Why are lost items always in the last place we look? Because after we find them, we stop searching! Might we soon see an end to the search for Amelia Earhart?

On July 2, 1937, Earhart, who endeavored to be the first woman to fly solo around the globe, disappeared without a trace over the Pacific Ocean during her attempt. Now, 77 years later, an artifact that turned up on a tiny uninhabited island years ago has been reviewed and found to match a makeshift patch that was put over a navigation window, leading researchers to an object off the coast of Nikumaroro that could be the remnants of Earhart’s plane.

According to researchers with The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR), the artifact matches the unique characteristics of a patch of metal installed on the Electra, Earhart’s circumnavigation attempt aircraft. The patch was installed to replace a window during the aviator’s 8-day stopover in Miami, the fourth stop on her doomed flight.

A photo from the Miami Herald shows the Electra departing for San Juan, Puerto Rico, on the morning of Tuesday, June 1, 1937. The shiny metal patch can be seen clearly in the photo.

“The Miami Patch was an expedient field repair,” Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. “Its complex fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was as unique to Earhart’s Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual.”

The rivet pattern and other features of the patch in the photo match the artifact found on Nikumaroro.

“This is the first time an artifact found on Nikumaroro has been shown to have a direct link to Amelia Earhart,” Gillespie said.

The consensus explanation for what happened to Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, holds that they crashed in the Pacific Ocean after running out of fuel near their target destination of Howland Island. However, the artifact is now the basis for suggesting that Earhart made an emergency landing on the smooth, flat coral reef of Nikumaroro, leaving her and Noonan stranded as castaways on the atoll, some 350 miles southeast of Howland.

An object off the coast of the island lies on the Ocean floor some 600 feet below the surface. Forensic imaging analysis of a photo of the area suggests that the object’s dimensions and shape match those of landing gear of a Lockheed Electra. TIGHAR will investigate further in June of 2015 and is currently collecting funds, partly in the form of sizeable contributions from individuals who wish to join the expedition team.