A mysterious object discovered near a remote Pacific island is not the Wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s missing planeresearchers said after an expedition to the site, in a new setback for efforts to solve one of aviation’s greatest mysteries, nearly 90 years after the pilot’s disappearance.
“Evidence collected from the Taraia Peninsula in Nikumaroro confirmed that the visual anomaly first observed on satellite imagery in 2020 was likely a collection of large trees deposited along the peninsula’s sand spit,” the researchers said. “By the time the team arrived at the site, much of the debris had fragmented and washed away, leaving only a single Y-shaped segment,” which they said was what they had initially hoped was the plane.
The researchers said the reflective surface of the anomaly, which led them to believe it might be metal, was the result of carbonate plating, noting that other objects found nearby were “similarly covered with a shiny concretized amalgam of coral sand.”
On October 14, a 17-member expedition team led by Steve Schultz of Purdue University and Richard Pettigrew of the Archaeological Legacy Institute launched an expedition to investigate a mysterious object that, in aerial photos, appeared to resemble a possible wreck of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E aircraft.
Bad weather kept the search team aboard their ship for three of the five days allotted for the search, while lack of fuel and supplies prevented them from extending the expedition. The search area was so remote that it took the team five days at sea to reach it.
The expedition focused on a lagoon off Nikumaroro, where researchers examined the Taraia object, an anomaly spotted by a Navy veteran on satellite imagery during the COVID pandemic. Although visible in aerial photos dating back to 1938, the object went unnoticed until 2020. Pettigrew said before reaching it he thought it might be metal rather than a tree, but further investigation was needed to confirm its identity.
Rick Pettigrew, Archaeological Heritage Institute 
“Amelia Earhart’s spirit of courage and curiosity motivated every step of the search,” Pettigrew said Sunday. “We achieved our goal of determining what the Taraia object was, and we are deeply grateful to the private donors who shared our vision and made this journey possible. Our team remains in good spirits and proud of what has been accomplished.”
The team had drawn up plans to photograph and film the lagoon and Taraia Object before using magnetometers and sonars to survey the area. The researchers then planned to recover the object to identify it. The Archeology Channel documented the expedition through short video updates on its Heritage Broadcasting Service streaming platform.
The search team previously said in a press release that there was “very strong” evidence that the object was Earhart’s lost plane.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared on July 2, 1937, approximately 22,000 miles into their voyage. Earhart was attempting to become the first female pilot to fly around the world and the first pilot to do so around the equator, the widest point on Earth.
Getty Images 
Recently, President Trump ordered declassification of Earhart-related documents.
Nikumaroro is part of the Kiribati archipelago, located approximately halfway between Australia and Hawaii. The island is about 400 miles southeast of Howland Island, where Earhart and Noonan were headed when they disappeared during their attempted flight around the world.
Pettigrew believes that Earhart and Noonan landed on Nikumaroro and survived there for a time. He points to relics dating back to the 1930s and human remains discovered on the island, which were later lost as possible evidence. However, several competing theories about the aviator’s disappearance have emerged over the decades, many of which lack conclusive evidence.
Researchers have spent decades searching for Earhart’s plane, hoping its discovery could shed light on her disappearance. In 2024, an expedition team captured a sonar image of what appeared to be a plane on the ocean floor, but the object was later identified as a rock formation.
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