All the clues that led scientists to 'finally discover' Amelia Earhart's lost plane solving mystery after 88 years
The mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart may at last be solved as a team of scientists think they've finally discovered the missing piece of the puzzle.
Having disappeared 88 years ago, the ultimate fate of the famous flier has been unconfirmed for decades as there hasn't been concrete evidence of what happened to her.
This discovery would be the latest in a long line of clues as to the fate of Earhart, with the evidence largely pointing towards one spot which will be the site of a new investigation later this year.
A plethora of clues lit the way to this latest discovery which will finally solve the mystery of Earhart's disappearance if the scientists finally discover what they were hoping to find.
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Who was Amelia Earhart?
Amelia Earhart was a famous American aviator who, in 1932, became the first woman in the world to make a solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
She also broke many other aviation records and was an advocate for equal rights for women.
Sadly, she disappeared in 1937 while attempting to become the first woman to successfully circumnavigate the globe in a plane after her aircraft disappeared on one of the last legs of her journey.
What is the mystery of Amelia Earhart?
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan set off on their journey on 1 June after a previous effort to fly around the world was abandoned.
A month and a day later they were setting off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, towards their next stop of Howland Island.
But they never arrived, and the enduring mystery is exactly where they and their plane ended up.
One whole plane and two human bodies don't just vanish into thin air willy-nilly - something happened to them and they ended up somewhere, but the big details remain unclear as long as the exact location of their final resting place remains unknown.
Why their plane went down and what happened to Earhart and Noonan remains a mystery, as do their final moments as we don't know whether they survived the immediate aftermath of the crash and how they ultimately died.
The lack of answers resulted in a number of claims and conspiracy theories, including that she and Noonan were captured by the Japanese as her circumnavigation was secretly a spying mission, that she faked her death and lived under another identity or that she was eaten by crabs after getting stuck on a desert island.
What have scientists discovered?
A team of scientists from Purdue University, which employed Amelia Earhart, are going to be launching a new expedition in search of the aviator as they think they've found satellite images from 2015 which show her plane.
The team thinks they've discovered a glimpse of Earhart's aircraft, a Lockheed Electra, crashed beneath the surface of the sea just off the coast of the Pacific Island of Nikumaroro.
The satellite images captured the island in the aftermath of a tropical storm which shifted the sands of the island's coastline and uncovered a shape in the water just off the coastline.
As such, the team are planning on making an expedition to Nikumaroro later on this year to see if the object really is Earhart's plane, and if so, it would finally solve the mystery of what happened.
They weren't just looking all over the Pacific at random, a number of clues have been pointing Amelia Earhart enthusiasts towards Nikumaroro for years.
This sighting is known as the Taraia Object, which other expeditions may not have spotted because it would previously have been buried beneath seawater and sediment.
What are the clues that led them there?
Oh, so many things.
Nikumaroro is the most likely site of Earhart's final landing for a reason.
Three months after Earhart went missing a picture taken of the island showed what some think was her plane's landing gear, which has come to be known as the Bevington Object.
Human remains were first found in the island in 1940, and while they were initially dismissed as not being Earhart's remains subsequent analysis found that they were almost certainly from a woman of her size and build.
Shoe fragments which match boots the aviator was pictured wearing were found on the island in 1991, while a chunk of scrap metal recovered was matched with a repair job on her plane.
Several items from the 1930s were also discovered on the island including a jar of freckle cream, further leading experts to believe a woman with American cosmetic products from the decade Earhart disappeared had been there.
All signs point towards Nikumaroro, if the scientists can find the plane that's about as sure as sure can be.
Joe Harker