Amelia Earhart’s Long Lost Plane? “Anomaly” Found In Solar Image Off Tropical Island Coast

A team of experts may have found Amelia Earhart's plane off the coast of a tropical island, giving new clues to help solve the mystery of her disappearance in 1937.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has spent more than a decade trying to find Earhart's missing plane. Ten years ago they pinpointed Nikumaroro as the Pacific Island where her plane likely crashed. Now the group says an underwater solar image from a visit to the island in 2012 could show the wreckage of Earhart's plane, USA Today reports.

TIGHAR analyzed the grainy photo recently, and noticed an "anomaly," about 600 feet below the water's surface.

"What initially got our attention is that there is no other sonar return like it in the entire body of data collected," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News.

The post prominent part of this anomaly is less than 32 feet long, according to TIGHAR's website. The plan was 38 feet 7 inches long.

According to NBC News, other debris and artifacts found by TIGHAR during their 10 expeditions support their claim that Earhart crashed on the island. They believe she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing onto the island's flat coral reef, where they became castaways and eventually died.

"If our theory about what happened is correct, this is exactly what we would expect to see in just the place we would expect to see it," Gillespie said, USA Today reports.

Amelia Earhart was the first female to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She famously disappeared on July 3, 1937 on the way to Howland Island in the Pacific Island, according to ABC News.