Scientists searching for the legendary yeti have agreed that the mythical creature does, after all, exist.

They reached their decision at the end of a two-day conference in Moscow devoted to the abominable snowman.

The meeting was timed to mark the anniversary of some celebrated, but controversial film footage, supposedly showing a female Yeti, shot in California 30 years ago. The participants were in agreement that the film was genuine and that the yeti exists.

The BBC's Russian affairs specialist Stephen Mulvey says a steady flow of reported sightings of the yeti has helped to keep alive the theory that the animal is more than just a figment of the imagination.

In China in 1993, and in the United States in 1995, there were widely publicised claims of close encounters with the creature.

Earlier this year a well-known Italo-Austrian adventurer, Reinhold Messner claimed to have stood face to face with a yeti in the Himalayas.

He is writing a book on the subject and has promised to publish photographs.   But to date the most famous pictures of a yeti remains the footage shot in 1967 in Bluff Creek, Northern California. On the eve of the Moscow conference an American film-maker claimed that the creature seen at Bluff Creek was no more than an actor in a specially-made suit.

However conference participants from America, Canada and Russia all dismissed the hoax theory, arguing that both the anatomy and the gait of the creature were non-human.

The yeti is a mythical creature who is supposed to live in the Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world.

Although there have been many reported sightings of the yeti, none of them have been documented with evidence in any way.

According to the conference organiser, publisher Igor Burtsev, Western and Russian specialists studied the film independently over many years, but arrived at many of the same conclusions.

Friday, October 24, 1997 Published at 21:18 GMT
Credit: BBC World News

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