On 6 January 2018, German cryptozoologist Hans-Jörg Vogel purchased an item advertised on the Internet as an alma/almasty fingernail (see ), ‘almasty’ being a local name for the Abominable Snowman. The man who sold it to Vogel had himself bought it from a flea market stall in Vienna where he had been told it was “the nail of a great Siberian ape” that originated from Gorno-Altaysk, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Altai, and that it had been preserved sometime between 1940 and 1945. A steady stream of reports of large manimals has come from this region for years (see ), gaining some prominence recently, with conferences and expeditions trying to show
