What it establishes, with the precision appropriate to a DNA identification from ancient material, is that the mandible is Fitzjames’s, that he died at Erebus Bay, and that his remains were processed there in the manner documented across the NgLj-2 site. It does not solve the larger questions of the expedition’s history. It does not tell us what happened in the two and a half years between the ships becoming beset and the moment the mandible was deposited at Erebus Bay. It does not give us the journals that may or may not be preserved in the ships’ interiors.
What it gives us is a name on a bone, confirmed by science, documented by history, and commemorated in a cairn on the island where the captain of HMS Erebus spent his last weeks.
He is the second of 129 to be identified. The work continues.
The specific combination of factors that made this identification possible — preserved Arctic specimens, advances in ancient DNA methodology, genealogical database research, and the institutional continuity of a research program working the same site since the early 1990s — will likely be replicated in other contexts. The methodology is proven. The demonstration that a 175-year-old Arctic tooth can yield a Y-chromosome profile sufficient for identity comparison against a living individual 176 years later is a methodological proof of concept with implications beyond the specific Franklin expedition context.
For the ongoing identification program, the clearest path forward is genealogical: finding the living male-line descendants of the other expedition crew members whose bones are in the NgLj-2 collection and whose names are known from the expedition roster. The roster is documented. The bones are in the collection. The laboratory methods are established. The limiting factor is finding the living people who connect the present to 1845 through unbroken paternal lines.