A researcher believes he knows what happened to Amelia Earhart.
The mystery has tantalized society for decades. Earhart disappeared in 1937 during an around the world trip. The pilot was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean by herself and had already achieved massive fame when she went missing.
Richard Jantz, an anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee, argues that he knows what happened to Earhart. Her remains, according to Jantz, were found on the Pacific island of Nikumaroro in 1940. Researchers originally thought that the bones, which have been lost, belonged to a man.
Theorists claim that Earhart died after crashing her plane the abandoned, inhospitable Nikumaroro island. Dr. David Hoodless examined bones found on the Island in 1941. Jantz contradicts his findings.
“When Hoodless conducted his analysis, forensic osteology was not yet a well-developed discipline,” Jantz said in a paper published in the journal Forensic Anthropology.
“Evaluating his methods with reference to modern data and methods suggests that they were inadequate to his task; this is particularly the case with his sexing method. Therefore his sex assessment of the Nikumaroro bones cannot be assumed to be correct.”
He compared Hoodless’ data to measurements taken from nearly 3,000 people.
“This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample… This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart,” Jantz said.
Other modern scientists, however, disagree. They support Hoodless’ original conclusion. The bones found on Nikumaroro belonged to an unknown male, not Earhart.
The Amelia Earhart story is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history. People have an insatiable desire to know what really happened, even though the chances of finding definitive proof are incredibly slim. Did she crash into the ocean? Become a castaway on a deserted island?
We may never know.
(Source: New York Post)