Amelia Earhart's Finger Found in Pacific?

If you go to a place where humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years and bone happens to be well preserved, you will find bits and pieces of people on a regular basis. If you go to a Polynesian island and look for bones you are more likely to find a turtle or fish bone than a human bone. Thus, when I see ....

... an array of artefacts from the 1930s and bones found on the uninhabited Pacific atoll of Nikumaroro suggest that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, endured lingering deaths as castaways on a desert island and were eventually eaten by crabs.
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Researchers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery have found what appears to be a phalanx from a finger and two other bones, alongside a host of other clues after two decades attempting to solve the mystery.

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.

... I think "hmm... I dunno about this..."

The story is here. This will be interesting no matter what.

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Seems to be a non-profit organization dependent on outside donations. I guess making a press release before the analysis results are in makes sense from a fundraising viewpoint (after all, they might not have anything left to write about afterward), but waiting for some results would definitely have helped to dispel the suspicion that it could be nothing more than a fundraising ploy to begin with.

But wasn't the whole Nikumaroro hypothesis predicated on the assumption a female skeleton found there during the war - and later lost - was Earhart's? Wouldn't that mean none of her finger bones should be lying around there, anyway?

By Phillip IV (not verified) on 16 Dec 2010 #permalink

Dang that evilushun - why did gawd make human finger bones like turtle flipper bones? An he told us we wus speshul!

I'll have to do some background reading again. I can't even remember when radio contact was lost. However every few years there are claims that aircraft wreckage, camp stuff, or bones had been found. Amelia's a bit like a cross between Elvis and Gilligan.

By MadScientist (not verified) on 16 Dec 2010 #permalink

Here in Kansas we still keep the runway lights on for Amelia, just in case.