Published :February 2006

Most mainstream scientists believe that few species of large mammal remain to be discovered. Nevertheless, there are countless unverified reports of a large, non-human, bipedal primate from Asia (the ‘Yeti’) and North America (‘Sasquatch’ or ‘Bigfoot’). Thus far, none of these reports has been convincingly verified by modern scientific methods .

However, new species inhabiting remote areas are occasionally described that were previously known only from local and traditional knowledge. The most recently described large mammal could be the sao la Pseudoryx nghetinhensis, which became known to science in 1992 from three sets of horns found in the possession of hunters in the Vu Quang Nature Reserve in Vietnam . Subsequent surveys and the morphometric and DNA analysis of >20 specimens revealed that the sao la was a previously undescribed 100-kg bovid distinct from all described genera.

More recently, in 2003 a new species of African monkey (Lophocebus kipunji) was discovered in southern Tanzania, based on sightings, photographs and recorded distinctive vocalizations.

Discoveries such as these fuel hope in the cryptozoology community for the existence of more enigmatic creatures, such as the Sasquatch.