Minnesota Frozen Man

Minnesota Frozen Man or Minnesota Iceman was displayed in the United States and Canada in 1960s and early 1907s. According to Loren Coleman’s account, the body of the creatures may have been encased in a block of ice in the fall of 1967. That was when Terry Cullen paid a quarter to see such a sight on exhibit in Milwaukee. It was on display in a refrigerated glass coffin shown by exhibitor Frank Hansen. Cullen notified the Bigfoot community and soon Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson were examining the creature. What they found was the likeness of an adult male with large feet and hands. It was covered with dark brown fur. Both eyeballs were missing from the sockets, one entirely absent and one dangling on the face. It also had an open wound and broken bone in its left arm. The smell of rotting flesh was obvious.

Heuvelmans described his examination:

“The specimen at first looks like a man, or, if you prefer, an adult human being of the male sex, of rather normal height (six feet) and proportions but excessively hairy. It is entirely covered with very dark brown hair three to four inches long. Its skin appears waxlike, similar in color to the cadavers of white men not tanned by the sun . . . The specimen is lying on its back . . . the left arm is twisted behind the head with the palm of the hand upward. The arm makes a strange curve, as if it were that of a sawdust doll, but this curvature is due to an open fracture midway between the wrist and the elbow where one can distinguish the broken ulna in a gaping wound. The right arm is twisted and held tightly against the flank, with the hand spread palm down over the right side of the abdomen. Between the right finger and the medius the penis is visible, lying obliquely on the groin. The testicles are vaguely distinguishable at the juncture of the thighs."

(Heuvelmans in ‘Bulletin of the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium,’ quoted in Coleman 2003b, 113)

In 1969, Heuvelmans wrote an article in a Belgian scientific journal about the Iceman suggesting that it was a new species with Neanderthal affinities called Homo pongoides, and theorized it was shot and killed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

Sanderson, the science editor for Argosy magazine, authored an article about the Iceman in the April 1969 issue that featured the headline, "Is this the missing link between man and the apes?" Sanderson also spoke about the Iceman in television appearances, and contacted primatologist John Napier, asking him to investigate it under the official auspices of Smithsonian Institution.

Unfortunately, before the researchers could progress any further the creature disappeared, pulled from public viewing by Hansen. When Hansen did resume the exhibition of the creature, it was reported that he had replaced the original with a wax likeness. In other words, Hansen’s exhibit turned out to be a gaffe – a fake designed for the sideshow. Heuvelmans and Sanderson, however, continued to claim that the specimen they had examined – the original Frozen Man – had been the real thing.

Sources:
Weird Science and Bizarre Beliefs: "Mysterious Ceatures, Lost Worlds and Amazing Inventions" by DR. Gregory L. Reece;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Iceman