Amelia Earhart plane found: latest updates

Decades-long search for Amelia Earhart's fate may be over, as sonar image of aircraft-shaped object found in Pacific Ocean.

Nearly 90 years after famed U.S. aviator Amelia Earhart disappeared, a new image has emerged that could provide a crucial clue in the decades-long hunt for answers about her fate.

Tony Romeo, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer and pilot, captured a sonar image of an aircraft-shaped object resting on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. He believes the image shows the remains of the Lockheed 10-E Electra piloted by Earhart when she vanished without a trace. Romeo expressed his excitement about the discovery, comparing it to a treasure hunt.

Dorothy Cochrane, from the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, acknowledged the significance of the location glimpsed in the sonar image, although she did not confirm that they had definitively found Earhart.

Romeo plans to lead another expedition in 2024 to search for additional evidence, such as the tail number on the missing plane. The unsolved disappearance of Earhart, one of the most well-known aviators of all time, has sparked decades of investigations and numerous theories about what happened to her.

The theories, nurtured by nearly 90 years without answers, are wide-ranging. Some suggest Earhart ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, while others claim she may have been captured by Japanese forces. There are also theories that she and her navigator managed to land on a remote island or that she was a spy who assumed a new identity.

The ongoing mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance continues to captivate people around the world. The new sonar image has reignited hope that the mystery will finally be solved, nearly a century after she vanished.