While looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, team finds uncharted shipwreck

Shipwreck.
(Image credit: Twitter.com/Q13Fox)

A search team looking for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean instead found a shipwreck that likely took place in the 19th century.

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The search vessel Fugro Equator's deep tow system "detected a cluster of small sonar contacts" 3,900 meters (2.4 miles) under the sea, CNN reports, and underwater drones that were dispatched captured images of an anchor and pieces of a destroyed hull. It will be very hard to identify the ship, Western Australia Maritime Museum curator Michael McCarthy told Australia's ABC. "The best we can do at the moment is a mid- to late-19th century wooden hull, iron sailing ship and of unknown origin but of European-style build. There are hundreds of ships lost in our world's oceans over time, through old age, cyclones, typhoons, and one would expect this to occur."

Searchers said they were "disappointed" they didn't find anything related to the plane that disappeared in March 2014, and the team has moved on to a new location.

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Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.