Press
Release
For Immediate Release, 6 February 2018
A
newly published study further supports the hypothesis that Amelia Earhart
landed and died as a castaway on the remote atoll known as Nikumaroro (Gardner
Island).
A highly
technical peer-reviewed paper published in the scientific journal Forensic Anthropology compares
measurements of the bones of a castaway found on an uninhabited Pacific atoll
in 1940 with new quantified data on Amelia Earhart. The author concludes that
“Until definitive evidence is presented that the remains are not those of
Amelia Earhart, the most convincing argument is that they are hers.”
The study,
titled “Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones – A 1941 Analysis versus Modern
Quantitative Techniques” is open access and can be downloaded at the University of Florida Press.
The author,
Richard L. Jantz, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus and Director Emeritus at the
University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center. The university’s
Anthropological Research Facility, famously known as “The Body Farm,” was
founded by Dr. William Bass. The donated body program was established in 1981
as a means of studying factors that affect human decomposition and to develop a
skeletal collection of modern Americans. Many of the skeletons used to
characterize Amelia Earhart were from the donated collection.
In 2005,
Richard Jantz and Stephen Ousley created Fordisc, a computer program for
estimating sex, ancestry, and stature from skeletal measurements. Now in version
3.1, Fordisc, is used by nearly every board certified forensic anthropologist
in the United States and many around the world.
This latest
finding in the 80-year search for an answer to Earhart’s fate is the
culmination of research that began with TIGHAR’s 1998 discovery of original
British files that document the finding of a partial skeleton on Gardner Island
(now Nikumaroro) in 1940. The bones were suspected at the time of possibly
being the remains of Amelia Earhart. In 1941, a British colonial doctor concluded
that the bones belonged to a short, stocky European or mixed-race male. The
bones were subsequently lost.
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In 1998, forensic anthropologists Karen
Burns and Richard Jantz analyzed measurements of the bones included in the
British file. Using late 20th century forensic tools and techniques they
concluded that the skeleton appeared to be consistent with a white female of
Earhart’s height and ethnic origin. In 2015, British graduate student Pamela
Cross and Australian anthropologist Richard Wright took issue with Burns and
Jantz. In a paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science they
argued that the original 1941 British findings were more likely correct.
Their study, titled “The Nikumaroro bones identification controversy:
First-hand examination versus evaluation by proxy — Amelia Earhart found or
still missing?” can be purchased at Science
Direct.
Karen Burns died in 2012, but in response
to the 2015 Cross/Wright critique, Richard Jantz undertook a quantitative
analysis of the Nikumaroro bone measurements using the latest software and
new forensic information about Amelia Earhart’s physique obtained by TIGHAR
with the cooperation of Photek Forensic Imaging, the Smithsonian Air &
Space Museum, and Purdue University Special Collections. His newly released
paper, “Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones – A 1941 Analysis versus
Modern Quantitative Techniques” is the result.
Dr. Jantz’s study stands in stark contrast
to the evidence presented in the July 2017 History Channel special “Amelia
Earhart – The Lost Evidence.” Shortly after the show aired, the lost evidence
– a photo said to show Earhart and Noonan in Japanese custody – was revealed
to be neither lost nor evidence when it was found to have come from a
Japanese tour book printed in 1935 – two years before the flyers disappeared.
The show was withdrawn from re-broadcast and a promised investigation by the
History Channel has, so far, not materialized.
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Since launching
The Earhart Project in 1988, TIGHAR has taken a science-based approach to
testing the hypothesis that the missing flight ended at Nikumaroro. Thirty
years of research suggests that Earhart made a relatively safe landing on the
dry reef at the west end of the uninhabited island. She and her navigator Fred
Noonan sent radio distress calls for six nights before rising tides washed the
airplane into the ocean where it broke up in the surf at the reef edge. An
over-flight by U.S. Navy search planes on the seventh day failed to spot the
stranded flyers. Earhart survived for a matter of weeks, perhaps months, before
dying at an improvised campsite near the atoll’s southeast end. Her partial
skeleton was found three years later when the British established a colony on
the island. Noonan’s fate is unknown.
For further information: Ric
Gillespie, Executive Director,
TIGHAR, Phone: 610-467-1937, Email: tigharic@mac.com.
TIGHAR, Phone: 610-467-1937, Email: tigharic@mac.com.
