Southern Sasquatch Expeditions

09/03/2026

Around 90,000 years ago, a female individual lived in Siberia whose parents came from two different branches of the ancient human family. Scientists discovered her story from a piece of bone barely 2.5 centimeters long.

In 2012, Russian archaeologists excavating Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia found the tiny fragment among thousands of bones that could not be identified by sight. It was later catalogued as Denisova 11.

Researchers from Oxford University and the University of Manchester used a technique called ZooMS, which identifies bones by collagen proteins preserved inside them. Out of more than 2,000 fragments, Denisova 11 turned out to be human. The bone weighed only 1.68 grams and was part of an arm or leg bone. Its thickness suggested the individual was at least 13 years old when she died.

Then scientists examined her ancient DNA.

A team led by Viviane Slon at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, discovered something extraordinary: her mitochondrial DNA came from a Neanderthal mother, while analysis of her full genome showed that her father was Denisovan. She had inherited roughly one set of chromosomes from each group.

Researchers nicknamed her “Denny.” Their findings were published in Nature on August 22, 2018. Her Denisovan father even carried DNA from an earlier Neanderthal ancestor, showing that the two groups had mixed before Denny was born.

Later research placed Denisova 11 broadly between about 79,000 and 118,000 years ago, which is why her age is often rounded to roughly 90,000 years.

Denny remains the only identified first-generation child of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father—a tiny bone fragment that gave scientists a direct glimpse into one ancient family.

09/02/2026

Jeff Adams posted this to our page, found in Indiana

08/11/2026

08/01/2026

A new report is fueling speculation that Bigfoot may be roaming the woods of southern New England.

07/25/2026

Bigfoot comedy?

07/21/2026

Happy Tuesday! 👣👣

07/13/2026

Earth’s largest chimpanzee community split — and is now locked in a deadly civil war.

For thirty years, scientists have closely monitored the Ngogo chimpanzee community in Uganda's Kibale National Park—a massive group of around 200 chimps that was famously featured in the Netflix documentary series Chimp Empire.

For the first two decades of study, these primates coexisted peacefully, grooming each other, foraging together, and defending their borders from outsiders.

However, a groundbreaking study published in the journal Science reveals that this once-unified group has permanently fractured. Triggered by a series of events starting in 2015—including the deaths of key elder males, changes in the social hierarchy, and a devastating disease outbreak—the community completely split into distinct Western and Central factions by 2018.

What followed is being described by researchers as an unprecedented, slow-motion civil war of shocking brutality. Members of the smaller Western group began launching coordinated, lethal raids into the territory of their former companions in the Central group. Between 2018 and 2024, researchers documented at least 24 killings, including seven adult males and 17 infants. Since chimpanzees are among our closest living evolutionary relatives, this rare event—estimated to occur naturally only once every 500 years—offers a sobering look into the origins of collective violence. Scientists note that because these primates began killing former friends with whom they once held hands, it demonstrates that deep-seated group dynamics and polarization can drive lethal conflict even in the absence of human-like political or religious ideologies.

source: Sandel, A. A., et al. (2026). Lethal conflict after group fission in wild chimpanzees. Science, 392(6794), 216.