Having covered the very patchy impact of genetics on the field of cryptozoology, let me at last describe how Michel Sartori and I set about making our own contribution. Soon after agreeing the collaboration between Oxford and Lausanne we began to discuss the practical issue of getting hold of sufficient material to make the project worthwhile. I had thought there might be some useful samples in the Heuvelmans archive itself, but there was not. Michel and I agreed that obtaining enough material might be a serious obstacle to the project's success. We had to come up with a good plan. We decided in the end to issue a joint press release, announcing the collaboration and inviting individuals and institutions to submit samples for testing. Although we settled on this approach in the summer of 2011, it was not until the following spring that we were both sufficiently free of other commitments to cope with a large response – if there were to be one.
We drafted the following announcement:
SCIENTISTS SEARCH FOR YETI DNA
The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project
Background
Ever since Eric Shipton's 1951 Everest expedition returned with photographs of giant footprints in the snow there has been speculation that the Himalayas may be home to large creatures ‘unknown to science’. Since then, there have been many eyewitness reports of such creatures from several remote regions of the world. They are variously known as the ‘yeti’ or ‘migoi’ in the Himalayas, ‘Bigfoot or ‘sasquatch’ in America, ‘almasty’ in the Caucasus mountains and ‘orang-pendek’ in Sumatra, as well as others. Theories as to their species identification vary from surviving collateral hominid species, such as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo floresiensis, to large primates like Gigantopithecus widely thought to be extinct, to as yet unstudied primate species or local subspecies of black and brown bears.
Mainstream science remains unconvinced by these reports both through lack of testable evidence and the scope for fraudulent claims. However, recent advances in the techniques of genetic analysis of organic remains provide a mechanism for genus and species identification that is both unbiased, unambiguous and impervious to falsification.
These techniques were not available to biologists like Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, whose 1955 book Sur la Piste des Betes Ignorees (translated into English as On the Track of Unknown Animals) helped foster widespread public interest in the subject. Between 1950 and 2001, the year of his death, Dr Heuvelmans, as well as investigating numerous claims, assembled a considerable archive that is now curated by the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In this release we are pleased to announce the launch of the Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project, a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology to employ these new genetic techniques systematically to investigate organic remains from these and other cryptozoological* samples. We invite submissions of material, particularly hair shafts, for analysis accompanied by details of their provenance. For submission procedures please visit http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/academic/GBFs-v/OLCHP.
The principal investigators are Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford and Michel Sartori, Director of the Museum of Zoology, Lausanne.
*Cryptozoology: The search for animals whose existence is not proven.
The press release was sent out on 22 May 2012. Nothing happened until two days later, when I was contacted by Reuters, the press agency. After their report went out on the wires, the floodgates opened. Both Michel and I were inundated by interview requests from newspapers, radio and television.
I was pleased to see that there were very few comments about whether or not this was an appropriate subject for investigation by ‘serious’ scientists. The only one I encountered came from a professor of anthropology in St Louis, Missouri, and which was put to me in an Associated Press interview. He considered any research in this area to be both frivolous and futile but I responded that he had basically misunderstood the philosophy of science. I was making no claims that anomalous primates existed, or did not exist, but doing what science is all about – finding and testing evidence. I added that I did not have to believe what I was told, or even form an opinion. I just needed to test the evidence. Michel had a similar response from a professor of paleogenetics from Mainz, Germany who said in a radio interview: ‘I only fear that the examined questions, which are not really relevant to zoology, but rather belong to the boulevard press and can present some interest to the public, will never be discussed by serious zoologists.’ Other than those two rather mild admonishments, I was pleased to see that we had not stirred up much resistance to our project.
This media interest rumbled on during the following months. Michel and I were filmed in Lausanne by NBC for the Today show, which went out to their audience of 100 million people all over the world. The magnitude of the response at least showed that what we were doing was popular. Perhaps even more important, it also brought a good number of responses from individuals who told us about material they had that they were willing to submit for testing. In no time, my office in Oxford and Michel's in Lausanne were filling up with all sorts of yeti samples. We knew we would have enough material for a decent project.
However, not all of the samples were submitted in a formal way. I had specified that potential donors should email some details of what material they had, then Michel and I would make a decision about whether to include it in the study. Most contributors complied admirably and returned their hair samples in one of the sample bags that I sent out to them as a package, complete with a pair of disposable gloves. This was designed to prevent contamination through handling; although I could remove that, I hoped it would also give contributors the impression that they should be careful. Each proper submission was accompanied by a numbered consent form that gave us permission to analyse the sample, and confirmed that the donor was in a position to donate the sample to the project. Michel had kindly agreed that, when the project was over, unused material could be accessioned in the Heuvelmans archive in his museum. Contributors could choose between having their material kept in Lausanne for further study in the future, or returned to them after analysis. The great majority chose to have their unused material accessioned. As I was to discover as the project proceeded, so many samples that I heard or read about had been lost or could not be located. Michel and I were keen to make sure this didn't happen to our samples and that they would be made available to researchers in the future.
All these precautions did not prevent the arrival of samples without warning and unaccompanied by a consent form or any other documentation. One package arrived in Oxford from Colorado containing three hair samples, each in Ziploc bags, which was fine. But they were not labelled, there was no indication which sample was which, nor any information about where they had been found or what made the donor think they had come from a Bigfoot. There was a note with a name and address, but nothing else, so at least I was able to return them to the owner with a request that he label them, give me some information and send them back. They never arrived.
