Bones found on Pacific island are those of Earhart, forensic report claims.
Human remains found on a remote Pacific island are almost certainly those of Amelia Earhart, the lost aviator, a forensic study has concluded.
The American pilot, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 while attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air.
In the decades since, numerous theories and conspiracies have emerged as to her fate, including that she was captured and held by the Japanese.
However, a study by Richard L Jantz, a professor at the University of Tennessee, has concluded that bones found on the island of Nikumaroro three years after her disappearance are those of the missing pilot.
The bones were initially ruled out as those of Earhart after an initial examination concluded that they were male. However, Jantz has argued that forensic techniques were not fully developed at the time and the bone measurements closely match Earhart’s records.
He said: “The only documented person to whom they may belong is Amelia Earhart.”
Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic in 1932 and in 1937 she was attempting to fly around the globe with Fred Noonan, her navigator.
At the time of her disappearance, the 39- year- old was trying to reach Hawaii before completing her journey on the leg to California.
The remains found on Ni kumar or owe re examined by Dr. D. W. Hood less, the principal of the Central Medical School, Fiji, who concluded they belonged to a “stocky male” around 5 feet 5 inches tall.
The bones have since been lost. Jantz, an expert in forensic anthropology, used the bone measurements taken by Hoodless and then compared them with what is known about Earhart’s body type.
Jantz used Earhart’s driver’s and pilot’s licence records and photographs of the aviator to piece together her bone measurements.
Summing up the process, he said: “If the skeleton were available, it would presumably be a relatively straightforward task to make a positive identification, or a definitive exclusion.
“Unfortunately, all we have are the meagre data in Hoodless’s report and a premortem record gleaned from photographs and clothing. From the information available, we can at least provide an assessment of how well the bones fit what we can reconstruct of Amelia Earhart.”
Jantzarguedt ha tin 1940 “osteology was not yet a well-developed discipline ,” leading Hood less to incorrectly assign the gender of the remains. His own studies showed that the bones were closer to the measurements of Earhart than 99 per cent of a “very large” sample size.
Jantz concluded: “Until definitive evidence is presented that the remains are not those of Amelia Earhart, the most convincing argument is that they are hers.”