The fate of Amelia Earhart is an infamous mystery that inspires researchers to look for her aircraft's remains to this day.
According to Fox News, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) is planning to excavate an area near Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific Ocean for clues to the possible remains of the Lockheed Electra airplane Earhart was flying when she disappeared in 1937. As part of this search, the group will reportedly use an ROV and attached camera to search 600 feet underwater.
In 2014, the group determined that a lost piece of scrap metal found on Nikumaroro Island in 1991 was an aluminum patch applied to her plane. A team of TIGHAR researchers made multiple visits to this area and is following other similar artifacts in hopes of uncovering the lost fuselage of the plane itself.
The researchers are especially interested in a "sonar anomoly" off the coast of the atoll, which is near a spot where wrecked landing gear was discovered in 1937. On the official TIGHAR website, the group explains its hypothesis that this island is where Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan landed and attempted to signal for help nearly 80 years ago. They believe the craft was swept off of the island and out to sea by tides.
TIGHAR executive director Ric Gillespie told Fox News that evidence on the island leaves him fairly confident it was Earhart's last resting place.
"It's an established archaeological site where we know a castaway died – apparently female and of Earhart's height and ethnic origin – and where we have found artifacts that speak of an American woman of the 1930s," he said.
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