The remains of a British researcher who vanished in 1959 in Antarctica when he was 25 years old were discovered amid rocks near a receding glacier and identified using DNA analysis, the British Antarctic Survey said Monday.
Dennis “Tink” Bell had been working as a meteorologist for the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, the predecessor of the British Antarctic Survey, in 1959 when he died on July 26, 1959, in a crevasse on a glacier at Admiralty Bay on King George Island, located off the Antarctic Peninsula. His body was never recovered.
Bell and another man, Jeff Stokes, left the base they were staying in to survey a glacier using a dogsled, according to the survey. The snow was deep and the dogs began to show signs of tiredness, so Bell walked up to encourage them, but wasn’t wearing his skis. He suddenly disappeared into a crevasse.
According to accounts in the British Antarctic Survey records, CBS News partner network BBC News reported, Stokes lowered a belt to Bell and he was pulled up to the lip of the crevasse. As he reached the lip of the hole, though, the belt broke, and Bell fell again. He then no longer responded to his friend’s calls.
The Polish team that found Bell’s remains also found over 200 personal items, including an inscribed watch, a Swedish knife, radio equipment and ski poles.
“When my sister Valerie and I were notified that our brother Dennis had been found after 66 years, we were shocked and amazed,” Bell’s brother David told the British Antarctic Survey.
Dennis Bell (left) is shown with his colleagues and dogs that helped them to work in Antarctica in 1959 at Admiralty Bay Base. / Credit: British Antarctic Survey
David Bell said the work of The British Antarctic Survey, British Antarctic Monument Trust and the Polish team that brought Bell’s remains home “helped us come to terms with the tragic loss of our brilliant brother.”
“I had long given up on finding my brother. It is just remarkable, astonishing. I can’t get over it,” David Bell, now 86, told BBC News.
Jane Francis, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, called the discovery a “poignant and profound moment.”
“This discovery brings closure to a decades-long mystery and reminds us of the human stories embedded in the history of Antarctic science,” Francis said.
Bodies exposed by melting glaciers in recent years
As glaciers melt and recede around the world, there has been an increase in discoveries of the remains of missing skiers, climbers and hikers.
Last year, the preserved body of an American mountaineer was found in Peru, 22 years after he disappeared scaling a snowy peak there.
In 2023, the remains of a mountaineer who had been missing for 37 years were recovered from a glacier in the Swiss Alps.
In 2017, a shrinking glacier in Switzerland revealed the bodies of a couple who went missing in 1942.
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