An expeditionary team searching for the aircraft belonging to Amelia Earhart has released its first findings from the tiny, remote island of Nikumaroro, where a mysterious object attracted speculation that it may be the lost aviator's plane.
The search, one of the many efforts to locate Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, since their 1937 disappearance, has centered on the "Taraia object," a visual anomaly discovered through satellite imagery in the island’s lagoon. The team traveled to the remote Pacific island, located between Hawaii and Australia, to investigate whether the object could provide new clues about the fate of Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E.
The team announced on Oct. 19 local time that it found no conclusive evidence linking
the Taraia Object to Earhart's aircraft. Researchers determined that the visual anomaly, first identified in satellite imagery in 2020, was likely a collection of large trees and other debris deposited along a sandspit on the island.
"By the time the team arrived at the site, a good portion of the debris had fragmented and washed away, leaving only a single Y-shaped segment — a fraction of the anomaly’s original size observed in imagery when the Taraia Object hypothesis was developed," Purdue University said in a news release.
The remaining fragment's reflective surface was caused by a carbonate coating rather than metal, according to the university.
Despite ruling out the latest hypothesis, the team said the search for Earhart's aircraft will continue. Expedition members discovered several artifacts during their work, including a steel tube about 30 inches long found in a lagoon near the Taraia Peninsula.
Those items will undergo further analysis. Researchers said the discoveries could help them better understand how debris travels through the lagoon and where it eventually accumulates.
"Though the team did not find the wreckage, the mission only deepens the resolve, and adds a new chapter, in the quest to find the ultimate answer to the mystery of what happened to Earhart and Noonan during their attempt to circumnavigate the globe nearly nine decades ago," the university said, noting that it remains committed to continuing the search.
Search team braved harsh conditions on remote Pacific island
The team previously stressed that they're taking a methodical approach to data gathering and analysis as they examine the sediment and other materials in a lagoon on Nikumaroro, where some theorize the famed aviator's plane ended up on a late leg in her ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the globe at the equator.
The 17-member Taraia Object expedition, including members from the Archaeological Legacy Institute, Purdue Research Foundation and Purdue University, embarked earlier this month on the long journey to Nikumaroro, a small island part of the nation of Kiribati.
Since reaching the area on Oct. 13, they've contended with rough seas and high winds and, on the island itself, thick vegetation, rats and large coconut crabs. They planned to leave the island before each nightfall because conditions are too dangerous.
Lead archaeologist Richard Pettigrew previously told USA TODAY that he was "very confident" the search would yield results, adding, "I'm pumped."
Purdue Research Foundation originally financed Earhart's "Flying Laboratory" through the Fund for Aeronautical Research, which bore the aviator's name. The university, where Earhart had been a lecturer, said in a news release she'd intended for the plane to be returned to the Indiana school after her flight.
The expedition began taking video and still images of the site, followed by remote magnetometer and sonar scans. The team used an underwater hydraulic dredge to expose and analyze the Taraia Object, and conducted a walk-over survey of nearby land surfaces to check for any debris that might have washed up onshore.
Pettigrew previously called the possibility of finding and identifying Earhart's lost aircraft "the discovery of a lifetime," providing "the smoking-gun proof" of theories that placed her and Noonan on Nikumaroro.
What happened to Earhart and Noonan?
Earhart was already a famous pilot when she and Noonan set out from Lae, Papua New Guinea, toward Howland Island, where a U.S. Coast Guard cutter was waiting to refuel their Lockheed Electra 10E. Earhart and Noonan began their around-the-world journey on May 21, 1937, in Oakland, California, but disappeared on July 2 as they neared the end of the trip. Nikumaroro is about 400 miles from Howland Island.
Earhart messaged the Coast Guard to say the Lockheed plane was almost out of fuel, but neither Earhart nor Noonan knew Morse code, so there was no two-way contact, according to the Smithsonian Institution's analysis of government records of the incident.
After the Coast Guard lost contact with the pair, the U.S. government conducted what was at the time its largest-ever search for a lost aircraft. After two weeks with no trace of either Earhart, Noonan, or their plane, however, the search ended. On Jan. 5, 1939, Earhart and Noonan were each declared legally dead.
Satellite imagery that came to light in 2015 prompted some to theorize that Earhart and Noonan landed on Nikumaroro but later died there, perhaps from injuries sustained in a crash. Human bones that resembled Earhart's measurements, a woman's shoe, a jar of freckle cream and a medicine vial that date to the 1930s were also found there, bolstering that theory, according to the Purdue ResearchFoundation.
Contributing: Christopher Cann, USA TODAY
Phaedra Trethan is a national correspondent for USA TODAY, writing about history and Americana. Contact her by email at ptrethan@usatoday.com, on X @wordsbyphaedra, on BlueSky @byphaedra, or on Threads @by_phaedra.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Was it her plane? Amelia Earhart expedition reveals what it found
