Did Scientists Find 'Irrefutable Evidence' of Siberian Yeti?

Tracks -- check. Probable den -- check. Hair sample -- check.

To a group of international scientists, this all of this adds up to "irrefutable evidence of the existence of the Yeti in Mountainous Shoria," according to a release from the Kemerovo administration (via Huffington Post). The release goes on to say the researchers are 95 percent sure of the existence of a yeti in the Kemerovo region of Siberia, based on the evidence they found.

According to PhysOrg, a group of scientists from the United States, Canada and other countries, set out at the invitation of Kemerovo's governor to find the yeti and then reconvened to share their evidence and stories:

"They found his footprints, his supposed bed, and various markers with which the yeti marks his territory," the statement said. The collected "artifacts" will be analysed in a special laboratory, it said.

Yetis, or Abominable Snowmen, are hairy ape-like creatures of popular myth, that are generally held to inhabit the Himalayas.

But some believe Russia also holds a population of yetis, which it calls Snow Men, in remote areas of Siberia.

According to Huffington Post, hair samples found will be analyzed by Russian scientist Anatoly Fokin. But, it goes on to report there are skeptics to the "evidence:"

"This does not seem to be any more than what you hear about from weekend excursions in North America that go out, discovering some hair of undetermined origin, calling it 'Bigfoot hair,' then locating some broken branches and piled trees, saying it was made by Bigfoot, and finding footprints that look like Sasquatch tracks," said Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

"These are not 'proof' that would hold up, zoologically," Coleman told The Huffington Post.

Huffington Post notes that the area, traditionally a mining town, is trying to promote tourism:

[...] let's hope they don't discover a cave that contains a set of recently purchased touristy Yeti beverage mugs.

Watch this report from a Russian news station about the expedition: