Researchers who have been investigating Amelia Earhart's fate some 75 years after the famed aviator disappeared, believe they may have discovered the wreckage of her airplane near a remote island in the Pacific.

Videotape of an underwater debris field found by researchers near the island of Nikumaroro was shown in a recent Discovery Channel TV special called "Finding Amelia Earhart: Mystery Solved?"

During the search near Nikumaroro in July, high-tech equipment was used to scan the bottom of the ocean and hours of high-definition video footage was recorded.

When the video of the debris field was closely examined by researchers later, it showed man-made objects on the reef slope off the west end of Nikumaroro which might include some remnants of Earhart's plane.

Researchers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery - or TIGHAR - theorize that Earhart and Noonan made an emergency landing on Nikumaroro, then called Gardner Island, about 400 miles southeast of their destination on Howland.

Earhart and Noonan were last seen taking off in her twin-engine Lockheed Electra on July 2, 1937, from Papua New Guinea en route to tiny Howland Island, some 2,500 miles away in the central Pacific.

Radio contact with her plane was lost hours later after she reported running low on fuel.

A massive air-and-sea search, the most extensive such U.S. operation at that time, was unsuccessful. Earhart's plane was presumed to have gone down, but it has never been known whether she survived, and if so, for how long.

Researchers at TIGHAR hope to return to Nikumaroro to collect and analyze the contents of the underwater debris field, and unearth the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart 75 years ago