One of the great mysteries of the 20th Century revolves around the ultimate fate of pioneering female aviator Amelia Earhart.

As I’m certain most people out there know, in 1937 she attempted to be the first female aviator to fly around the world.  However, in early July of that year she disappeared over the central Pacific and, since then, no one knows what has become of her.

Last year there was an intriguing -though ultimately proven very false- “discovery” that she might be in a photograph discovered in the U.S. archives and taken years after her disappearance (I wrote about that here and the fact that it was very quickly proven false here).

Anyway, the latest bit of news involves a re-examination of bones found in 1940, three years after her disappearance, and on a South Pacific island named Nikumaroro, some 400 miles from Earhart’s intended route.  Rachael Leah in an article posted on Salon.com reports on this:

Scientist says bones found on Pacific Island belonged to Amelia Earhart

Here’s the thing, though, and I know I’m spoiling the article but, hey, it is what it is:

The bones found in 1940 have long ago disappeared.  The person who found them who originally examined them thought they belonged to a man but measurements were taken and those notes still exist.

Going by the notes and the measurements within them, anthropologist Richard Jantz in the journal Forensic Anthropology determined that…

The data revealed that the bones have more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample.

How did Mr. Jantz come up with this?  By using photographs and the actual clothing of Ms. Earhart to come up with detailed measurements of her size and then compared these measurements with those of the bones found on that island in 1940.

Now, I grant you this: It is a very strong statement to make that the bones found on that island have such a strong similarity to Ms. Earhart.

However…

The fact remains that the actual bones are long gone and we have to assume the measurements used are indeed very accurate (there is no evidence to suggest they are or aren’t).

I feel, though, that with only those measurements as a guide and not the actual bones to examine we’re speculating an awful lot.

Not to degrade those who found and examined the bones back in 1940, but they believed at the time that the bones belonged to a MAN and not a woman.  If they did indeed belong to a woman (or, as Mr. Jantz speculates, Amelia Earhart herself), is it possible other errors were made back then, too?

And if so, it feels like quite a leap to assume we may indeed have her bones.