There was no immediate word on the precise location of the wreckage or whether it included the data recorders that are essential for helping determine why the plane crashed.

The discovery was the first significant breakthrough in the search for the plane since investigators said they had detected signals from one of its two flight recorder beacons, or “pingers,” nearly two weeks ago.

With the battery life of those beacons expiring by next week, investigators are hoping to retrieve the recorders — which contain cockpit conversations and data from the plane’s onboard computers — before they fall silent.

Investigators and search teams will begin mapping the debris field on the ocean floor, the Egyptian committee said. Even in the absence of the data from the flight recorders, air accident experts have said that the distribution of the wreckage would yield significant clues. If the debris contains large pieces of the plane that are concentrated in a relatively small area, that would suggest that the plane hit the water largely intact. Smaller debris scattered across a wide area would suggest that it broke up in midair — possibly the result of an explosion.

Remi Jouty, the director of France’s air accidents bureau, which is advising Egypt in the investigation, said last week that investigators were still “very far” from understanding what may have caused the crash. Earlier this week, the Egyptian authorities appeared to back away from suggestions that Flight 804 had disappeared abruptly from radar screens — a scenario that had fanned theories that the plane might have been brought down by a terrorist bomb or other deliberate act, rather than a mechanical or other failure.