abominable snowman. Are the large footprints in snow discovered by Army team of Yeti?

Mountaineers from the Indian Army on a Nepal expedition have found mysterious large footprints in snow that they think belong to the Yeti, or the abominable snowman, the military said on Tuesday.

Largely regarded by the scientific community as a myth, the Yeti is part of Nepali folklore and is said to live high in the snow-capped Himalayas.

In a tweet accompanied by pictures, the Indian Army said it had sighted footprints measuring 32 by 15 inches close to a camp near Mount Makalu on April 9.

“For the first time, an #IndianArmy Mountaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast ‘Yeti’”, it said in a tweet.

Located on the Nepal-China border, Makalu is among the highest mountains in the world and stands near the Makalu-Barun valley, a remote wilderness that has also been surveyed by researchers hunting for the Yeti.

Tales of a wild hairy beast roaming the Himalayas have captured the imagination of climbers in Nepal since the 1920s, prompting many, including Sir Edmund Hillary, to go looking for the creature.

Scientists have found little evidence of the Yeti’s existence so far. In 2017, a group of international researchers studied multiple purported Yeti samples collected from across the Himalayan region and concluded they belonged to bears.

In 2008, two men in the US said they had found the remains of a half-man, half-ape, which was eventually revealed to be a rubber gorilla suit.

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