Richard Jantz, professor emeritus of anthropology and director emeritus of UT’s Forensic Anthropology Center, re-examined seven bone measurements conducted in 1940 by physician D. W. Hoodless. Hoodless had concluded that the bones belonged to a man.
Jantz, using several modern quantitative techniques — including Fordisc, a computer program for estimating sex, ancestry, and stature from skeletal measurements — found that Hoodless had incorrectly determined the sex of the remains. The program, co-created by Jantz, is used by nearly every board-certified forensic anthropologist in the US and around the world.
The data revealed that the bones have more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample.
The new study is published in the journal Forensic Anthropology.
Source: University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Last Updated on December 9, 2024