Octopus Overlords

Three years after Earhart disappeared British colonial authorities, who then administered Nikumaroro, found 13 bones from a human skeleton at the site of the latest discoveries. The bones were later assessed to be "more likely female than male" and "more likely white than Polynesian or other Pacific Islander". Those bones have since been lost.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Three years after Earhart disappeared British colonial authorities, who then administered Nikumaroro, found 13 bones from a human skeleton at the site of the latest discoveries. The bones were later assessed to be "more likely female than male" and "more likely white than Polynesian or other Pacific Islander". Those bones have since been lost.

Paingod wrote:Why, so shortly after such a high-profile disappearance, when someone finds bones on a remote beach that look like a womans, wouldn't they do a little more to find out what happened or even take better care of them?

That seems like bumbling idiocy in today's world of forensic analysis.

Regardless of who was there, I don't think "Eaten by Crabs" is high on my list of ways to go. It's Castaway without a happy ending.

Holman wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Three years after Earhart disappeared British colonial authorities, who then administered Nikumaroro, found 13 bones from a human skeleton at the site of the latest discoveries. The bones were later assessed to be "more likely female than male" and "more likely white than Polynesian or other Pacific Islander". Those bones have since been lost.

Some bones were found back in 1940, and those are the ones that were later lost.

But if I read the story right, the news is that *more* bones have now been discovered (a possible finger and neck bone) that were missed in the earlier find. These are the ones now being tested.

Paingod wrote:Why, so shortly after such a high-profile disappearance, when someone finds bones on a remote beach that look like a womans, wouldn't they do a little more to find out what happened or even take better care of them?

That seems like bumbling idiocy in today's world of forensic analysis.

Regardless of who was there, I don't think "Eaten by Crabs" is high on my list of ways to go. It's Castaway without a happy ending.

Steron wrote:Interesting. I wonder what the DNA sample Earhart's family provided is? Hair maybe?

silverjon wrote:

Steron wrote:Interesting. I wonder what the DNA sample Earhart's family provided is? Hair maybe?

If she has surviving relatives, they can test for mDNA to see if there's a match to prove genetic relationship. They don't need a sample known to have come from Amelia Earhart herself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondr ... nheritance" target="_blank

The suspected finger is being tested for human DNA. It may turn out to be from a turtle – which have similar bones in their flippers.

triggercut wrote:

Paingod wrote:Why, so shortly after such a high-profile disappearance, when someone finds bones on a remote beach that look like a womans, wouldn't they do a little more to find out what happened or even take better care of them?

That seems like bumbling idiocy in today's world of forensic analysis.

Regardless of who was there, I don't think "Eaten by Crabs" is high on my list of ways to go. It's Castaway without a happy ending.

It was 1940. The world had bigger fish to fry. Especially the Brits.

It'll be ok, pookie.

A newly discovered photograph suggests legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished 80 years ago on a round-the-world flight, survived a crash-landing in the Marshall Islands.

The photo, found in a long-forgotten file in the National Archives, shows a woman who resembles Earhart and a man who appears to be her navigator, Fred Noonan, on a dock. The discovery is featured in a new History channel special, "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence," that airs Sunday.

Independent analysts told History the photo appears legitimate and undoctored. Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director for the FBI and an NBC News analyst, has studied the photo and feels confident it shows the famed pilot and her navigator.
...
Les Kinney, a retired government investigator who has spent 15 years looking for Earhart clues, said the photo "clearly indicates that Earhart was captured by the Japanese."

Japanese authorities told NBC News they have no record of Earhart being in their custody.

The photo, marked "Jaluit Atoll" and believed to have been taken in 1937, shows a short-haired woman — potentially Earhart — on a dock with her back to the camera. (She's wearing pants, something for which Earhart was known.) She sits near a standing man who looks like Noonan — down to the hairline.
...
The photo shows a Japanese ship, Koshu, towing a barge with something that appears to be 38-feet-long — the same length as Earhart's plane.

For decades, locals have claimed they saw Earhart's plane crash before she and Noonan were taken away. Native schoolkids insisted they saw Earhart in captivity. The story was even documented in postage stamps issued in the 1980s.

"We believe that the Koshu took her to Saipan [in the Mariana Islands], and that she died there under the custody of the Japanese," said Gary Tarpinian, the executive producer of the History special.

"We don't know how she died," Tarpinian said. "We don't know when."

It is not clear if the U.S. government knew who was in the photo. If it was taken by a spy, the U.S. may not have wanted to compromise that person by revealing the image.

The film said the image “may hold the key to solving one of history’s all-time greatest mysteries” and suggested it disproved the widely accepted theory that Earhart and Noonan disappeared over the western Pacific on 2 July 1937 near the end of their attempt at a history-making flight around the world.

But serious doubts now surround the film’s premise after a Tokyo-based blogger unearthed the same photograph in the archives of the National Diet Library, Japan’s national library.

The image was part of a Japanese-language travelogue about the South Seas that was published almost two years before Earhart disappeared. Page 113 states the book was published in Japanese-held Palau on 10 October 1935.

Deep Sea Vision, a Charleston, South Carolina-based team, said this week that it had captured a sonar image in the Pacific Ocean that "appears to be Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra" aircraft.

The company, which says it scanned over 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor starting in September, posted sonar images on social media that appear to show a plane-shaped object resting at the bottom of the sea. The 16-member team, which used a state-of-the-art underwater drone during the search, also released video of the expedition.
...
Tony Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, told the Wall Street Journal that he funded the $11 million search by selling off his commercial real estate properties.
...
Romeo told the Journal that his team's underwater "Hugin" submersible captured the sonar image of the aircraft-shaped object about 16,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean's surface less than 100 miles from Howland Island, where Earhart and Noonan were supposed to stop and refuel before they vanished.

Romeo's team didn't find the image until about three months into the trip, and at that stage it was impractical to turn back, he told the Journal, so they intend to return for a closer look.
...
"Until you physically take a look at this, there's no way to say for sure what that is," underwater archaeologist Andrew Pietruszka told the newspaper.

Max Peck wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2024 10:42 pm She'd be 127 years old now, so if she is alive and hunting us, I'm not too worried about it. If someone that old can take me down, good for them.