A new book about British mountaineer Frank Smythe, written by his son, Tony, claims George Mallory’s body was discovered decades before Conrad Anker came upon the lost climber in 1999, reports the Guardian. Smythe, a noted mountaineer during the 1930s and '40s, and a member of 1936 British Everest expedition, was well known in his day, putting up climbs around the Alps, as well as making attempts on Himalayan giants. During the 1936 Everest trip, Smythe believes he spotted Mallory’s body through a telescope, in the same location where he was found more than 50 years later.

"I was scanning the face from base camp through a high-powered telescope last year, when I saw something queer in a gully below the scree shelf," Smythe wrote in a letter to Edward Norton, the leader of the 1924 expedition, when Mallory and Irvine went missing. "Of course it was a long way away and very small, but I've a six/six eyesight and do not believe it was a rock. This object was at precisely the point where Mallory and Irvine would have fallen had they rolled on over the scree slopes."...