Friday, January 11, 2013

Giving up on China's Wildman?

The buzz about a "wildman" (presumed to be an unknown upright primate) in the undeveloped regions of China has  periodically made it into the popular, and even the sceintific, press, as hairs or body parts not immediately identified have been found and eyewitness reports collected.  Now, though, an anthropologist who has followed the topic for half a century reports "...a Chinese Wildman of biological significance still has not been shown to exist, and simply may not exist." All the biological samples in Bejing anthropologist
Zhou Guoxing's collection have turned out to be from known creatures, and he classes the most detailed eyewitness accounts as fabrications.  His disappointment is evident - he was once an enthusiastic field investogator of Wildman tales - but this is where the evidence has led him. 
COMMENT: Darn.  There were times when this case looked really intriguing.

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