Amelia Earhart searchers plan to use bone-sniffing dogs to see if they can find human remains on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean where they believe the vanished aviatrix might have landed and died a castaway.
Earhart was on the final leg of her famed trip around the world when her airplane disappeared July 2, 1937 while on her way to Howland Island, reported USA Today. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, claimed that 13 human bones were found the island of Nikumaroro three years after her disappearance.
Fredrik Hiebert, the National Geographic Society's archaeologist-in-residence, will return to Nikumaroro to see if he can find more human bones that could prove that the island was Earhart's possible final destination.
"We will process whatever bone samples we find and compare them to a family member of Amelia Earhart, and if they are her bones, it will be the biggest CSI story in the world," Hiebert said, per USA Today.
According National Geographic, the new Earhart expedition will take off for the island from Fiji on Saturday. Nikumaroro is located about 1,000 miles north of Fiji.
National Geographic said the working theory was that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan could not find Howland and were running low on fuel, landed on Nikumaroro as an alternative.
Hiebert said once the expedition arrives on the island, the dogs will be used for eight days to look for bones.
"There's real potential for there to be more bones there," Tom King, TIGHAR's senior archaeologist, said, per NatGeo. "There are 193 bones unaccounted for."
Ric Gillespie, the executive director of TIGHAR, though, said he doubts that the dogs will be able to come up with anything that would solve the Earhart mystery.
"The rats chew up bones," Gillespie told National Geographic. "DNA, in general, likes cold and dark. You're just not going to get a lot of cold and dark on Nikumaroro."
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