Oxford Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project Wants Your Bigfoot Hair Samples

Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology have collaborated on a Bigfoot project. They plan to use the latest genetic techniques to investigate organic remains that some have claimed belong to the Yeti, Bigfoot, Migoi, Sasquatch, Almasty, Orang Pendek, Yowie, Meh-Teh and other potentially lost hominid species. Professor Bryan Sykes, a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, will lead the project with Michel Sartori, Director of the Lausanne Museum of Zoology.

The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project is inviting individuals with collections of cryptozoological material to submit details of the samples they hold, and then on request submit the samples themselves, particularly hair shafts, for rigorous genetic analysis. The results will then be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Sykes says, "Theories as to their species identification vary from surviving collateral hominid species, such as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo floresiensis, to large primates like Gigantopithecus widely thought to be extinct, to as yet unstudied primate species or local subspecies of black and brown bears. Mainstream science remains unconvinced by these reports both through lack of testable evidence and the scope for fraudulent claims. However, recent advances in the techniques of genetic analysis of organic remains provide a mechanism for genus and species identification that is unbiased, unambiguous and impervious to falsification."

Information about how to submit details about your mysterious Bigfoot hair can be found here.

Some of the submitted samples could turn out to belong to ancient Neanderthals or early hominids. Professor Sykes says, "It is possible that a scientific examination of these neglected specimens could tell us more about how Neanderthals and other early hominids interacted and spread around the world."

Credit: aquarius-project.blogspot.com