Fragments of a skull found in a museum in Kiribati may lead to the mystery of Amelia Earhart's fate. Pieces of bones were found during the National Geographic Expedition last summer to the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro.
While much of the press surrounding the project centered around the involvement of oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had previously found the wreckage of the Titanic, it turned out that a visit to the Kiribati National Museum provided the most promising clue in the search.
It was there that Dr. Fredrik Hybert, an archaeologist at National Geographic and forensic anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle, noticed some skull fragments that were left on a shelf in a vault and seemingly forgotten for decades.
Based on the age of the bone fragments, the researchers hypothesized that they could be human remains that were discovered in 1940 on Nikumaroro, briefly examined by an expert, and eventually forgotten shortly thereafter.
Fortunately, Kimmerla was able to take possession of these fragments for further analysis and restore as many fragments of the skull as possible. The curious skull was first shown to the public as part of a teaser for an upcoming National Geographic special about last summer's expedition. On the program, Kimmerle will share her forensic analysis of bones, including what she believes to be a person's gender, age, and ancestry.
Additional DNA analysis on the bones could provide insight into the original owner of the skull and whether that person was Amelia Earhart or not. If the findings indicate that the bones belonged to the legendary female aviator, then the findings will likely confirm that she and her navigator Fred Noonan crashed on Nikumuro and eventually died there.
However, given how elusive the answer to Earhart's mystery was up to this point, this is probably not the end of this mysterious story at all.
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