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Bone find may solve Amelia Earhart's mystery
by Anter Prakash Singh - December 20, 2010 - comments
The fragments of bones found at the site are being examined by the team of scientists at the University of Oklahoma.
The remains found on a remote island, 1,800 miles off the cost of Hawaii, can unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, who went missing when she took a flight in an attempt to fly across the equator.
Scientists are hopeful that DNA tests will be able to solve this 73-year-old mystery.
Amelia Earhart went missing on 2nd July, 1937, along with her navigator, Fred Noonan, while they were attempting to circumnavigate the globe in their Lockheed 10 Electra model plane.
The Island
Ric Gallespie, Director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), an aviation enthusiasts group who have found the pieces of bones during their expedition, told Associated Press, “It looks like that she could have landed successfully on the reef surrounding the island. It’s very flat and smooth ... At low tide it looks like this place is surrounded by a parking lot.”
The team of TIGHAR says that they have only explored five percent of the camp site and much more needs to be done. There are great chances of finding more stuff at the site
The Nikumaroro Island lies on the flight path Amelia took as she proceeded to Howland Island from New Guinea, when she disappeared.
Continuous efforts to solve the mystery
Since 1989, Ric Gallespie’s group has made ten trips of the island in an effort to find some information about the legendary aviator.
In an earlier expedition in 2007, costing $500,000, the members of TIGHAR found a mirror from a woman’s compact, a zipper from flight jacket and some buttons at the site. All these items were manufactured in America in the 1930s.
Gellespie said that the island was uninhabited till 1938, when the British colonists send an advance party here to clear the island for coconut plantation and a village.
Two years later, the administrator of the island found a camp site and bones on the island.
The British sent the skeleton to Fiji and then lost track of it in the summer of 1941.
Recent analysis of the measurements of those bones suggests that they may be of a white female.
Gillespie said that there is no guarantee of the bones belong to Amelia or her navigator. “You only have to say you have had a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and people get excited.”
After a drought forced the settlers to leave the 2.5 mile long island in 1963, it has remained uninhabited.
The team of TIGHAR says that they have only explored 5 percent of the camp site and much more needs to be done. There are great chances of finding more stuff at the site.
Scientists want to be sure
The three fragments of bones found at the site are being examined by the team of scientists at the University of Oklahoma.
The DNA will prove conclusively if the bones are of the legendary aviator and her navigator or not.
Gillespie said that there is no guarantee of the bones belong to Amelia or her navigator. “You only have to say you have had a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and people get excited.”
“But it is true that, if they can get DNA, and if they can match it to Amelia Earhart’s DNA, that’s pretty good.”