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I wonder if the DNA has actually been found and dismissed, several years ago I helped some biologists place hair traps; pieces of boiled (to clean it) barb wire attached to the top of fallen trees, or under suspended "widow-makers" that tangle and pull out hair strands from passing animals, which are then DNA tested.
What amazed me were how many samples were tossed due to being "inconclusive", "degraded", or "contaminated"! Basically, if it showed any human or primate markers, it was contaminated, or if it didn't match something in the database it was "inconclusive"
It makes me wonder if any of those hairs were from a squatch, after all, only about 20 years ago they discovered a 600lb "cowlike" creature(Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) in Vietnam that the locals had described for decades!
Last edited by scoutergriz (12/06/2017 12:41 pm)
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I don't see this recent news posted on this thread yet. The Sasquatch's Asian cousin the Yeti has been proving to be a bear:
In terms of the DNA tests that ScouterGriz mentions, it is quite easy for DNA in hair samples to become "degraded". In fact unless you get the root of the hair it likely won't contain useful DNA to start with:
Given the nature of collecting field samples, particularly using unattended methods such as barbed wire hair traps you can also expect a fairly high percentage of contaminated samples even before the human researcher comes along to collect them. For example a bird collecting some of the hair to line a nest would be likely to contaminate the rest of the hair sample by contact. Air born seeds or spores could also get caught in the hair without any animal intervention.
I would interpret the "inconclusive" category as just that - it doesn't match a known species with enough statistical confidence (typically 99% for this kind of research) - and neither is it either complete enough a sample or distinctly different enough to be 99% confident that it is not a known species.
In other words the "inconclusive" group leaves the door open for something new to be discovered but doesn't have enough evidence to make scientifically justified claims of identifying a new species.
