NORMAN, Okla. — The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.
Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.
“There’s no guarantee,” said Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a group of aviation enthusiasts in Delaware that found the pieces of bone this year while on an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.
It could be months before scientists know for sure — and it could turn out the bones are from a turtle. The fragments were found near a hollowed-out turtle shell that might have been used to collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.
Earhart’s disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries. Did she run out of fuel and crash at sea? Did her Lockheed Electra develop engine trouble? Did she spot the island from the sky and attempt to land on a nearby reef?
Since 1989, Gillespie’s group has made 10 trips to the island, trying each time to find clues that might help determine the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
Last spring, volunteers working at what seemed to be an abandoned campsite found one piece of bone that appeared to be from a neck and another unknown fragment dissimilar to bird or fish bones. A third fragment might be from a finger. The largest of the pieces is just over an inch long.
The area was near a site where native work crews found skeletal remains in 1940. Bird and fish carcasses suggested Westerners had prepared meals there.
Millions of dollars have been spent in failed attempts to learn what happened to Earhart, a Kansas native declared dead by a California court in early 1939.
The official version says Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and crashed at sea while flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel.
Gillespie’s book “Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance,” and “Amelia Earhart’s Shoes,” written by four volunteers from the aircraft group, suggest the pair landed on the reef and survived, perhaps for months, on scant food and rainwater.
After the latest find, anthropologists who had previously worked with Gillespie’s group suggested that he send the bones to the University of Oklahoma’s Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, which has experience extracting genetic material from old bones. Gillespie’s group also has a genetic sample from an Earhart female relative for comparison with the bones.
Cecil Lewis, an assistant professor of anthropology at the lab, said if researchers are able to extract DNA and link it to Earhart, a sample would be sent to another lab for verification.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” Lewis said.
Other material recovered this year also suggested the presence of Westerners at the isolated island site:
•Someone carried shells ashore before cutting them open and slicing out the meat. Islanders cut the meat out at sea.
Bits of makeup were found. The group is checking to see which products Earhart endorsed and whether an inventory lists specific types of makeup carried on her final trip.
A glass bottle with remnants of lanolin and oil, possibly hand lotion.
Following Earhart’s disappearance, distress signals picked up by distant ships pointed back to the area of Nikumaroro Island, but while pilots passing over saw signs of recent habitation, the island was crossed off the list, Gillespie said.
In 1940, a British overseer on the island recovered a partial human skeleton, a woman’s shoe and an empty sextant box.
Thinking of Earhart, the overseer sent the items to Fiji, where a British doctor decided they belonged to a stocky European or mixed-blood male.
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