Although I had agreed a good rate for the DNA analysis at Terry Melton's lab, it was not so low that I could send every sample off for testing without a second thought. At least I thought I should have a look at them under a microscope. It was a good job I did, because they were obviously not all hairs. One looked like plant material, roots of some kind, with clearly branching fibres which is not a feature of mammalian hair. Another sample looked very odd indeed. The fibres were dead straight, very thin with a satin sheen and no visible internal structure. I set aside the samples I wasn't sure about and took them to the US Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory in Oregon later that year before selecting what to send to Terry's lab for DNA analysis. This kind of visual screening certainly saved the expense of pointless testing, but if I was in any doubt and if the provenance was good, off it went to the lab in any case.
As time went on, and news of our project spread through the Internet, samples arrived in Oxford at regular intervals. Even though I had made it clear that I was only going to work on hairs, this preference didn't stop a range of other materials being offered, or in some cases arriving in Oxford unannounced.
More than once I was asked if I would be able to analyse objects that donors believed had been touched by a Bigfoot. One I recall was from a lady in Tennessee with a family of Bigfoot living on her farm. This family had been there for many years and she knew them all by sight, though oddly had never managed to take a photograph. She used to leave sausages for them on the back porch at night in a plastic sandwich box. In the morning the sausages were gone, and there was saliva and bite marks on the sandwich box which she kindly offered to send me for DNA testing. I declined, and not just because this sounded like a very tall story, but because I could not decontaminate slime on a sandwich box in the same way I could a hair.
I did, however, accept one saliva sample and that was because the story behind it was so striking. This was from a gentleman in Washington State who had been driving home one night when a Bigfoot leapt onto the bonnet of his car and tried to attack him through the windscreen. In so doing the creature left a layer of slime on the screen before it fell off. The driver, realising he may have proof of Bigfoot, had the windscreen removed and stored it in his garage wrapped in cling film. I was so enthralled by this story that I sent my correspondent a DNA swab with instructions to get a sample of slime from the windscreen. This was duly returned and sent off to the lab. A week later the result came back with a definitive identification of the creature. It was a cow.
Another case of an unorthodox sample came to my attention when my contacts in the Bigfoot world alerted me to the excitement surrounding a sasquatch skull that had been discovered on the Colville tribal area of eastern Washington State. This was obviously an extremely important find as it would not only allow a DNA identification but also a proper anatomical investigation. Was this the vital piece of evidence that the world had demanded for so long? If so, when the sceptics asked ‘Show me a body,’ the Colville skull could be produced with a flourish. I was getting excited by the prospect, and so I asked my contact to send me a photograph of the skull.
It duly arrived, not crystal clear but in good enough focus to see the top of the skull. The feature which had immediately convinced my contacts of its Bigfoot origins was the prominent sagittal crest, a bony extension which ran across the top of the skull. This is a feature of all great apes, especially the gorilla, where it secures one end of the massive jaw muscles the great ape needs to chew its food. At a stroke, so it seemed, the mystery of Bigfoot had been solved. It was a great ape, like a gorilla and, since its sagittal crest was even more pronounced than that, this Bigfoot was most likely a vegetarian endowed with the muscular equipment to pulverise the toughest plant.
The Colville skull was lacking any facial bones or teeth, but I was not unduly disturbed by this omission. Who knows how old it may have been and, in any event, many skulls are fragmented when they are first discovered. For example the Neanderthal skull unearthed in Spy in Belgium in 1886 had the top of the skull separated from the facial bones. The frontal bone of the skull of a Neanderthal child from La Cariguela de Pinar in southern Spain is similarly detached from the face. I was about to impress upon my informants that this skull must be secured for science at all costs, and even considered offering to help finance an expedition to Colville to recover this unique piece of evidence, when I had second thoughts.
It was Christmas, and as usual we were having turkey. On Boxing Day the remains of the bird went into the pot to make stock. After it had simmered for most of the day, the now de-fleshed carcass was lifted out of the saucepan and put on one side ready for disposal. I must have been thinking about the Colville skull because, looking at the carcass, I could see the same sagittal crest on the Christmas turkey as I had seen on the Bigfoot specimen. I rushed through to my computer, and looked again at the image of the Colville skull. It was similar, but not identical to the turkey. A little relieved, but not much, I hesitated in offering to cover the cost of the expedition to recover the Colville skull until I had a second opinion. If it wasn't a turkey, then was it perhaps a goose? There was only one way to find out, so I bought one, cooked it and cut the flesh away from the breast. And there was the Colville skull. There was no doubt about it. The sagittal crest certainly supported muscles, the flight muscles of a goose rather than the powerful jaws of Bigfoot. The odd indentations around the Colville skullcap were the insertion points for the ribs. I emailed my contacts to call off the expedition, only to hear that Dr Jeff Meldrum had also come to the same conclusion as to the skull's anserine origins.
It was around this time that I agreed terms for a television documentary with Harry Marshall of Icon Films that would follow the yeti project. It had been Harry who, ten years earlier, had made the film about the Bhutanese migoi I mentioned earlier. It had been beautifully made and I had enjoyed working with him. However, the new documentary was an enterprise on a quite different scale. Whereas my contribution to the Bhutan film had been limited to the three DNA analyses carried out by my lab, this time Harry persuaded the UK broadcaster Channel 4 to commission three one hour films covering the entire project. That was very good news of course, but it did change the timetable of my own research. Naturally, Harry wanted to know the results of the DNA tests I was carrying out on the specimens that I had already received. I was keen not to know the results until after I had spoken at greater length to the sample donors. I was sure that had I known the test results before I interviewed the donors, it would influence the direction of our conversation. Also, I needed to get out into the field on my own, unaccompanied by the film crew, and try to dig up some more interesting material. I had always planned to do this, but the filming schedule for the documentary made me act more quickly than I otherwise would.
I am very glad I did so, as you will gather from the following chapters, as I introduce you to the characters I met on my several journeys. I never travelled without my voice recorder so most of what you read is taken from recordings with only the lightest editing.