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Updated: May 01, 2019 08:55 IST

The Army’s tweet on Monday night saying one of its mountaineering teams recently sighted the “mysterious footprints” of the Yeti has added to the Nepali lore about the “mythical beast”. Many mountaineers and locals have contributed to it in the past.

The Army said the “elusive snowman has only been sighted at the Makalu-Barun National Park in the past”. The remark appeared to refer to footprints British explorer Eric Shipton sighted in 1951 near Mount Everest.

Tales of the big mythical beast, which people in Nepal say could be living in the Himalayas, have been shared across the world since the 1920s.

Many including mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary have launched expeditions to search for the creature. In 1960, he went on an expedition to a location situated along the Nepal-China border, but nothing came out of the mission.

“Sir Edmund Hillary and Mr Desmond Doig, who have been on a Yeti-hunting expedition in Nepal, arrived in London by air yesterday with the scalp of what is believed in Khumjung village to be a Yeti,” the Guardian wrote in an article published in December 1960. It was later established that the scalp did not belong to the mythical beast.

In 1937, English mountaineer Frank Smythe took photographs of big footprints in

the snow near Nepal’s Mount Makalu.

The footprints were examined and experts found that they belonged to a bear, an animal that is found in the region and has often fuelled the Yeti lore.

Daniel C Taylor, who has written a book on the mystery of the Yeti, told news agency Reuters on Tuesday that the footprints the Army reported were likely those of bears. “If that is the footprint of an animal or a single animal, it is the size of a dinosaur,” he added.

Several other scientists have written the creature off as a centuries-old myth originating in Tibet, with forensic results of previous samples proving to be from bears.