What this identification established, precisely, is worth stating carefully. The DNA analysis established that the mandible belonged to a person who shared Fitzjames’s paternal Y-chromosome lineage. Because Tetteroo’s genealogical research had identified Fitzjames as the specific person in that lineage whose remains would be expected at an expedition site on King William Island, the researchers concluded that the mandible was his.
What the identification did not establish, and cannot establish, is how or precisely when Fitzjames died. The DNA evidence says who he was; the physical evidence at the site says where his remains ended up. The sequence of events between the march’s departure on April 22, 1848, and the bone’s presence at NgLj-2 is not recoverable from the DNA or from the bone itself.
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## The Cut Marks: What They Document and What They Do Not
The mandible that yielded Fitzjames’s DNA also bore cut marks. This combination — the highest-ranking identified expedition member and physical marks on his remains — was the detail that generated the most widespread coverage of the September 2024 announcement.
The marks on the jaw are described in the published research and in coverage of the announcement as being consistent with defleshing — the removal of soft tissue from the bone. The mandible’s location as a bone, and the specific placement of cut marks on it, is consistent with the patterns that Keenleyside and other researchers identified across the 451-bone sample from NgLj-2 as a whole: marks in locations that make mechanical sense for the removal of meat from the body after death.