Yeti - the best proof yet or an elaborate hoax?

The alleged findings were revealed on the official website of a regional government in Russia.

It claimed that two tests were carried out in Russia and one in the US. These had agreed the hair came from a human-like creature which is not a Homo sapien yet is more closely related to man than a monkey, it was reported.

'We had ten samples of hair to study, and have concluded that they belong to mammal, but not a human, and not the animals known to the area where they were found, like a bear, or wolf, or goat, or any other animal,' Professor Valentin Sapunov was quoted as saying. 

'It was a branch of our university in St Petersburg that carried out a DNA test, and the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences. The tests were performed by laboratory of electronic microscopy and laboratory of molecular genealogical classification.'

The tests were undertaken on hair found one year ago in the Azasskaya Cave in the Mourt Shoriya area of Kemerovo region in Siberia, it was alleged. 

'All three world level universities have finished DNA analysis of the hair and said that the hair belongs to a creature which is closer by its biological parameters to Homo sapiens than a monkey. The Yeti's DNA is evidently less than one percent different to that of a human.'

Giving strangely scant details, the report claimed that the cave hair was divided into three lots - 'one was sent to a laboratory in Moscow, another to a laboratory in St Petersburg and the third was sent to an Idaho laboratory'. 

There has been speculation previously that some people in Kemerovo - where there have been many alleged sightings - sought to exaggerate tales about the Yeti to boost tourism in southern Siberia. 

Perhaps significantly, an academic known as Russia's leading expert on the 'abominable snowman', Dr Igor Birtsev, played down the new 'findings'.

He had led the 2011 international expedition to the remote cave complex in Kemerovo when the alleged Yeti hair was found. 

'I doubt that they have indeed managed to carry out a DNA test on Azasskaya Cave hair, and doubt that they found how close the Yeti is to humans by its DNA,' he was quoted as saying.

'It has not been done anywhere in the world. I take it that they've worked with electronic microscopes, but have they compared it to other samples? I am not sure. So I am rather sceptical about Valentin Sapunov's conclusions.'

Bizarrely, too, the report on the regional government website claims that Yeti are intuitive about impending disasters. 

They 'leave the area where they are about to happen. Like with the earthquake, the animals are somehow able to get connected to the information channel from the future,' states the story with no explanation.

'If scientists manage to explain how exactly the Yeti manages to obtain this information channel and  feel what is about to happen.....mankind would develop the way of the most exact forecasting of the future and would be able to know about coming disasters well in advance'.

It is understood results are also awaited from a rigorous DNA test in the UK.