Amelia Earhart may have survived as castaway for months

Amelia Earhart,the legendary American pilot who went missing while on an attempt to fly around the world in 1937...

Amelia Earhart,the legendary American pilot who went missing while on an attempt to fly around the world in 1937,may have survived for months as a castaway on a remote South Pacific island,according to new findings.

Preliminary results of a two-week expedition on Nikumaroro,an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati,suggested that the famous pilot and her navigator Fred Noonan may have eaten turtles,fish and bird to survive on the tiny coral atoll after making an emergency landing.

There is evidence on the island suggesting that a castaway was there for weeks and possibly months, Ric Gillespie,executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR),told Discovery News. We noticed that the forest can be an excellent source of water for a castaway in an island where there is no fresh water. After heavy rain,you can easily collect water from the bowl-shaped hollows in the buka trees… We also found a campsite and nine fire features containing thousands of fish,turtle and bird bones. This might suggest that many meals took place there, Gillespie said.