Japanese team finds 'yeti footprints' in Nepal

PHOTO: undated handout picture from Yeti Project Japan, received on October 20, 2008, shows what is alleged to be the footprint of a Yeti (left) measured on the Dhaulagiri mountain and compared to a human footprint (right). A team of Japanese adventurers say they have discovered footprints they believe were made by the legendary yeti said to roam the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. ...

A team of Japanese adventurers say they have discovered footprints they believe were made by the legendary yeti said to roam the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet.

"The footprints were about 20 centimetres (eight inches) long and looked like a human's," Yoshiteru Takahashi, the leader of the Yeti Project Japan, told AFP in Kathmandu on Monday.

Takahashi was speaking after he returned with his seven-member team from their third attempt to track down the half-man-half-ape, tales of which have gripped the imaginations of Western adventurers and mountaineers for decades.

Despite spending 42 days on Dhaulagiri IV -- a 7,661-metre (25,135-foot) peak where they say they have seen traces of yetis in the past -- the team failed in their prime objective of capturing one on film.

But Takahashi said the footprints were proof enough.

"Myself and other team members have been coming to the Himalayas for years and we can recognise bear, deer, wolf and snow leopard prints and it was none of those," he said.

"We remain convinced it is real. The footprints and the stories the local tell make us sure that it is not imaginary," he added. - yah