Old bones yield cold facts about Franklin mystery body

It's perhaps the coldest of Canadian cold cases: Whose skeleton was recovered from a High Arctic island in 1869 and entombed in a British memorial dedicated to the lost Franklin Expedition? For more than 140 years, the remains found on Nunavut's King William Island by an American adventurer have been identified as those of Lt. Henry Le Vesconte, one of the officers who died with Sir John Franklin and all 127 other crewmen aboard the exploration ships Terror and Erebus during their famously illfated voyage to Northern Canada in the 1840s. Now, the first modern scientific study of the bones and teeth of the sailor who perished while helping Britain -and, in turn, Canada -establish its Arctic sovereignty has shown that the remains probably belong to another of Franklin's officers: expedition naturalist and assistant surgeon Harry Goodsir. Remarkably, the mystery was unlocked thanks to a reconstruction of the dead man's face and a chemical probe of his teeth -modern-day scientific techniques that evolved, in part, from the discoveries of a pioneering 19th-century anatomist named John Goodsir, Harry's own brother, who emerged as one of Britain's leading figures in the anatomical sciences and the study of dentistry.. The study has also shed fresh light on the theory that a disastrous illness, perhaps scurvy or tuberculosis, doomed Franklin and his men. "No evidence of these diseases was found on the bones, and DNA tests proved negative for tuberculosis," English Heritage, a British government advisory agency, stated in a summary of findings from the longdelayed autopsy. Another prominent theory about the tragedy remains to be tested using the bones. "Work is still ongoing on samples from the remains," English Herigate noted, "to analyze for lead to see if lead poisoning from the expedition's canned food or from their water supply was a factor." The bones were gathered originally from the southern tip of King William Island and shipped to Britain by eccentric American explorer Charles Francis Hall, one of many 19th-centu-ry searchers who scoured Arctic Canada for signs of Franklin's lost ships -a quest revived in recent years by Parks Canada archeologists. The remains, one of only two sets of bones from the Franklin voyages ever repatriated to Britain, were examined by English doctors in the 1870s and determined to belong to Le Vesconte despite doubts expressed at the time by the officer's family. Placed beneath the ornate Franklin Expedition memorial at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England, the remains were briefly removed in 2009 while repairs were carried out on the monument. Researchers led by English Heritage skeletal biologist Simon Mays were permitted to study the bones and teeth of the entombed individual, and their findings -published in the latest issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science -led to the tentative re-identification of the remains as those of H.D.S. (Harry) Goodsir. "We do know from letter evidence that Le Vesconte's sister was not convinced" about the initial identification of the remains, Mays told Postmedia News. "It was nice to vindicate her after 140 years." Read more: http://www.thestarphoenix.com/technology/bones+yield+cold+facts+about+Franklin+mystery+body/4481091/story.html#ixzz1HRJcoJOD