Amelia Earhart’s Plane May Have Been Found in Lagoon on Remote Island: Everything to Know About Search
After nearly 90 years, the mystery behind Amelia Earhart‘s disappearance may finally be solved.
A group of researchers with the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University landed in Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the South Pacific, Oct. 12 in search of the famed pilot’s missing plane after satellite images showed a mysterious shape submerged in a nearby lagoon.
The visual anomaly, dubbed the Taraia Object, is believed to be the Lockheed Model 10-E Electra aircraft Earhart was piloting alongside her navigator Fred Noonan when they vanished in 1937.
But it will be a while before investigators get their answers. After all, they will spend days “marking and cutting a trail through the jungle” from their landing site to Taraia Peninsula, where the lagoon is located, according to a Purdue press release.
In addition, officials said the researchers must sleep on a ship as native coconut crabs—the largest terrestrial crustacean in the world—make staying on the island overnight “impractical.”