To the untrained eye, it may look suspiciously like a cast-off from a fancy dress party. But to Bigfoot believers, this is the latest “evidence” that the mysterious ape-man said to dwell in the forests of North America is more than just a hairy myth.

Named Rickmat in honour of Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton, Bigfoot hunters who claim to have bagged the 500lb ’corpse’ during an expedition in the US state of Georgia, it was being hailed today as potentially the “greatest discovery of the millennium” - by its finders, at least.

But that was not all they found in the woods. For as they marvelled at the seven foot seven inch, red-haired, flat-footed beast prostrated before them as they trekked through densely wooded mountains, Dyer and Whitton, 33 - who is currently on leave from police work after accidentally shooting himself while pursuing a robbery suspect - claim that they also spotted several of Rickmat’s friends and relatives lurking among the trees.

They are due to present the purported corpse, and their video footage of the shy Bigfoot clan, in public tomorrow, along with what they describe vaguely as “DNA evidence”.

Times Archive, 1951: A Mystery of Everest

The tracks showed three broad 'toes' and a broad 'thumb' to the side. Sherpa Tensing immediately pronounced them to be the footprints of yetis

• In pictures: Abominable Snowman's footprints

• Leading article: Again the Abominable Snowman

• The 'snowman' of Everest

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“I think you’ll find that this is the real deal,” claimed their spokesman, Robert Barrows.

Photographs of Rickmat lying crumpled and apparently decapitated in a chest freezer drew so many visitors to one website today that it crashed under the pressure.

But Dyer and Whitton’s own website - bigfoottracker.com - appeared well prepared for the onslaught, advertising opportunities for the public to take guided tours in the footsteps of Rickmat for $499 a time, and selling T-Shirts declaring: “Bigfoot for President.”

“We have located a family of Bigfoot and besides the clear photo and video we have something even more shocking, A BODY. Please bear with us at this time. We have hired legal help. History is in the making,” they stated on their site.

The story was being met with heavy doses of scepticism tonight, not least because of the lack of scientific validity and the involvement of Tom Biscardi, an ’expert’ with a prior record of dubious discoveries relating to Bigfoot - also known as the Sasquatch, America’s equivalent of the Abominable Snowman.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organisation, which believes in Bigfoot but not in Rickmat, said the deceased apeman displayed a remarkable likeness to the “Deluxe Sasquatch Costume” on sale on a Hallowe’en costume website for $449.

Ben Radford, managing editor for Skeptical Inquirer magazine, said: “It’s smelling to high heaven like a hoax.”

“They can claim to have DNA, but its not going to be possible for them to prove through DNA analysis that they have Bigfoot because there’s no specimen in a jar that says, ’This is Bigfoot’, to match it to.

"And the video?... it’ll be what’s known in the Bigfoot research community as a Blobsquatch, an indeterminate, dark blob that may or may not be a man, a bear, a Bigfoot, an elf, a dragon...who knows?”

Perhaps you would be interested in reading the 'Dictionary of the Unexplained?'

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