Yeti/The Abominable Snowman.

I am driving to work this morning when the Radio 3 presenter mentioned that a group of scientists may have solved the mystery of the Yeti.

The Yeti/The Abominable Snowman that occasionally gets reported from the Himalayas.

Apparently an Oxford genetics professor has done tests on two hair samples taken 800 miles apart. After doing DNA test and comparing the results to other animal genomes stored on a database Professor Sykes says he found a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back at least 40,000 years. Apparently this was the time Polar Bears were separating from the closely related Brown Bear.

According to Professor Sykes

This is an exciting and completely unexpected result that gave us all a surprise. 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 descendent of the ancient polar bear.