With water levels reaching record lows, a fifth set of human remains has been discovered in Nevada’s Lake Mead, where water levels are fast decreasing.
Monday evening at 8 p.m., National Park Service rangers were told of the discovery at Swim Beach, according to the NPS. “Park rangers have established a perimeter to retrieve the remains with assistance from the dive team of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department,” they stated in a statement.
Additionally, the Clark County Medical Examiner was notified.
Additionally, the preceding two sets of remains have been discovered at Swim Beach.
The coroner said last week that these two sets of skeletal remains may be from the same individual.
Fox News showed divers on the scene, however it is unclear whether this fifth pair also belongs to the same individual as the third and fourth. In May, bones and other bits started to surface, beginning with a male body in a barrel. The victim suffered a gunshot wound to the head, and a murder investigation has been initiated. The man was likely murdered in the 1970s or 1980s.
A individual thought to be between 23 and 38 years old was discovered near Callville Bay on May 7 and DNA samples were collected.
Todd Kolod, a Spaniard, has expressed growing conviction that the bones are those of his father Daniel, who was killed in a speedboat accident on the lake in 1958 at the man of 22 and whose corpse was never retrieved.
On July 26, a third set of human remains was discovered at Swim Beach, and on August 6, a fourth set was discovered at the same area.
‘At this time, the investigation into these remains includes determining whether the two sets of remains are from the same person or not,’ the coroner’s office said in a statement on August 10Christopher Orozco told Fox 4 that he and his family were swimming at the lake when they discovered the bones sticking out of the sand in shallow water.
Before notifying the National Park Service, he claimed to have taken photographs and films of the bones.
Orozco said, “We got in the water, and one of my girls reported she spotted something in the water that she believed was a bone.”
‘I replied alright let me go check. As I approached it and took it up, I saw it was a bone of this size.’
The National Park Service verified that Orozco was the first individual to report the finding on August 6. Identifying all of the remains might take months or perhaps years.
As DNA collection is a relatively recent innovation, it is possible that some of individuals who drowned in the lake are untraceable.
Police in Las Vegas are combing through unresolved missing person cases and have gathered DNA samples from many families in an effort to find answers.
Kolod, who is anxious to find whether the second set is actually his father, said over the weekend that he has not yet been asked for his DNA, but he is willing to help.
The set had bones with missing teeth that looked to correspond with Daniel’s partial denture.
He told 8 News Now, “With each clue, I always think in my mind that it would move us farther away from our objective, but constantly, each clue moves us closer, and this is like a bullseye.”
Kolod had thought that his father might be identified by his teeth.
A few years before he drowned, Daniel lost his front teeth in a vehicle accident and wore dentures.
Ournalists from 8 News Now sent photographs of the remains to Dr. Deborah Staten, the owner and dentist at Desert Hills Dental, who is qualified to assist in the identification of human remains using dental records.
She said that it is evident that the skeleton is lacking its front teeth, but she thinks that the individual was missing other teeth before to death and that others were recently extracted.
In the ensuing six decades, dental records have undoubtedly been lost.
Kolod said that he is eager to provide a DNA sample as soon as possible in order to solve the mystery, but was upset by the delay.
“The rate at which I’m getting called for a DNA sample – I’m beginning to lose hope,” he added.
Perhaps this latest discovery explains anything.
Since the 1930s, around 300 persons have drowned in Lake Mead, excluding those whose corpses were never retrieved, including Daniel Kolod.
During the summer, when the lake’s water level lowers, human remains, sunken vessels, including a World War II landing craft, and other objects have been unearthed.
The discovery have sparked suspicion about decades-old unsolved murder and missing person cases involving organized crime and the early days of Las Vegas, which is just 30 minutes away from the lake.
The lake level is falling while the great majority of peer-reviewed research indicates that the planet is warming, mostly due to increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
In the last 30 years, the West of the United States, particularly the Colorado River basin, has been warmer and drier, according to scientists.
About 40 million people get their water from the Colorado River, with Lake Mead and Lake Powell acting as the region’s principal reservoirs.
According to NASA, Lake Mead’s water levels are at their lowest point since 1937. As of the 18th of July, 2022, the lake was 27 percent full.
Ann Willis of the Center for Watershed Science told the Washington Post in June, “We have not had a drier time in the last 1,200 years.”
In terms of how bad the circumstances are, we’ve reached an all-time low.
Historically, Lake Mead stood 1,200 feet above sea level.
In July, however, after more than two decades of drought, the lake was barely 1,040 feet above sea level, its lowest level since the 1930s.
It is now raining around 12 inches every week.