Franklin researchers hope to link DNA from sailors’ bones with descendants
Researchers who have completed the first genetic analysis on the bones from the crew of the doomed Franklin expedition in Canada’s Arctic say they’re hoping to meet living descendants to match them with the remains of their ancestors.
Anne Keenlyside, an anthropologist at Trent University and co-author of a study on the remains, performed DNA analysis of tooth and bone samples recovered from eight sites where sailors died after they deserted the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in April 1848.
Keenlyside said the analysis doesn’t shed much light on what befell the expedition, which became icebound while looking for the Northwest Passage. But researchers have put a call out to genealogists in Canada and the United Kingdom for anyone who can trace a family tree to the Franklin sailors.
Matching the DNA with the living would indicate who died where, the study says.