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Cannibalized Sailor From Doomed Arctic Expedition Identified Through a DNA
For over a century, the skeletal remains of sailors from Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to the Northwest Passage were scattered along the rugged shores of an Arctic island. Bleached and battered by the elements, nearly a quarter of these anonymous bones bore the chilling signs of cannibalism, marking a tragic end to one of history’s most famous voyages. Now, after years of meticulous research by Canadian scientists, one of those sailors has been identified, and is Captain James Fitzjames from London, who captained HMS Erebus.
This breakthrough came after researchers isolated DNA from one of Fitzjames’s molars, which was then matched to living relatives. The identification represents a major milestone in the study of Franklin’s expedition, which departed England in 1845 in hopes of conquering the elusive Northwest Passage, and is the subject of a brilliant new study published in The Journal of Archaeological Sciences.
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