Back in the fifties, none other than movie star legend Jimmy Stewart became part of bigfoot lore. He smuggled a supposed yeti finger out of India, where it was studied briefly and then lost to the ages. But now the finger has been uncovered, DNA tests performed, and - to some disappointment - analyzed as being 100% human.

 

In 1958, a yeti hunter named Peter Byrne overheard two of his sherpas talking about the yeti. He learned that the Pangboche Monastery was said to have a yeti hand on the premises, where it was revered as a sort of holy relic. The monks refused to let Byrne have the hand, claiming that if the hand left the monastery, a curse would befall them.

 

Undeterred by any sort of ethical or spiritual qualms, Byrne pressured the monks to allow him to take one of the fingers for £100, if he agreed to mask his theft. Byrne replaced it with a desiccated human finger, which he had dyed with iodine to match the rest of the hand. 

 

Unfortunately Byrne ran into trouble trying to smuggle the finger out of the country. His patron, the wealthy American oil baron Tom Slick, hooked Byrne up with Jimmy Stewart. Stewart was one of Slick's old hunting buddies, and Slick knew that Stewart happened to be in Calcutta at the time.

 

Stewart smuggled the relic back to the West, where a London professor pronounced it "not human." And after that, the finger vanished. Many have speculated on its whereabouts, but it turned out to be under everyone's nose all along. Someone happened to stumble across it during a visit to the Royal College of Surgeons, recognized it, and brought it to the attention of Peter Byrne (now 85).

 

DNA tests were performed by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. The results were revealed Monday: the hand is 100% human.

 

Meanwhile, a mountaineer named Mike Allsop is stumping for the finger to be returned to the monastery in Nepal where it belongs, who have asked for its return. 

 

Many experts on cryptid ape lore feel that the yeti is the Bigfoot which is most likely to exist. There is precious little food in the Himalayas in winter, but enough scrub brush in summer to support life. The Himalayas have a population of bears, after all, and a bear - large and omnivorous - has habitat and dietary requirements similar to that of a human or large unknown ape.