The Minnesota Iceman is a purported man-like creature frozen in a block of ice that has been displayed at state fairs and carnivals in and around Minnesota in the late 1960s as a “missing link”. Obviously male in anatomy, it was human-like, hairy, with large hands and feet, and a flattened nose. One of its arms appeared to be broken and one of its eyes appeared to have been knocked or plucked out of its socket, allegedly by a bullet that was supposed to have entered the animal’s head from behind. If genuine, the specimen would be one of the most significant zoological discoveries of all time, and while some have suggested the creature was a genuine Bigfoot or Minnesota ice creature, others contended that it was a hoax.
Two cryptozoologists, Ivan Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans, examined the “iceman” and concluded it was a genuine creature, noting “putrefaction where some of the flesh had been exposed from the melted ice.” Dr. Heuvelmans wrote a scientific paper about the iceman which was published for the Institute of Natural Sciences in Belgium entitled, “Preliminary Note on a Specimen Preserved in Ice; Unknown Living Hominid” and even named it as a new species with Neanderthal affinities, Homo pongoides.
