NIKUMARORO, KIRIBATI—Claiming to have finally solved the longstanding mystery surrounding the missing aviator’s ultimate fate, a team of Purdue University researchers announced Friday they had found new evidence suggesting Amelia Earhart was accepted into crab society and lived the rest of her life among crustaceans. “Our investigation of a remote atoll in the area where Earhart’s plane vanished in 1937 has led us to believe she ended up assimilating into a colony of coconut crabs who welcomed her with open claws,” said researcher Sheryl Thompkins, adding that her team’s conclusion was supported by DNA evidence of numerous crabs directly descended from a blond human woman. “It appears that the crabs taught Earhart how to scuttle up palm trees and pull apart carrion with a powerful pincer-grip, allowing the aviator to live on for many happy decades as an honorary member of crabkind. Earhart likely would have stopped walking upright and developed a thick, chitinous shell as her cultural carcinization progressed, making identification by subsequent recovery efforts difficult. In fact, we suspect that previous expeditions to Nikumaroro likely came face to face with Earhart herself, but were unable to distinguish her from any of the other coconut crabs she had come to regard as family.” At press time, Thompkins added that Earhart’s navigator Fred Noonan likely succumbed to repeated pinching by Earhart after refusing to accept the crabs’ ways.

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