Utah archaeologist raises doubts about supposed discovery of vagabond poet’s remains

Inquiry reopened in discovery of poet’s remains

SALT LAKE CITY — Any doubt that remains found in the Utah wilderness were those of Everett Ruess, a legendary wanderer of the 1930s, seemed to be erased by a battery of forensic and genetic tests a few months ago.

But Utah’s state archaeologist, who was not involved in the discovery, is raising a series of questions about whether the remains are actually those of the poet and artist who disappeared in the Escalante canyons.

Kevin Jones said Ruess’ surviving dental records don’t match the condition or characteristics of the teeth on a lower jaw bone that was found among the remains. The worn teeth suggest a strictly Native American diet heavy with stone-ground grains. Jones also said the shovel-shaped lower front teeth are characteristic of an American Indian’s.

In an interview Thursday, Jones elaborated on his critique, which was posted on his state agency’s Web site. His doubts were first reported by The Salt Lake Tribune.

“There are good dental records of Everett Ruess’ — and none of those features appear on the teeth” in a recovered mandible, Jones said Thursday.

Ruess’ nephew Brian Ruess, a 44-year-old software salesman in Portland, Ore., said Thursday that his family was reopening a scientific examination because of Jones’ questions.

The family enlisted a dental expert to look at the evidence. It is making preparations for another round of DNA tests that initially confirmed the remains were those of the self-styled vagabond, who vanished in 1934. And University of Colorado scientists are assembling their forensic and genetic tests for scrutiny by Jones and others.

Yet Brian Ruess said he is confident in the initial identification, and the scientists told The Associated Press they stand by their work.

Ruess said the old dental records can’t be regarded as wholly accurate. Scientist say 13 of Ruess’ 32 teeth were never recovered, complicating dental comparisons, while the dental records are “confused and extremely incomplete.”

“I’m confident of the identity,” said Dave Roberts, who pieced together the story of Ruess’ fate in the May/April issue of National Geographic Adventurer. The discovery began with the haunting account of a Navajo elder who, according to a family story, had witnessed the young man’s murder by other Indians and waited decades to reveal it.

The remains, along with a few contemporary artifacts, were excavated in May 2008 by Navajo Nation archaeologist Ron Maldonado at Comb Ridge in remote southeastern Utah, and handed off to forensic anthropologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Dr. Dennis Van Gerven, a professor of anthropology, and his graduate student assistant, Paul Sandberg, used fragments of skeleton to create a biological profile of an Anglo man of Ruess’ age — he was 20 when he vanished — and approximate height.

Van Gerven said Thursday that DNA comparisons of Ruess’ bones with four nephews and nieces — his closest living relatives — left no doubt about the remains.

Jones suggested the DNA was too degraded for analysis, but Van Gerven said that degraded DNA is incapable of indicating any kind of match.

“What we are being treated to is a shotgun approach where every conceivable — and, in this case, inconceivable — assertion is being made in the hope that something will eventually stick,” Van Gerven said in a lengthy e-mail answering each of Jones’ doubts.

Krauter said the rounded teeth found on a lower jaw bone were consistent with a gritty diet Ruess was likely to have had sharing Navajos meals and preparing and eating his own food in the sandy outdoors.

Teeth can wear quickly, said Van Gerven, who spent six months as a youth in the Sahara Desert “and lost more enamel than the Ruess skeleton! That didn’t make me a Nubian and it didn’t make me 70 years old.”

Van Gerven said the “great fuss” Jones made over shovel-shaped incisors had little scientific importance — eight percent of European-Americans possess the same trait, he said, while 10 percent of American Indians lack it.

On the Net:

adventure.nationalgeographic.com/

www.everettruess.net/