New Yeren Footprints Found

Although I mentioned the footprints in my previously published “Top Ten…for 2007” list, this more detailed news item includes additional information:

The bigger footprint discovered was 30 centimeters long with a width of eight centimeters at the heel and 12 centimeters at the sole.

The investigation into the Shennongjia “wild men” made great progress when witnesses identified two footprints left along the Licha River where the two mysterious creatures had been spotted.

An investigative team consisting of journalists and officials from the local government and scientific investigators were sent out along the Licha River to conduct a thorough investigation on November 20. Two days later professionals from China Association for Scientific Expedition joined them.

The team discovered a series of irregular footprints, averaging one meter apart, along the riverbank. They also found three branches believed to have been broken by the “wild men” in the shrubbery beside the footprints. Two barefoot prints of different sizes were discovered behind a stone. Pointing in the same direction, these adjacent footprints were both identified belonging to left feet. The bigger one was 30 centimeters long with a width of eight centimeters at the heel and 12 centimeters at the sole. The smaller one was 18 centimeters long with an arch-like outside edge.

Veteran forest rangers rooted out the possibility that the footprints belonged to known animals such as bears, antelopes or deer.

The team then reached two of the witnesses, a local resident Wang and his friend Zhang from Xiangfan, Hubei Province. They recalled their encounter with the two mysterious creatures on the morning of November 18. Zhang, along with his guide Wang and other friends, was driving along the Licha River, heading for Laojun Mountain. They were approaching a sharp curve in the mountain road when they spotted two giant, dark figures standing behind a tangled mass of shrubbery some 50 meters away from their car.

According to the witnesses, the two “wild men” were skinny and covered with black hair. The taller one was about 1.7 meters high and the other one was approximately 1.3 to 1.4 meters. Both were quite agile because they quickly fled into the dense forest as soon as they saw the car.

The witnesses’ testimony was in accordance with the investigation results. The investigation team has made a preliminary conclusion that the thrilling event was indeed a real life sighting of a group of upright human-shaped creatures.

According to Luo Yongbin, an official from the foreign affairs office of Shennongjia Nature Reserve government, all the investigation results and evidence, including two plaster models of the footprints, will be submitted soon to the central government. The whole investigation process has been videotaped. All suspicious evidence has been photographed for further analysis.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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