Amelia Earhart and her disappearance rank up there with DB Cooper in terms of unsolved mysteries, but perhaps the answer has been right in front of sleuths the whole time.

Side note – check out our July story on DB Cooper HERE.

Earhart is, of course, famous for being the female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She then attempted a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937, although that didn’t end all too well.

She went missing somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean, and rumours and mysteries have swirled ever since. The latest below from Newser:

For 79 years, people have been searching for Amelia Earhart. But for 76 years, the mystery of her disappearance might have been solved. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery [TIGHAR] says Earhart’s bones were perhaps found on the island of Nikumaroro in Kiribati in 1940…

In 1998, scientists including Richard Jantz discovered the skeletal measurements and determined they were “consistent with a female of Earhart’s height and ethnic origin.” But another break came recently when Jantz realized a forearm bone was longer than normal.

Jantz then asked a forensic imaging specialist to compare the arm bone measurements to a photo showing Earhart with partially bare arms. Paying close attention to the location of Earhart’s shoulder, elbow, and wrist, the specialist estimated Earhart’s radius bone in her forearm was 76% of the length of her humerus, or upper arm bone—”virtually identical” to the castaway’s bones.

It adds the average woman’s forearm was 73% of the length of her humerus during Earhart’s lifetime. “The match does not, of course, prove that the castaway was Amelia Earhart, but it is a significant new data point that tips the scales further in that direction,” [TIGHAR] says.

Is she sleeping with the fishes? Was that her skeleton on Nikumaroro? I guess we’ll never know, but that won’t stop people from trying.

[source:newser]