AN OXFORD University professor’s theory that the Abominable Snowman or Yeti is a rare polar bear-brown bear hybrid has been challenged.

Last year genetics professor Bryan Sykes, who has links with Wolfson College, revealed in his research that hairs said to be from the creature matched the DNA of an ancient polar bear.

Two other scientists, Ceiridwen Edwards and Ross Barnett, have since re-analysed the same data and said the hairs belong to a modern polar bear, a sub-species of the brown bear.

Their research refutes Prof Sykes’s claim the DNA matched an ancient polar bear and not a modern one.

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They said in a paper on their research: “This is an incorrect statement.

“The hairs have a 100 per cent identify with that of a modern U. maritimus (polar bear) from Diomede, Alaska.”

Prof Sykes and a team of genetic experts conducted DNA tests on 30 hair samples from unidentified animals from northern India, Bhutan, Nepal, Russia and America.

The team’s research, published last year, found a 100 per cent DNA match on two of the animals, one from Ladakh in northern India and one from Bhutan, with that found on an ancient Pleistocene polar bear.

The mythical yeti is a large ape-like creature believed to have inhabited the Himalayan region of Tibet and Nepal.

In a statement to the BBC Prof Sykes and his team said: “Importantly for the thrust of the paper as a whole, the conclusion that these Himalayan ‘Yeti’ samples were certainly not from a hitherto unknown primate is unaffected.”

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