A modern-day northern Indiana Jones believes he may be able to prove the existence of a relative of the abominable snowman. Nigel Burton reports.

In 1818 an Englishman named William Marsden, who was the British Secretary in Residence in Sumatra, wrote to the Admiralty of a strange creature on the island.

The orang pendek was a short, ape-like animal which spoke in a language none of the native Sumatrans could understand.

Its brown skin was covered in short black hair and it had a thick mane - no tail - and arms like a human.

Marsden's letter was dismissed as the ramblings of a white man who had spent rather too long out in the sun and nothing was heard of the orang pendek.

Then, almost 100 years later, another Brit, explorer Edward Jacobson, reported sighting a stange ape-man while he was camped near the base of Boekit Kaba mountain. When the animal spotted his scouts it ran away on powerful hindlegs.

In 1918, the Sumatran Governor L C Westenek wrote of several sightings including one instance of a pendek attempting to light a fire.

Although at least one hunter claims to have captured a pendek - in 1954 - and two bodies were discovered in the 1940s, no remains have ever surfaced outside of Sumatra.

Now a North-East adventurer believes he may be close to proving the existence of an ape-man who may be a close relative of the Abominable Snowman.

Hans Brunner, an associate of Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, has been analysing two hairs found by a team of British explorers led by Newcastle man Andrew Sanderson.

Dr Brunner famously provided testimony which helped prove the innocence of Lindy Chamberlain the mother wrongly convicted of killing her baby, claiming it had been stolen by dingoes in the infamous ''Cry in the Night'' case in Australia in the 1980s.'

Now he has volunteered his expertise after the story of three part-time explorers discovering unknown hairs and a cast of a footprint was published worldwide.

Andrew, Adam Davies and Keith Townley are crypto-zoologists who take time off from respectable day jobs to prove, or disprove, the existence of mythological creatures.

They sent the hair samples they found in Western Sumatra to Australia for analysis and the findings have been little short of startling.

No match could be found when they were tested against reference hairs of orang-utan, chimpanzee, gorilla, sun bear, red leaf monkey, pigtail macaque, Malaysian tapir and human.

Dr Brunner said: ''So far I have found that the two hairs which I have are different from any species which I have compared them with. If nothing comes which looks like the same I would have to say there could be an animal that we do not yet know about.''

A digital re-print of the footprint found on the expedition was sent to be analysed by Dr Colin Groves, professor of primatology at University of Canberra, Australia.

He has opted not to make his findings public until Mr Brunner releases a scientific paper on the hair analysis but has told Mr Sanderson that he believes it will be ''good news''.

Mr Sanderson, 31, of Jesmond, Newcastle, said: ''The very fact the leading world-renowned hair expert has come forward and offered to analyse our findings shows we have credibility.

''The fact he has struggled to find a match for the hair is equally significant as it means this creature could exist.''