Do We Finally Know Where Amelia Earhart's Plane Crashed?

(CBS SF) -- Researchers say they have positively identified a fragment of Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft for the first time since her plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937.

Discovery.com reports that the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has determined with a "high degree of certainty" that aluminum debris found 25 years ago on Nikumaroro, an uninhabitable Pacific atoll, belongs to Earhart's Lockeed Electra plane.

TIGHAR says the debris is an aluminum patch installed on the plane to replace a window during Earhart's Miami stopover May, 1937.

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If the patch does indeed belong to her plane, then it would suggest that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan did not crash into the ocean as it's been widely believed for years. Instead, it's possible they made a forced landing on Nikumaroro's coral reef.

U.S. Navy planes flew over Nikumaroro to search for Earhart and Noonan a week after they were reported missing, but did not spot anyone.

The group suggests that the fliers eventually died of exposure to the elements and starvation.