AUGUSTA – Using dental records, the state’s Medical Examiner’s Office formally identified the remains of a pilot whose plane crashed on a Piscataquis County mountain as those of 53-year-old Guy Perkins.

State investigators held off naming the pilot until an autopsy and formal identification could be made, even though authorities were identifying the body as belonging to a Norridgewock man Saturday, a day after the plane crashed on Saddleback Mountain.

A spokesman for the state Medical Examiner’s Office said Thursday that a cause of death determination was pending further study. The body was burned beyond recognition, authorities said.

The single-engine Cessna 182 went down Friday evening, last seen by a Virginia organization that tracks planes about 8:30 p.m., authorities said. But it wasn’t until Saturday – when the pilot’s wife became concerned – that authorities were notified and began a search. The plane was located Saturday afternoon, but authorities who trekked to the crash site later that day were forced to turn back when darkness fell.

Wardens, a state trooper and forest rangers enlisted to put out the smoldering plane arrived at the crash scene Sunday morning and recovered the body. The plane had crashed on a plateau near the summit, about 2,700 feet up the mountain.