Dr. Sykes Explains How They're Going To Help Discover Bigfoot

The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project, led by Dr. Sykes and Michel Sartori is currently cataloging purported Bigfoot/Yeti samples sent in by people from all over the world. While it's exciting to know that their study could lead to the discovery of an unknown hominid, the science behind is also quite intriguing. A recent article by BBC News delves into the finer points of the project and explains they're going to find out whether Bigfoot is real or not.

The team have put a call out for people around the world to submit samples to the team before September, along with theories about what they could be. They then plan to use DNA barcoding to test each specimen. It is a technique that is widely used in biology. For example it is used by food inspectors to check what is served up on a plate is what a restaurant says it is. Customs officials also use it to stop trafficking of illegal animal parts, whilst field biologists use it to identify organisms. In all cases the technique is largely the same. A sequence of DNA is extracted from an organism or sample of interest and then compared against a DNA bank.

In the case of the Collateral Hominid Project, the team will largely focus on hair samples – the most commonly presented physical evidence to back up claims of sightings.

“Up until the last couple of years, you needed quite a lot of biological material … and often the results were inconclusive,” said Sykes. “Now, all we need is a small amount of hair.”

Hair is useful because the keratin – a kind of biological plastic that encases the hair shaft - protects the DNA that it contains from the contamination and degradation that can affect DNA from other parts of the body, such as teeth and bone. Once they have extracted a sample, the will compare it to the billions of sequences published online, such as at Genbank (managed by the National Institutes of Health in the US). If the sequence is different to those known from existing species it may be a new species. The more DNA that is used, the more reliable the comparison.

‘Hidden from view’

But even if the team find a sequence of DNA that has no match in the world’s databases it does not automatically mean that the creature is a mythical beast, says Albert Zink, an anthropologist at the European Academy of Bolzano in Italy who questions the validity of the whole enterprise. “It could be a sample of an extinct animal that has nothing to do with the Yeti myth,” he explains.

Sykes admits that might be the case but he is unconcerned. Although the search for Yeti DNA grabbed the headlines, it is part of a bigger project charting the relationship between our own species and others. It could even help identify new species of hominid - a general term archaeologists and paleontologists use for humans and our ancestors. The team want to use the samples to narrow down their search for unknown species – alive or dead, mythical or not. If the DNA tests find something of interest, the thinking goes, the team can began to look for other clues – potentially in the area where the sample was found. Cryptids became involved because, along with unstudied primate species and subspecies of bears, some people believe the legends could describe distant relations.

"Theories as to what Yetis are... range from surviving collateral hominid species, such as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo floresiensis, to large primates like Gigantopithecus, which were widely thought to be extinct,” says Sykes.

[via www.bbc.com]