The family of missing Indiana University student Lauren Spierer is anxiously waiting to learn if a skull found about 60 miles from where Spierer was last seen could be hers.

"In the days ahead, a family will have answers they have been desperately seeking. Will it be ours?" the Spierer family posted on its Facebook page Saturday.

Spierer, 21, vanished on June 3, 2011, after a night out with friends in Bloomington, Ind. The Indiana University student is 4 feet 11 inches tall, and weighs less than 100 pounds. She has hair and blue eyes.

Over the past year, the Spierer family has experienced similar "finds," which turned out to be false alarms.

The Spierers have frequently posted messages and blogs, appealing to the unknown person who they believe abducted their daughter, and they did so again on Saturday.

"When will you end this nightmare for our family?" they asked on Facebook. "We will never give up. We are just as determined as we were on June 3, 2011. You need to know that. It's our promise to you. For now we continue to wait. … The Spierers."

A fisherman found the skull in White River, under the Raymond Street Bridge, about 60 miles from where Spierer was last seen.

The Bloomington police called the Spierer family to tell it about the finding, according to ABC News' Indianapolis affiliate WRTV. Divers searched the river for additional remains but did not find anything else.

The skull has been sent to a forensic anthropologist, who will try to determine its gender, age and race. The testing could take six to eight weeks, according to WRTV.

(Image credit: Jeremy Hogan/Bloomington Herald-Times/AP Photo)