New evidence has come to light supporting the theory that Amelia Earhart died as a castaway on Nikumaroro, a tiny, uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati.

According to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart nearly 80 years ago, "there is a newly discovered similarity" between Amelia Earhart and partial skeletal remains found on the remote atoll in 1940.

Earhart disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator. Her final resting place has long been a mystery.

A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR on 11 expeditons to Nikumaroro have suggested that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash in the Pacific Ocean, running out of fuel somewhere near their target destination Howland Island.

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Instead, they made a forced landing on the Nikumaroro's smooth, flat coral reef. According to Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director, the two became castaways and eventually died on the atoll, which is some 350 miles southeast of Howland Island.

"We know that in 1940 British Colonial Service officer Gerald Gallagher recovered a partial skeleton of a castaway on Nikumaroro," Gillespie told Discovery News.