A military laboratory scientist said forensic experts trying to identify the recently discovered frozen remains of a World War II airman have narrowed down the possibilities to four.

Dr. Robert Mann told CNN in an interview yesterday that analysts have singled out the plane the airman was aboard when it crashed in California some 60 years ago. Records show there were four crewmen aboard that plane.

The Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command had earlier been looking at 10 possibilities for the identity of the serviceman, whose body was found Oct. 16 jutting out of solid ice atop a mountain in a national park.

Mann said the airman was a Caucasian male in his 20s and was 5-feet-9 to 6-feet-2 tall. He said the man suffered massive trauma when the plane crashed.

Mann said he believes the lab will be able to identify the airman in a few weeks to a few months.

But he said it would not be as easy as matching DNA from the airman with relatives of the missing four crew members. There is a possibility that the pool of missing aircraft, and thus missing crew, may be larger than what analysts have concluded, he said.

"We don't want to just look at the material evidence we have and immediately jump to the conclusion that this is a certain individual. What we want to do is have the evidence speak for itself," Mann said.

Two forensic anthropologists and a dentist at Hickam Air Force Base have been examining the airman's body, teeth and clothing.

The joint command, which operates the largest anthropological laboratory in the world, has identified more than 1,200 servicemen dating to World War I.

It usually works with skeletal remains but has received well-preserved frozen bodies in the past, such as airmen who were found in a Tibet glacier in 1993.