How Can You Lose Amelia Earhart's Bones?

People have been looking for Amelia Earhart, and her plane (and, when they think about it, her navigator, Noonan!) ever since she disappeared. It's one of the great unsolved mysteries.

When her plane/bones whatever are found...then it's time to have the following headline:

Earhart's Final Resting Place Believed Found

Until that time...should this even be a newsstory? (Although, I suppose the cost of the expedition is such that they're looking for sponsors to help underwrite it, and that requires advance publicity.)

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/10/23/amelia-earhart.html

Here's a sentence in the article that puzzles me:

"We know that in 1940 British Colonial Service officer Gerald Gallagher recovered a partial skeleton of a castaway on Nikumaroro. Unfortunately, those bones have now been lost," Gillespie said.

How in the world could you lose those bones???? According to Wiipedia (not that that's an unimpleachable source), the Japanese never made it to this island, so why would the bones go missing?

And frankly, why does it take 20 years (the expedition in question has been searching this island off and on for 20 years) to find Earhart. Surely her plane would still be on the island? Or did it crash at sea and she swam for the island?

Heh heh...now my curiosity is piqued...

Here's the link for the Tighar website: The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.