ended up at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, labelled “a Yeti finger from Pangboche Hand”.
