Obituary: Michael Ward

Michael P. Ward, British physician and mountaineer, has died. While Ward has many important feats of mountaineering to his credit, including pioneering work on Mount Everest, he is known in cryptozoology for being co-discoverer, with Eric Shipton, of the "yeti footprints" in 1951. In 1972, primatologist John Napier wrote that he would dismiss the yeti except that the Shipton-Ward prints were the one piece of evidence that "simply sticks in my throat." The prints, which look like a primate's but with an anomalously broad heel, small big toe, and long second toe, have never been convincingly explained.