Melba Ketchum from Texas-based genetic testing firm DNA Diagnostics said back in February that her team had sequenced mitochondrial and nuclear genome DNA samples from Sasquatch, which they published in the brand-new journal the DeNovo Journal of Science. At the time, Ketchum said in a press release that Sasquatch appeared to be a hybrid between humans and an unknown hominin species.
The paper had many critics, including the Houston Chronicle's SciGuy, Eric Berger, who called it "almost certainly Bigfoot scat."
Berger now writes that Ketchum contacted him shortly after that and offered him Sasquatch samples. Berger sent those samples off to a reputable Texas geneticist for DNA testing. (He adds that he is giving that researcher anonymity "because some of his peers would question his engagement on such a topic, believing it unworthy of valuable research time.")
And the results are in — the samples are a mix of opossum and other species.
"I'm honestly really disappointed," Berger writes. "A world with Bigfoot would be a little softer. A little more fun. But in my world science is the arbiter of reality."
Similarly in 2008, one of three purported Bigfoot samples came back as opossum while the other two samples were human in origin.
Sorry, Sasquatch.