A human jawbone found in an Arizona man’s rock collection has been identified as belonging to a U.S. Marine killed in a 1951 training accident in California.
The jawbone was inherited by an unnamed Arizonan as a boy from his grandfather. In 2002, the man’s mother found the bone in the collection and contacted the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, the office said in a post on Facebook Friday.
With its owner unknown, the jawbone was listed as belonging to the “Rock Collection John Doe.”
In 2023, Ramapo College of New Jersey approached the sheriff’s office about using the remains as part of a genealogy certificate program. Law enforcement agreed, and after the genome from the jawbone was sequenced, students produced a lead on who it might be, the college said in a release.
Using DNA from the decedent’s daughter, the college confirmed last month that the jawbone belonged to Marine Capt. Everett Yager disappeared during a flight training exercise over Riverside County, California, on July 31, 1951, the sheriff’s office said.
It is not known how the jawbone got to Arizona, as Yager’s remains were recovered and buried in Palmyra, Missouri.
One theory is that the jawbone was missed during the collection of remains and that a scavenging bird picked it up and left it in Arizona, Ramapo College said.
“The team that worked on this case at our [Investigative Genetic Genealogy] bootcamp included some truly outstanding researchers, and we are so proud of them for helping to repatriate Capt. Yager’s remains and return them to his family,” Ramapo College IGG Center Assistant Director Cairenn Binder said in a statement.
