The British artist Pollyanna Pickering was exploring the Bhutan area when she was shown by the Brokpas people at their monastery, the scalp of what was considered a once live yeti. She claims the scalp still had a bone intact and was larger than any skull of a human or ape and “had tufts of reddish-black fur coming out of it and was mounted on a pole and seen as a holy relic.” Unfortunately, while photography is prohibited in the monastery, Pollyanna sat with the native people who described the ‘migoi’ or yeti, to her, and gave her suggestions to alterations in her drawing of the timid, roughly 2.4 meter (8 ft.) creature. The photo to the left is the result of this “photofit.”
Yeti expert from the UK, Johnathan Downes, of the Centre of Fortean Zoology, claimed, “This is potentially explosive. If this scalp is authentic and has bone still attached, it will be probably the single most important zoological find since the discovery of the coelacanth in the late 1930s.” He continued, “If it does exists, we now think it a likely descendant from a giant ape called Gigantopithecus blackii which lived in India and China around half a million years ago and was between eight to 10.5 feet tall.” He believes it is more closely related to an orangutan than an ape or gorilla, and that the descriptions from the natives of its shy behavior fit previously gathered information on the not-so-mythical beast.
The Centre of Fortean Zoology, which researches mysterious wildlife, plans to send a five-man expedition to the Russian republic of Karbadino Balkaria toward the middle of June to search for the yeti, while Pollyanna’s yeti sketches will be displayed in the Land of the Thunder Dragon exhibition, touring the United States and Canada, then showing in Oaker from June 14 to 29.