The thawed remains of a lost U.S. airman, chipped from a California glacier more than 60 years after his death, were carefully delivered yesterday to the military's premier identification lab on the far edge of Hickam Air Force Base.

His arrival starts a methodical identification process by a team of specialists that will analyze bones, teeth, clothing and, because the airman was frozen at an altitude of 12,000 feet, his preserved skin. It could be weeks, months, even years before the work is finished.

The airman was discovered last week by climbers who noticed his head and arm jutting out of solid ice on the slopes of Mount Mendel in the Sierra Nevada. He was wearing an unopened parachute.

"It is a mystery that has been buried and only now that the ice and snow have melted, can we unravel that mystery," said Robert Mann, deputy scientific director of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's identification lab.

A veteran forensic anthropologist, Mann will analyze the airman's skeletal remains. A forensic odontologist will review the airman's teeth and compare them with dental charts of airmen lost in the area — there are 10 — and an anthropologist will analyze the artifacts found with the remains, from his uniform to whatever he may have kept in the pockets of his pants.

Styles of military clothing can reveal a lot about the time they were made and a parachute will nearly always have information printed on it that allows a researcher to determine when and where it was made, Mann said.

They are not allowed to share information, though, Mann said.

"We want them to work in the blind," he said. "We want them to compile all the information based on what the evidence shows them. In these kinds of cases, the evidence really does speak to us. We're not speaking to the evidence. It is telling us what the story is."

Although it had been preserved, the airman's face may have been distorted by the freezing process and not easily recognized, Mann said. Instead, the lab will turn to dental records, the method that is always its first choice for identification, Mann said. If that fails, the forensic experts will turn to mitochondrial DNA — a particular kind of DNA transferred through a person's maternal blood line, he said.

The best place to get a sample is in a person's femur, and after that, a tibia.

Samples must be taken carefully to prevent contamination of the remains of other cases on the lab's main floor. The act of cutting into a body can send DNA into the air, Mann said. Because of that, everyone who enters that part of the lab must have his or her own DNA sample on file in case of a problem.

Having skin to examine is a rarity for the lab's older cases and allows for the relatively quick identification of race and sex, and may even yield identifying tattoos, Mann said.

Most of the time, the lab only has skeletal remains to work with. Recoveries have been made four times, however, from glaciers in Tibet and Greenland and in the dead of winter in Japan, Mann said.

"We have some great people here and everybody is going to be working their piece of the puzzle and I feel pretty confident that it is all going to come together with a positive identification," he said.

The remains were accompanied to Hawai'i by Paul Emanovsky, a forensic anthropologist with the lab who was sent to the glacier soon after the airman was discovered. He said the remains were "in very good condition."

The skin is mummified and most of the bones and teeth are preserved, he said.

After the body was thawed over the course of several days — a careful process that required occasional flushing with tap water — Emanovsky went through the pockets of the airman's uniform, finding a pen, coins and a small notebook. The airman was wearing pants, shirt, an undershirt and a sweater.

But he wore no military dog tags.

"I did go through his pockets and I did not find any identification," Emanovsky said. "There is a badge above his shirt pocket but it was corroded."

The lab may be able to clean the badge, however, and read the name, he said.

Personal items often are an important point of closure for relatives, once they receive a positive identification based on biological evidence. Mann said relatives have held weathered rabbit's feet and old lucky coins found on missing servicemen and concluded that their loved one had been found.

It could happen with the frozen airman from California.

"These are just unbelievable cases," Mann said. "A 60-year mystery locked in ice: It's just unbelievable."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.