The mystery over the existence of "Bigfoot" will have to remain a mystery a little longer.

A hair sample that some claimed came from a sasquatch has turned out to be from a bison.

Dr. David Coltman, a wildlife geneticist from the University of Alberta who conducted tests on a hair sample found in the Yukon, announced to a news conference Thursday that the DNA match for a bison was 100 per cent.

"We are quite sure -- we are absolutely certain, in fact -- that this hair sample comes from a bison and not from a new species of primate," Coltman later told CTV Newsnet.

Several residents of Teslin, Yukon, swear that the hair sample was left behind on a bush after a large, hairy creature made a late-night run through their backyards in early July. It was the second report of the creature near Teslin in just over a year.

Coltman agreed to test the hair to determine its origin. He compared the sample's DNA to an electronic database that contained the DNA of nearly all large animals in the Yukon, including bison.

He noted that the DNA was highly degraded, suggesting the hair sample was not fresh.

"We had quite a difficult time getting a DNA profile from this specimen," Coltman told CTV.

"So it was unlikely to have been recently separated from its owner. It's possible that this hair sample probably wasn't left by a bison that went through the bush the night before."

But Coltman conceded though that his testing doesn't prove that Bigfoot doesn't exist.

"The Bigfoot believers can take solace in that we can't disprove the existence of such a creature," he said, before jokingly adding: "You know, maybe Bigfoot stepped on this pile of bison hair on his way out of Teslin."

He noted that he still can't explain why the witnesses in Teslin said they found footprints in the creature's wake -- not the hoof prints you'd expect from a bison.

While Coltman wasn't able to back up the Bigfoot theory, at least, he said the process would serve as good way to get students interested in the field of DNA testing.

The stories of a large, hairy, two-legged creature lurking in the mountains of western Canada and the United States are legendary and date back to before Europeans settled the continent.

The legend grew in the late '50s following reports of enormous footprints being found in northern California.

Then in 1967, while backpacking in the remote canyon of Bluff Creek, California, Roger Patterson shot 53 seconds of 16 mm film of a creature he claimed was Bigfoot.

While many have since dismissed the footage as a hoax, sasquatch believers says it's the strongest evidence yet that Bigfoot exists.