There is a new theory floating around surrounding Amelia Earhart’s mysterious disappearance. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, also known as TIGHAR, had recently discovered a skeleton of a castaway, found on the island of Nikumaroro, Kiribati, in 1940. They are suggesting it may be Earhart’s.
Many theories were presented, one being she had died in a plane crash and her remains disappeared in the Pacific Ocean.
Since 1998, TIGHAR had been analyzing the skeleton, and has been trying to prove that these remains do in fact belong to Earhart.
“Until we started investigating the skeleton, we found what history knew was that Amelia Earhart died in July 2nd, 1937, in a plane crash,” said Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR’s executive director, to CNN. “But there is an entire final chapter of Earhart’s life that people don’t know about. She spent days – maybe months – heroically struggling to survive as a castaway.”
However, in 1998 the skeleton’s measurements were sent to forensic anthologists Karen Burns and Richard Jantz.
“The morphology of the recovered bones, insofar as we can tell by applying contemporary forensic methods to measurements taken at the time, appears consistent with a female of Earhart’s height and ethnic origin,” Burns and Jantz stated.
As analyzing continued, Burns and Jantz realized that the skeleton had forearms which were large for a European female.
The TIGHAR team then also revealed Earhart had made over 100 radio transmissions calling for help on July 2 to July 6 of 1937. This made it more impossible to consider her disappearance had occurred due to a plane crash, considering that the airplane’s radio would not have been working if the engine was not running.
“There are historical documents that prove official airlines received radio calls for help in 1937. If we look at the press of the time – people believed she was still alive,” said Gillespie to CNN. “It was only when planes were sent to fly over the islands where the distress signals were coming from and no plane was seen, that the searches shifted towards the ocean.”
No plane was ever found, yet TIGHAR believes the reason behind that is because the plane would have been dragged out by waves by the time rescue planes were sent out.
“But she lived and died on that island for a while,” Gillespie said.
Gillespie also organized three rescue archeological expeditions to the island where the remains were found.
“We found records of bonfires being lit in the area where the bones were found. Based on the fish bones and bird bones found in the area, Earhart survived weeks, maybe even months, in that island,” Gillespie said.