Tópico: [en] DNA tests squelch Canadian sasquatch discovery

[Galileo]

DNA tests squelch Canadian sasquatch discovery
Jul 28, 2005      
By Scott Pattison (Reuters)

EDMONTON, Alberta - Big Foot will remain just a tall tale, for a while at least, after DNA hair samples thought to be from the mythic creature turned out to be bison hair.

Researchers said on Thursday that a mysterious clump of hair found in the Yukon Territory is from a North American bison and not from the elusive ape-like sasquatch, or Big Foot, said to haunt the woods of western Canada.

"The DNA profile of the hair sample we received from the Yukon earlier this week clearly matches reference DNA profiles from North American bison," said David Coltman, a wildlife geneticist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. "However, if you're a believer, we haven't disproved there is a Big Foot out there," Coltman said.

Hair and large footprints were discovered by two witnesses who claimed to have spotted a large and furry ape-like figure dash through the bush this month near Teslin, a village about 100 miles east of the Yukon capital of Whitehorse.

Coltman often works with Yukon wildlife officials and agreed to test the samples using a chemical solution to separate the DNA material from the hair shaft so that the gene sequences could be compared with the known sequences of other animals.

"DNA is quite powerful at detecting new species. It's the genetic blueprint for a potential organism."

The legend of an ape-like, or human-like, creature lurking in the mountains of western Canada and the United States goes back to a time before Europeans settled in the continent.

The word "sasquatch" was derived in the 1920s from tales of the Chehalis Indians in British Columbia.

Coltman's decision to test the hair drew media interest from around the world, although he had suspected from the beginning that the tufts came from a bison. "People want to hold on to these myths that something unknown is possibly living in their backyard," Coltman said. "I think it's highly unlikely that the sasquatch exists; however, it's not really scientific to disbelieve anything either. You must always maintain an objective mind," he said.

Coltman has since turned down a request from a Wisconsin woman to analyze fur from a wolf/man hybrid creature spotted frequently in the badger state.

[uiliníli]

The worst thing it could happen to sasquatch species if they really exist is being discovered by our species.
But I think it´s very unlike there´s an animal such as the big-foot in North America, since there are no other big primate species in America, except for the man kind.

[Euzébio]

Here in Brazil we have the myth of Mapinguari, maybe another species of sasquatch!

[Buckaroo Banzai]

they're never discovered because they're the main ones leading the invisible hand that controls the world all along the so-called "history"!!

Chewbacca was not a person wearing a costume!


But seriously, I think that if they are found that's better to the species, as they'd be put in some endangered species list among with others.... and eventually someone does something effective to avoid the end of a species..... something that way happened with some brazilian tiny monkey.... in the last decade...

[Galileo]

What's the Brazilian word for chupacabra?

[Guinevere]

chupa-cabra, or chupa-cabras (not always the plural form for the creature name, that's because one creature can - in theory - suck many "cabras")

[Südenbauer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupacabra