
Bones Found 76 Years Ago Could Actually Be Amelia Earhart’s - Mz
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/amelia-earhart-skeleton_us_581883dde4b064e1b4b49b74
======
curtis
The backstory to the bones is pretty interesting. Take a look at
[https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Bones...](https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Bones_Chronology.html)
if you're curious. One of the surprises to me when I first read it is that the
British administrator on Nikumaroro flat states that he thinks the remains
could be those of Amelia Earhart.

Ultimately they decided that no, these bones were those of some other
unfortunate person predating Earhart's disappearance. It's worth reconsidering
their conclusion because we know some things now that they didn't know then.

Here's a link to a scan (or maybe it's a photograph) of one of the Tarawa
telegrams:
[https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Taraw...](https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Tarawa_Archives/1940Bones_File/02bones.pdf).
Take note of the two serial numbers from the Sextant box, those turn out to be
important.

Scans of some more telegrams from the Tarawa archive can be found here:
[https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Taraw...](https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Tarawa_Archives/1940Bones_File/1940Bones_File.html).

The sextant box with two different serial numbers seems weird. That's
addressed here:
[https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bullet...](https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/52_NumbersGame/52_NumbersGame.html).
The TLDR is that there's a very good chance that this was the box for a
sextant that was surplussed by the U.S. Navy some time after 1919. Also it
turns out that Fred Noonan (Earhart's navigator) liked to carry a naval
sextant as a backup to his regular aeronautical instrument.

------
smacktoward
I've been seeing breathless "could be!" announcements from TIGHAR in the news
every year for what feels like my entire adult life. So color me skeptical.

