DNA Solves 180-Year Arctic Mystery of Franklin Expedition Crew

The mystery surrounding the deaths of 129 British sailors trapped in the Arctic ice during the Franklin Expedition of 1845 is beginning to unravel. Modern genetic analysis has not only identified several members of the crew but also exposed chilling details about what happened aboard the doomed voyage. The expedition's ships, Erebus and Terror, left England in search of the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. None of the crew returned. For decades, scattered bones discovered on King William Island provided only fragments of the story. Now, researchers from the University of Waterloo have used advanced DNA analysis to officially identify several members of the expedition. Scientists compared genetic material extracted from remains with Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA from living descendants of the sailors.