Bone fragments may belong to Amelia Earhart

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 tantalising artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.

Scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 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 2,900 kilometres south of Hawaii.

“You only have to say you have a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and people get excited. But it is true that, if they can get DNA, and if they can match it to Amelia Earhart’s DNA, that’s pretty good.”

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 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.

“What were her last moments like? What was she doing? What happened?” asked Robin Jensen, an associate professor of communications at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

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 a 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 area was near a site where native work crews found skeletal remains in 1940. Bird and fish carcasses suggested Westerners had prepared meals there.

“This site tells the story of how someone or some people attempted to live as castaways,” Gillespie said. “These fish weren’t eaten like Pacific Islanders” eat fish.

Someone carried shells ashore before cutting them open and slicing out the meat. Islanders cut the meat out at sea.

Earhart was a Kansas native declared dead by a California court in 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 said the aviator would have needed only about 700 feet of unobstructed space to land because her plane would have been travelling about 90km/h at touchdown.