nikumaroro island
nikumaroro island
It has been 72 years since famed aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared while attempting to fly around the world. But the mystery remains unsolved: Nobody knows exactly what happened to Earhart or her plane.
Now researchers at the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or Tighar, say they are on the verge of recovering DNA evidence that would demonstrate Earhart had been stranded on Nikumaroro Island (formerly known as Gardner Island) before finally perishing there.
The non-profit International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery made several expeditions to Nikumaroro Island during the 1990s and 2000s,[7][8][9] investigating documentary, archaeological and anecdotal evidence supporting a hypothesis that in July 1937 Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan landed on Gardner after failing to find Howland Island during the final stage of their ill-fated World Flight and moreover, that Earhart might have survived on Nikumaroro for several months before the British survey parties began arriving in 1938, by which time she and Noonan may have succumbed to injuries, hunger or disease. Nikumaroro Island.
Nikumaroro is sporadically visited by biologists attracted to its extensive marine and avian ecosystems. Visitors often mention the island's oppressive equatorial heat, razor-sharp coral, dense foliage and extremely aggressive coconut crabs. Coconut palms, thick scrub and Pisonia forest cover the land surface. Migratory birds and rats abound. Several species of shark and tursiops dolphins have been observed in the surrounding waters. Some of the fish species are toxic to humans during certain seasons.
The scarcity of fresh water on Nikumaroro has proven problematic for residents in the past, and contributed directly to the failure of an ambitious British project to colonize the island from 1938-63.
During May and June of next year, Tighar will launch a new $500,000 expedition, continuing the archaeological work it has been doing on the island since 2001.
"We think we will be able to come back with DNA," said Tighar's Executive Director Ric Gillespie, who is working with two DNA labs in Ontario, Canada, Genesis Genomics and Molecular World. "We were out there in 2007 under the impression that in order to extract DNA we would need to find a piece of a human, and we didn't find anything like that. But we did find what's best described as personal effects of the castaway that died there." Nikumaroro Island
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