Scientists at the Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station on King George Island announced in January 2025 that melting ice on Ecology Glacier had exposed human remains. These remains were now identified as British meteorologist Dennis “Tink” Bell, who vanished in 1959 during a Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey winter expedition. Bell, then 25, fell into a crevasse on 26 July 1959 while traveling with three colleagues and a dog team.
The Polish researchers uncovered Bell’s bones at the foot of the glacier together with more than 200 personal items: an inscribed wristwatch, parts of radio equipment, a flashlight, ski poles, a Swedish Mora knife and an ebonite pipe stem. Working on 45-degree slopes riddled with crevasses, they marked the site with GPS so that, in their words, their “fellow polar colleague would not be lost again”. Four trips were needed to raise the remains and artifacts before fresh snow covered the area.
The collection traveled from Poland to the Falkland Islands aboard the Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough and then to London, where coroner Malcolm Simmons oversaw DNA testing at King’s College London. “The bone fragments matched samples from Dennis Bell’s brother and sister,” announced the British Antarctic Survey, confirming the identity with “extraordinary probability.”
“Dennis was one of the many brave staff members who contributed to the early exploration and research in Antarctica under extraordinarily harsh conditions,” said Professor Dame Jane Francis, director of the British Antarctic Survey. She called the confirmation “a poignant and profound moment” that “brings closure to a decades-long mystery and reminds us of the human stories embedded in the history of Antarctic science.”
Bell’s elder brother David, now 86 and living in Australia, reacted with emotion. “When my sister Valerie and I were notified that our brother Dennis had been found after 66 years, we were shocked and amazed,” he told BBC News. “I had long since given up hope… It’s wonderful; I’m going to meet my brother… He’s been found – he’s come home now.”
Archive records showed that on the day of the accident Bell and surveyor Jeff Stokes walked ahead of teammates Ken Gibson and Colin Barton while climbing Ecology Glacier. Deep snow slowed the dogs, and Bell removed his skis to spur them forward. Without the added support he fell through a hidden crevasse. Stokes heard him from below and lowered a rope nearly 30 meters. Bell tied the line to his belt and, with help from the dogs, was hauled upward, but the belt snapped at the rim. A second fall proved fatal, and worsening weather and new crevasses forced the would-be rescuers to retreat.
For more than six decades the body moved downslope inside the glacier until warming temperatures left bones and belongings on newly exposed rock. The Polish team said the case illustrated how “glaciers move masses of ice, and Dennis traveled with them.”
Before his death Bell was halfway through a two-year posting at the Admiralty Bay base, a station of about a dozen men isolated by frozen seas for most of the year. A former Royal Air Force radio operator, he launched meteorological balloons every three hours, gathered data used to chart King George Island, cooked for the team and bred husky dogs.
The British Antarctic Monument Trust recorded 29 deaths on British Antarctic missions since 1944, many still unrecovered. “The latest discovery is an opportunity to reassess the contribution these men made, and an opportunity to promote science and what we’ve done in the Antarctic over many decades,” said Rod Rhys Jones, chair of the trust.
Bell’s family plans to travel to England for a burial service. “I’m just sad my parents never got to see this day,” said David. “After so many years, I can finally say: Dennis has come home.”
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.