Amelia Earhart's Final Struggle Possibly Revealed by Newly-Discovered Artifacts: Researchers

New York Daily News ^ | Monday, June 7th 2010 | Nick Klopsis

[nickcarraway]

New artifacts found on an uninhabited South Pacific island may help reveal how Amelia Earhart spent her final days.

Researchers found three pieces of a pocket knife and shards of what appeared to be a broken cosmetic glass jar on Nikumaroro, an island about 300 miles southeast of Howland Island, Earhart’s intended destination on her final, ill-fated flight.

The findings may help bolster the researchers' theory that the famed female pilot and navigator Fred Noonan died on the island as castaways, Discovery News reports.

"These objects have the potential to yield DNA, specifically what is known as 'touch DNA'," Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (THIGAR), told Discovery News via e-mail.

"If DNA from the recovered objects matches the Earhart reference sample now held by the DNA lab we've been working with, we'll have what most people would consider to be conclusive evidence that Amelia Earhart spent her last days on Nikumaroro," he said.

Earhart disappeared while attempting to fly around the world at the equator in 1937, reporting in her final radio transmission that her plane was running low on fuel.

The presence of the pocket knife pieces intrigued TIGHAR researchers, and may shed some light into how the castaways tried to survive on the island.

"In the case of the knife, we found part of it in 2007 and have now found more. The artifacts tell a story of an ordinary pocket knife that was beaten apart to detach the blades for some reason," TIGHAR president Patricia Thrasher told Discovery News.

The team will explore Nikumaroro and the surrounding waters until June 14 in an effort to find more clues. They will concentrate specifically on the southeast end of the island, where the partial skeleton of a castaway was discovered in 1940.

Forensic files have indicated that the bones belonged to a 5' 7" white female of northern European descent, which matches Earhart's stature.

After Earhart’s plane disappeared in 1937, a large search was conducted throughout the Pacific Ocean, but it was concluded at the time that her plane crashed in the ocean and sank.:

[chris_bdba]

On one of the show on the Travel channel they did them over an open fire and they said the meat was really sweet since they eat mostly coconuts.

[nickcarraway]

At first, I thought you were talking about Amelia in that response.

[balch3]

I did a little research on the island they supposedly landed on. It was uninhabited at the time, but there had been a coconut plantation there in the last year or two with around a hundred people. The empty village would still have been there, with plenty of items lying around that would have been helpful in surviving. Also, there was the hulk of a wrecked freighter just offshore on the coral reef. They would have seen both these landmarks from the air.

Assuming the skeleton is Earhart’s the evidence is that she, at least, was able to get ashore and make some attempts at survival—the fire ring, improvising with the pocketknife. Why, then, did she stay in one place? It’s a small island, it would have been only a mile or two to the village, where they would have found shelter, tools to help them survive, and (as far as they knew) people. If she was able to get off the plane and swim ashore, she should have been able to make it to the other end of the island, even if injured.

And where was Noonan? Did he go down with the plane? Did he wander off somewhere else? Did he try to swim out to the wrecked freighter and get swept away by the current?

I’d like to believe they mystery is solved, but this was not a completely barren island. There were items there they could have taken advantage of. It just seems that they should have left more traces of themselves. A note, something.