Researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery announced that a piece of famous flyer Amelia Earhart's missing plane was found in Nikumaroro, along the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati.

This fragment of Earhart's vanished aircraft is the first piece of information about how she crashed while on an expedition to circumnavigate the Earth. She never accomplished the goal and her disappearance is part of a 77-year-old mystery.

TIGHAR posted a photo of the 19-inch-wide by 23-inch-long piece of a metal portion installed near the window of Earhart's Lockheed Electra, when it was on the plane in 1937. Researchers found the piece in 1991, but had not identified the piece to the plane until comparing it to a Lockheed Electra aircraft in Wichita Air Services in Newtown, Kansas.

The patch found in the Pacific was a "complex fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was as unique to Earhart's Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual," according to TIGHAR.

After the pilot and plane disappeared on July 2, 1937, a wide array of conspiracy theories sprouted. This new discovery debunks any theory that Earhart and Fred Noonan, her navigator, made it across the Pacific Ocean.

TIGHAR hypothesized that the duo made an emergency landing along the coral reef of Nikumaroro after fuel supply ran out 350 miles before their next pit stop on Howland Island. The two likely died as castaways with limited resources. Other evidence also supports this account of what happened.

"Earhart sent radio distress calls for at least five nights before the Electra was washed into the ocean by rising tides and surf," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, said.

The organization will now travel to Nikumaroro to conduct further exploration in the area searching for other pieces of Earhart's wreckage. TIGHAR said it believes that the remains of the Electra are likely buried deep off the west end of the island.