![]() Verano has had the unfortunate experience of finding “skulls rotting in boxes” in the outdoor part of a museum in Peru - at an establishment he chose not to name. “I’ve seen many things that have disappeared in museums,” said John Verano, a biological anthropologist at Tulane University who specializes in skeletal anatomy, in an interview. Still, even today, ancient bones are sometimes lost. ![]() “I would say it would be highly unlikely that something like that would happen today.” “You’re basically talking apples and oranges,” he said of the different time periods. But 80 years ago, the ethics and laws regarding bone discoveries were quite different than they are today. Today, “bones don’t disappear like that,” said Moore-Jansen. The science of forensic anthropology is carried out with extreme care and diligence. How could such valuable bones have been lost? “There’s a greater likelihood now that it’s Amelia Earhart - but you can’t firmly say that this is who it is,” said Peer Moore-Jansen, a biological anthropologist at Wichita State University who played no role in Jantz’s research, in an interview. The results are the best evidence yet that the bones belong to Earhart - although complete certainly is still elusive. Last week, Richard Jantz, professor emeritus at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee and former director of the university’s Anthropological Research Facility, plugged these measurements into a modern computer program and determined the bones “have more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample." ![]() Locating the bones would be a great boon in determining if they truly belong to the brazen, pioneering pilot and could provide proof that she landed on a remote beach before succumbing to isolation and starvation.īut even though scientists can't study the bones first hand, researchers still have enough information to make new discoveries thanks to the detailed measurements of the skeleton documented by the British doctor. Credit: Google MapsĮven if there's little hope of recovery, hunting for the bones still could be worthwhile. Without access to the missing original bones, it is impossible to be definitive, but on balance, the most robust scientific analysis and conclusions are those of the original British finding indicating that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to a robust, middle-aged man, not Amelia Earhart.Isolated Nikumaroro, or Gardner Island. A critical review of both investigations and contextual evidence shows that the original British osteological analyses were made by experienced, reliable professionals, while the cranial analysis is unreliable given the available data. The 1998 report discredited the British conclusions and used cranial analysis software (FORDISC) results to suggest that the skeleton was potentially a Northern European woman, and consistent with Amelia Earhart. A private historic group re-evaluated the British analysis in 1998 as part of research to establish Gardner (Nikumaroro) Island as the crash site. Their investigation concluded that the remains were those of a stocky, middle-aged male. The partial skeleton was recovered and investigated by British officials in 1940. Though no sign of the celebrity pilot or her plane have been definitively identified, possible skeletal remains have been attributed to Earhart. The iconic woman pilot remains a media interest nearly 80 years after her disappearance, with perennial claims of finds pinpointing her location. Abstract American celebrity aviator Amelia Earhart was lost over the Pacific Ocean during her press-making 1937 round-the-world flight.
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