Where Is Amelia Earhart?
In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic. Just five years later, during another record attempt, she vanished. What happened to her? Many scientists today are still searching for the answer.
Amelia Earhart amazed both friends and foes by breaking the altitude record for women and becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1937, the American pilot took on a new challenge: she wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world.
A crash or an emergency landing?
That was to be Earhart's last record attempt. After a stopover in Papua New Guinea (by which time Earhart had already travelled more than 35,000 kilometres), she took off for Howland, an island in the Pacific. But she never arrived. Researchers think that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan ran out of fuel, but what happened next is anyone's guess: did the plane crash or were they able to make an emergency landing? Despite large-scale rescue efforts, the two of them were never found.
Human bones found
Scientists are still searching for Earhart and Noonan to this day. Many suspect that they managed to reach the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro in the Pacific Ocean. Human bones were found there as early as 1940. At the time, researchers thought these came from a man, but today forensic anthropologist Richard Jantz believes they belong to a woman. What is more: Jantz has carried out computer studies looking at the physique of Earhart and more than 2,000 other individuals. The result: the bones showed more similarity to Earhart's body than to 99% of the others.
Items were also found along with the bones that could have belonged to them, such as pieces of men's and women's shoes. The finds included the box from a sextant of the type that Noonan used.
Aircraft wrecks spotted
In 2013, someone from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (THIGAR) believed they had discovered the possible remains of the plane. These were spotted on sonar images of the ocean floor, which were mapped using sound waves, near the coast of Nikumaroro.
Also in early 2024, the American company Deep Sea Vision reported a possible plane wreck in the Pacific Ocean. Their sonar image showed an object at a depth of +/- 4,800 metres. But... after more thorough investigation, it turns out to be a piece of rock.
The culprits: coconut crabs?
So the plane may be in the Pacific Ocean, but where is Earhart's body? TIGHAR thinks it knows the answer to this. Nikumaroro is home to coconut crabs. These crustaceans - despite their misleading name - are in fact hermit crabs rather than true crabs, and they eat not only coconuts, but dead animals as well. TIGHAR therefore suspects that they ate Earhart's carcass and then dragged her bones into their underground burrows.
(Un)solved mystery
Researchers in recent years keep getting closer to the mystery of Amelia Earhart, but it is still far from being solved: could one of the objects that have been spotted really be her plane? If it is, did she live on the island for some time or did she die during the landing or soon afterwards? These questions could be answered in future using modern research techniques.