On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart vanished in the middle of an attempt to fly around the world at the equator. For years, he disappearance remained inexplicable. Her airplane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean and was never found, and Earhart herself was presumed dead. Now, though, it looks as if scientists may finally have found a fragment of the lost expedition.

According to Fox News, a piece of Earhart’s missing plane “has been identified to a high degree of certainty” by researchers and experts at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). Not that the aircraft fragment is a new find. On the contrary, the slab of aluminum debris was found all the way back in 1991 near the deserted Nikumaroro Island.

Nikumaroro Island is actually a coral atoll, or a ring-shaped reef, with prevalent vegetation and a large lagoon in its center. It is located in the southwestern portion of the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and Australia.

23 years after the finding of the aluminum debris, scientists have determined that it belonged to the plane that Earhart was using in her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. The plane, a Lockheed Electra, was modified and repaired at several spots on Earhart’s aviation voyage. One of those repairs took place, and involved the replacement of a “navigational window” with a sheet of aluminum. It is that patch of aluminum that researchers believe was found on Nikumaroro back in 1991.

Researchers at TIGHAR say that a combination of the aluminum sheet’s “dimensions, proportions, materials, and rivet patterns” makes it unmistakable as a component of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. Researchers also say that this finding changes the presumption of Earhart’s story.

Previously, it was believed that the aviator and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had run out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Now, it looks as if the two noted their depleting fuel reserve and made a “forced landing” on Nikumaroro. There, the two became castaways, trying to send distress calls using the plane until it was washed away by the tides.

There is even support for that version of the story, beyond the finding of the new aluminum fragment. An old photo of the Nikumaroro shoreline, supposedly taken just months after Earhart disappeared, showed an “unexplained object protruding from the water” near the ringed reef island.

These pieces of evidence will send researchers to the shores of Nikumaroro to investigate and search for the other parts of Earhart’s lost plane.