Bayanov, Dmitri

Born in Moscow, Dmitri Bayanov has emerged as the foremost living Russian cryptozoologist and hominologist. He majored in humanities at a teachers college, graduating in 1955. He worked first as a teacher and later as a Russian-English translator. He studied under such individuals as Professor B. E Porshnev and P. P. Smolin, chief curator of the Darwin Museum in Moscow. He took part in Marie-Jeanne Koffmann’s expeditions in search of Almas in the Caucasus and made reconnaissance trips in the same region on his own. An active member of the Relict Hominoid Research Seminar at the Darwin Museum since 1964, he became the chairman of the seminar in 1975. Bayanov was a founding board member of the International Society of Cryptozoology and served on the ISC Board of Directors through 1992.

Dmitri Bayanov (left) is shown in 1972, meeting with other researchers (Karapetian, René Dahinden, and Marie-Jeanne Koffmann) discussing the Patterson Film. (FPL)

Through a series of exchanges with his colleagues, Bayanov coined the words “hominology” and “hominologists” in the early 1970s to describe the specific study of unknown hominoids and those who study them. Bayanov has recently published In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman (1996) and America's Bigfoot: Fact, Not Fiction—U.S. Evidence Verified in Russia (1997).

SEE ALSO:

• Cryptozoologists

SOURCE:

The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters,Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature
Written by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark – Copyright 1999 Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark