How coconut crabs may have absconded with Amelia Earhart's skeleton

This whole thing was solved conclusively in the '90s.

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Or she just crashed in the enormously vast ocean!

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Frigging nightmare fuel.

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I agree with @ratel – what happened to Amelia Earhart is not really a mystery. She crashed.

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I watched and read Naked and Marooned by Ed Stafford. He goes to a remote island with very little (except a bottle of antibiotics and a bunch of recording equipment and a radio for emergencies, which he ends up using, anywho…)

As fake/real as the show and book may be, he gets hungry and eats a coconut crab. He said it was delicious. How could it not be if that’s all you have to eat?

He also killed a goat and ate that whole thing over the course of a week. And ate a bunch of other questionable stuff that at one point made him violently ill and he had to call for help and a checkup.

I’m not sure how much we can trust the culinary tastes of a castaway, but there you have it. At least 1 guy says coconut crabs are delicious. I think he threw it on the fire and then cracked it open with rocks because the shell is tough.

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Been told humans tastes like hippopotamus. Does that help?

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The origin for the theory that she ditched on an island was that there were reports of distress calls made from her that were picked up by amateur radios. In the calls, she gave details- that she was on an island, that her navigator was badly hurt, and that they needed help quickly. The calls came at regular intervals that they thing aligned with low tides (when she could start the plane/ radio).

Weak SOS signals were also picked up by naval ships, etc, indicating that it probably did not just crash hard in the ocean.

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The writer’s curiosity is easily sated by the first available explanation.

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So, they crashed, people heard them crying for help and ignored it, starved/died of injuries and exposure, lifeless corpses picked apart by crawling scavengers.
If the truth is really depressing people will prefer a “mystery”.

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You just have to flip it over and hit it’s weak point for massive damage.

(This meme never gets old.)

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I take it as implying that Ratel is not a fan of Mounds/Almond Joy.

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Sometimes you feel like a nut.

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Obligatory

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Put it in the microwave, stick it on full power for 5 mins, then BLAM. Job done. Might be a bit chewy though.

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You see them eaten on survival shows. Apparently tastes like any other crab.

I might want to try one, once. But not make a habit of it, as to grow to full size it take 50 years.

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When the bones were discovered in 1940, they were sent to Fiji and were investigated by a British doctor who took a shot at identifying them using the limited knowledge of forensic anthropology of the time, and came to the conclusion that they were from a stocky Polynesian male. The bones have since been lost, but his notes with the bone measurements have survived, and two renowned forensic anthropologists in recent years have come to the conclusion, based on the original measurements, that they were most likely from a female of northern European ancestry between 5’7 and 5’9 in height.

Of course, that doesn’t shed any light on Noonan’s fate. The only clue about him at this point would seem to be Betty Klenck’s account of hearing Earhart broadcasting on 7/5 or 7/6. Betty could hear a man in the background, and Earhart seemed to be trying to calm someone who was panicky and not completely lucid. A head injury would seem likely, and in the absence of medical attention, he may not have lasted long.

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Bob Ballard just spent several days combing the seafloor around Nikumaroro for National Geographic for that very purpose. No indication yet that he found anything, but if anyone could, he’d be the guy.

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http://journals.upress.ufl.edu/fa/article/view/525/518

If Hoodless’s analysis, particularly his sex estimate, can be set aside, it becomes possible to focus attention on the central question of whether the Nikumaroro bones may have been the remains of Amelia Earhart. There is no credible evidence that would support excluding them. On the contrary, there are good reasons for including them. The bones are consis- tent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer. Her height is entirely consistent with the bones. The skull measurements are at least suggestive of female. But most convincing is the similarity of the bone lengths to the reconstructed lengths of Earhart’s bones. Likelihood ratios of 84–154 would not qualify as a positive identification by the criteria of modern forensic practice, where likelihood ratios are often millions or more. They do qualify as what is often called the preponderance of the evidence, that is, it is more likely than not the Nikumaroro bones were (or are, if they still exist) those of Amelia Earhart. If the bones do not belong to Amelia Earhart, then they are from someone very similar to her. And, as we have seen, a random individual has a very low probability of possessing that degree of similarity.

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“Lost”? The crabs came back to finish the job.

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