Legendary Donner Party research says some group members may not have resorted to cannibalism.

The Donner party was trapped in the Sierra Mountains during the winter of 1846 and 1847.

Results of recent analyses of bone fragments found at the Donner Family campsite in California's Tahoe National Forest are inconclusive with regard to cannibalism.

However, genetic material from bone fragments analyzed from the site was too degraded to provide much data, due to its degradation.

However, due to the accounts of some survivors and rescuers, researchers cautioned they could not rule out cannibalism among a few desperate pioneers in the party's final days of its four-month ordeal in 1846-47.

Julie Schablitsky of the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History and Kelly Dixon of the University of Montana and who led the excavation says, "We were unable to find a 'smoking gun,' from the archaeology that would definitively say cannibalism happened."