Amelia Earhart's Plane or a Tree? The Team Says Trees | Mystery Files 01

In 2020, a man on Apple Maps spotted what some called Amelia Earhart's plane.
The "Taraia Object" lies in the lagoon of Nikumaroro, Kiribati, about 400 miles south-southeast of Howland Island, where Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were headed when they vanished on July 2, 1937.
The Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) says a storm uncovered it: it first shows in satellite imagery on April 27, 2015, about a month after Cyclone Pam, and ALI says it has been there since 1937. TIGHAR founder Ric Gillespie called it a tree, and by 2026 Michael Ashmore, who spotted it, had labelled his own image "debunked."
In October 2026, a 17-person ALI and Purdue team sailed to Nikumaroro to identify it. On Oct 19, 2026, they said it was likely "a collection of large trees" deposited along the peninsula's sandspit, and found no conclusive evidence of Earhart's Electra (Purdue University). They also recovered a steel tube about 30 inches long from the lagoon, and say the search continues.
Full documentary linked above.

Credits: Satellite images, expedition footage and Rick Pettigrew interview: Purdue University (CC BY) youtu.be/CvB0RsemEIg, youtu.be/Wd7-DRKfHd0. Archival film: British Movietone and British Pathé, 1937 (public domain). NASA Earth Observatory / Landsat and NASA (public domain); Angela K. Kepler (public domain); map: SnowFire / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Music: Mixkit. Narration: AI voice (ElevenLabs).
#shorts #AmeliaEarhart #Nikumaroro #TaraiaObject