Bryan Sykes’s Bhutanese and Indian Yeti hair analysis

Record summary

Geneticist Bryan Sykes and colleagues examined hair attributed to Yeti-type creatures from Bhutan and the Ladakh region of India. The 2014 paper reported that one unusual Bhutanese sample closely matched DNA associated with an ancient polar-bear lineage, while other samples were identifiable as ordinary mammals. The result briefly became a major cryptozoological claim and is useful for comparing specimen provenance, contamination, and taxonomic overinterpretation. Later work challenged the polar-bear reading, making the paper and its correction history more important than the sensational headline.