Back in 1999, a song asked: "What ever happened to Amelia Earhart who holds the stars up in the sky?" Nearly 80 years after she disappeared scientists are still working to find the missing pieces of the puzzle and finally close the legendary pilot's tale.

Reports from last week provides fresh insight on the events following Earhart's plane crash back on July 1937. CNN said that Amelia Earhart survived for a few days or even months as a heroic castaway.

Amelia Earhart was already an accomplished pilot before she disappeared having been the first woman to fly over the Atlantic and the second person to do so solo. In 1937, Earhart together with her navigator, Fred Noonan, attempted to circumnavigate the globe.

On July 2, 1937, Earhart and Noonan left Papua New Guinea enroute to Howland Island, a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, a few hundred miles off Hawaii, just north of the equator. It was the third-to-the-last leg of their 30,000 mile journey. The 2 however did not make it.

The U.S. Coast Guard's Itasca was assigned to assist Earhart in her quest. The ship's radio log showed Amelia said she must be near the island and her fuel was low. Itasca got garbled messages from Amelia's twin-engined Lockheed Electra before the communication went silent.

One of the largest search in history followed the next day. A crew of 3,000 involving 10 ships and 65 airplanes went out to search for the remains of the famed pilot, her companion and plane but they came up empty handed. On January 9, 1939, Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead.

Since then we all believed that Amelia Earhart's plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, (TIGHAR) proposed a different theory and have been building their case for the past 25 years. The group claims that Earhart landed a few hundred miles off course in an island called Nikumaroro, also known as Gardner Island in the Republic of Kiribati.

Central evidence to this theory are the bones found in the island back in the 1940s together with what were initially believed to be women's shoes and a box assumed to be a navigator's sextant box.

The bones were not complete and authorities that examined the during that time dismissed that it was Amelia. They concluded that the bones were from a male of Polynesian descent and not female. The bones remained with Dr. D.W. Hood of the Central Medical School in Suva, Fiji. This was the last known location of the bones, no one has been able to locate them since 1941.

According to TIGHAR Amelia tried to call for help using her plane's radio for several days. They assumed that Earhart was able to land the plane otherwise the radio wouldn't be working. They also believed that she lived in the atoll without drinking water for weeks because they found evidence that bonfires were lit in the area where the bones have been found.

Last month TIGHAR also released new information they gathered after analyzing records of the bones found in Gardner Island. Using modern techniques they were able to establish that the bones were more likely female than male, European and about 5'5" to 5'9" tall.

According to the original records of the arm bone, it had a brachial index of .756. A forensic expert used computer measurements to determine the brachial index of Amelia Earhart using a photograph with her left arm exposed. Imaging specialist Jeff Glickman came up with a brachial index of .76.

These latest findings however are not enough to draw a conclusion. The evidence presented by experts from TIGHAR have been questioned earlier by a report in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports which supported the earlier conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to a stocky male and not Amelia Earhart.

TIGHAR is trying to raise funds to send a submarine near Gardner Island next year in hope of finding the final pieces to the puzzle.