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Was mystery castaway Amelia Earhart? Forensic study reopens 81-year-old mystery

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« on: February 09, 2018, 07:51:53 pm »

Was mystery castaway Amelia Earhart? Forensic study reopens 81-year-old mystery
By Richard Wood
12:55pm Feb 9, 2018

New forensic evidence has reignited the 81-year-old mystery surrounding American aviator Amelia Earhart.

Earhart's disappearance while travelling in the Pacific Ocean in July 1937, along with navigator Fred Noonan, has been one of the world’s most captivating mysteries.

Among the numerous theories seeking to explain the pair’s disappearance are capture by the Japanese military, death after crashing into the sea and perishing from hunger on a nearby island.


Amelia Earhart and the vast swathe of the Pacific Ocean where she and her navigator went missing. (AP).
Amelia Earhart and the vast swathe of the Pacific Ocean where she and her navigator went missing. (AP).

Now a US forensic expert has offered new evidence pointing to the latter explanation of their fate, reports The Economist.

In an article published in the journal Forensic Anthropology, Richard Jantz highlights bones recovered on the remote Nikumaroro island.

When Earhart and Noonan vanished aboard their plane the Electra, the inhospitable isle, part of the Phoenix Islands, was uninhabited.



But in 1941 a working party found a human skill and parts of a skeleton there.
Amelia Earhart before takeoff in Miami for an attempted round-the-world flight. Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in the South Pacific in July 1937, while on one of the last legs of that journey. (AP).
Amelia Earhart before takeoff in Miami for an attempted round-the-world flight. Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in the South Pacific in July 1937, while on one of the last legs of that journey. (AP).
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Close by was part of a shoe judged to be a woman’s and a box dated from 1918 that was designed to hold a sextant.

The bones were taken to a medical school in Fiji where they were inspected by British doctor and anatomy teacher David Hoodless.

After measuring them he concluded they had belonged to a stocky middle-aged male. Shortly after, the bones went missing.

Without them it is impossible to determine the accuracy of Hoodless’ work.

And as Jantz points out, Hoodless’ conclusions wrest on primitive 19th-century forensic science.


Aviator Amelia Earhart drew massive crowds with her feats of aviation. (AP).
Aviator Amelia Earhart drew massive crowds with her feats of aviation. (AP).

This involves calculating stature from bone length and predicting sex by angles of the femur and pelvis.

Hoodless found the mystery castaway was 1.66m tall, while Earhart’s pilot licence stated she stood 1.73m and Noonan was 1.84m tall.

But forensic experts today maintain the methods used by Hoodless greatly underestimated height.

As for Hoodless’ theory about the sex of the skeleton, only his measurement of the subpubic angle – between two bones in the pelvis – holds sway today in forensics.

And even a modern forensic investigator estimating the sex solely on this angle would not get it right all the time.




Amelia Earhart stands next to a Lockheed Electra 10E, not long before her last flight. (AP)
Amelia Earhart stands next to a Lockheed Electra 10E, not long before her last flight. (AP)

Jantz also describes new research into the Earhart mystery to take into account the morphological difference between modern Americans and their 1930s’ countryman.

He compared Hoodless’ measurements with the skeletons of 2700 white Americans who died in the mid-20th century. Measurements of Earhart’s bones, calculated from photographs of her, were also included.

This study concluded the aviator’s bones more closely matched the Nikumaroro castaways than do 99 percent of the reference sample.

Jantz’s article appears to support the theory that Earhart perished on the island, but it probably won’t satisfy every conspiracy theorist.

But even if she was abducted by the Japanese or died after crashing into the Pacific, it offers a fresh mystery: Who was the castaway if it wasn’t Earhart?


https://www.9news.com.au/world/2018/02/09/11/27/amelia-earhart-perished-on-remote-island-suggests-forensic-study
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