The Taraia Object is an unidentified shape at the edge of a lagoon on the Taraia Peninsula of Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in Kiribati, first spotted in satellite imagery in 2020. Some researchers believe it could be wreckage of the Lockheed Electra that Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were flying when they vanished in 1937, while sceptics think it may be something else entirely, such as a collapsed tree. A team from the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University reached Nikumaroro on Monday, Oct. 12, 2026, for a roughly five-day inspection; the object is thought to sit about 10 feet from shore in as little as five feet of water, and the crew is sleeping aboard its ship because of the island’s giant coconut crabs.
Source: BBC News — Crew searching for Amelia Earhart arrives at crab-infested island (Oct. 12, 2026).
Image: Amelia Earhart standing under the nose of her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, c. 1937. Photo by Underwood & Underwood, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
