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Merged Sykes: Yeti is a hybrid bear

MikeG said:
I am not assuming anything. I am reporting what Sykes is saying. But:

1: One of the samples was apparently from a "mummified" complete animal, shot 40 years ago by a local hunter. This is nothing to do with a single hair.

2: What track?

3: See 1/. And maybe take the trouble to read some of the links I posted, then I wouldn't have to be simply repeating what is on clear view for anyone to read.
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1. I see part of the problem...any evidence?

2. Sorry, I had this confused with one of the other yeti hoaxes...

3. Does not respond to my #3, above, at all...
 
MikeG said:
Those thinking up all sorts of tenuous explanations for the amazing DNA result (fell out of a bag, hunter's jacket etc) will have to explain how two samples, one from from either end of the Himalayas, come to match each other, but match no extant species. That's going to be one convoluted story.
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Aren't you the poster who is always criticizing other posters for pre-judging an argument or position until it is actually made? Did I get that right?
 
MikeG said:
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Those thinking up all sorts of tenuous explanations for the amazing DNA result (fell out of a bag, hunter's jacket etc) will have to explain how two samples, one from from either end of the Himalayas, come to match each other, but match no extant species. That's going to be one convoluted story.
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It seems very likely that the amazing DNA result could be because both samples are actually from the exact same animal. I'm not suggesting that there's not a second sample, just that human error being what it is there could have been some mix-up in storage, labeling, or otherwise handling the samples.

There is also the possibility of outright fraud. The "Documentary" label is applied equally to producers across the spectrum of credibility and honesty. The press release may be a complete misrepresentation of the results, as well. I'm honestly quite skeptical of all of it.
 
joesixpack said:
It seems very likely that the amazing DNA result could be because both samples are actually from the exact same animal.
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Bingo. Provenance really matters with something like this and, so far at least, we have nothing to go on other than what the media has written about it. The "we found this one hair in the bamboo forest" story is certainly suspect to me, and the vague details of the "mummified remains" sound pretty sketchy too. If the bear killed 40 years ago was so weird looking that the hunter kept it, why wasn't it ever shared with a biologist until, apparently, some yeti hunter came sniffing around after it?

Now if said yeti hunter had access to something weird - either because he intentionally cooked it up himself or he acquired it somewhere along the way - what's to keep him from providing two, apparently independent samples to "the scientist" to analyze? A man of science assumes all parties to be as honest as he is, so the scientist is quick to accept the explanation of the provenance as having come from independent sources and then is stunned by his result.

The only thing that still wouldn't make sense is the match to ancestral polar bear, but the 100% thing is also suspect as is the "hybrid" angle.

There's much more to learn here when and if a paper comes out on it, but joesixpack has identified that it's essential for the provenance of these samples to be confirmed before jumping to conclusions about an unidentified population of anything running around out there. Something really doesn't smell right about this.
 
Professor Sykes found a 100 per cent match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway.
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Sykes added "The fact that the hunter, who had great experience of bears, thought this one was in some way unusual and was frightened of it, makes me wonder if this species of bear might behave differently. Maybe it is more aggressive, more dangerous or is more bipedal than other bears."
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"There's more work to be done on interpreting the results. I don't think it means there are ancient polar bears wandering around the Himalayas. But we can speculate on what the possible explanation might be. It could mean there is a sub species of brown bear in the High Himalayas descended from the bear that was the ancestor of the polar bear. Or it could mean there has been more recent hybridisation between the brown bear and the descendant of the ancient polar bear."
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But if there aren't "ancient" polar bears getting shot dead in the Himalayas then we shouldn't get the 100% DNA match with the ancient museum specimen, right? Wouldn't a 100% DNA match indicate a truly identical animal instead of simply a similar or descended animal?

If this bear is so significantly different than the brown and black bears of the region then why haven't we already seen bodies, films and pictures?

Sykes says that it could be:

The ancestor of polar bears, or
A hybrid of that ancestor and the brown bear.

That actually proposes two different bears which could even exist simultaneously. But we don't have anything for any of that.

Oh, and if the bear hunter was so experienced with bears why couldn't he describe this odd bear with any more specificity than "different"? Are there any quotes from the hunter himself or is everything coming second-hand through another person? See this is something that sounds hinky to me and may indicate an attempt to hoax.

There is still good reason to believe that people would be as enthusiastic and capable of hoaxing the Yeti as they would be for Bigfoot. The perpetrators of the hoaxes could even be Americans or Europeans and do not have to be locals. You may also be able to get some locals to do or say anything for money.
 
The Shrike said:
Bingo. Provenance really matters with something like this and, so far at least, we have nothing to go on other than what the media has written about it.
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Wouldn't provenance, chain of custody, etc, be addressed in the peer-review process?
 
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William Parcher said:
But if there aren't "ancient" polar bears getting shot dead in the Himalayas then we shouldn't get the 100% DNA match with the ancient museum specimen, right? Wouldn't a 100% DNA match indicate a truly identical animal instead of simply a similar or descended animal?...
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My understanding is that we have only the mitochondrial genome of that ancient polar bear (via its jawbone), not the whole genome.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841953/
A 100% mtDNA match could mean that our "yeti" is a descendant of this ancient polar bear (through the mothers ?) fwiw
 
Castro said:
My understanding is that we have only the mitochondrial genome of that ancient polar bear (via its jawbone), not the whole genome.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841953/
A 100% mtDNA match could mean that our "yeti" is a descendant of this ancient polar bear (through the mothers ?) fwiw
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Ahhh...so it's not a 100% match at all, really.

It's a match to the female line of descent?
 
Resume said:
Wouldn't provenance, chain of custody, etc, be addressed in the peer-review process?
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No, and that's what's so disconcerting about stuff like this. The peer-referees are unlikely to be any more savvy to a hoax than Sykes. They're likely to focus like a laser on his methods with the DNA analysis, but unlikely to pull back and question the provenance of basic information used in the analysis unless they've specifically spent some time thinking critically about hoaxes.
 
LTC8K6 said:
Ahhh...so it's not a 100% match at all, really.

It's a match to the female line of descent?
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This sounds fishy to me. I think the mitochondrial DNA will have drifted in 120,000 years. There shouldn't be a 100% match.
 
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