A team of Japanese climbers claimed they have found the footprints of the legendary abominable snowman in the folds of the eastern Himalayas in Nepal.

An eight-member team claimed the footprints of the snowman or Yeti were about 20 centimetres long and were human in appearance. The creature's footprints were found on snow at an altitude of about 4,800 metres (15,748 feet) in the Dhaulagiri mountain range in west Nepal.

The scientific community said there is no proof of the Yeti's existence despite decades of sightings. "We saw three footprints which looked like that of human beings," Kuniaki Yagihara, a member of the Yeti Project Japan, told Reuters, after returning with photographs of the footprints.

The Japanese crew said it was their third attempt to track down the half-man-half-ape, which has long been part of the western adventuring folklore in this part of the world.

The team said they have become adept at recognising the various beasts such as bear and snow leopards and are adamant that the "footprint" was "none of those".

Although the climbers spent more than 40 days on Dhaulagiri IV - a 7,661 metre (25,135-foot) peak where they say they have seen traces of yetis in the past - they could not furnish the press with a single photograph of the Yeti. "If I don't believe in Yeti I would never come," said Yagihara.

Nepali Sherpas say the legend of the Yeti rests deep in the Himalayan psyche. Tales of wild hairy giants living in the snow are part of growing up in the mountains. These prompted many, including Sir Edmund Hillary, to carry out yeti hunts.

The Yeti is also considered more than a myth by the world of cryptozoology, the study of uncatalogued creatures, which takes seriously the idea that the alleged creature may be the last fragments of a race of giant man-apes that existed in central Asia more than 300,000 years ago.

There appears a global trading industry in sightings of the abominable snowman. Most turn out to be false. In July Yeti hairs were supposedly found in north east India. Upon testing they turned out to belong to a species of Himalayan goat. In August, two men in the US claimed they had found the remains of a half-man-half-ape Bigfoot, which actually turned out to be a rubber gorilla suit.