MUSSEL-LIKE shellfish growing on the aircraft wing which washed-up on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion PROVES it is part of missing Malaysia Airlines MH370, a leading marine biologist said today.
The two-metre long debris, which has now been shipped to French authorities, had a particular type of shellfish growing on it (PICTURED) which strongly suggests that it was from the Malaysia Airlines flight.
Joseph Poulin, a marine biologist at Brest Naval School, said that the creatures are a species of barnacle called Lepas anatifera, which live in warm water.
The size and growth of the shellfish, which grow one or two cm a month, matches perfectly with the date of the MH370 crash, which went missing over a year ago.
Mr Poulin, who believes the barnacles fixed onto the plane craft six months to a year ago, said his findings hugely reinforce the belief that the debris is from the doomed Malaysian flight.
The plane disappeared on March 8 last year while travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and no wreckage or any of the 239 passengers and crew have ever been found.
Lepas anatifera is a pelagic barnacle that can be found attached to a variety of floating objects, including driftwood, bottles, boats, buoys, macroalgal rafts, and turtles.
This species is most abundant in tropical and subtropical waters, such as the Indian Ocean, where MH370 is thought to have gone down, where sea temperatures exceed 18-20 ºC
The hunt for the plane wreckage, led by Australia, concentrated on a 60,000 sq km area off the coast of western Australia in the southern Indian ocean, an area where the barnacles are known to grow.
Experts who have examined the debris believe that found on the French island came from the flight which went missing 16 months ago.
Malaysia's prime minister said today it was 'very likely' the derbis was from MH370 but that it would still be sent for investigation to the French city of Toulouse, the centre for European aviation.
Aviation experts are hoping the find could be a miraculous breakthrough in an international search mission that has made little progress.
Air safety investigators - one of them a Boeing investigator - have identified the component as a "flaperon" from the trailing edge of a Boeing 777 wing, a U.S. official said.
"It's the first real evidence that there is a possibility that a part of the aircraft may have been found," said Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss, whose country is leading the search for the plane in a remote patch of ocean far off Australia's west coast.
"It's the first real evidence that there is a possibility that a part of the aircraft may have been found," said Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss, whose country is leading the search for the plane in a remote patch of ocean far off Australia's west coast.
"It's too early to make that judgment, but clearly we are treating this as a major lead."
Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak said at the time the plane's transponder, which emits signals, was "deliberately disabled".
Latest data shows it then continued for at least seven hours before crashing into the Indian Ocean.
The search for the missing flight had been scaled back in recent months, but has become the costliest in history.
Coincidentally, Australian authorities said on Friday they were “confident” they would find the plane this year.
Mathematicians and scientists have come up with their own conclusions as to where the plane may be.
Numbers experts used a specialist computer programme to calculate the MH370 plane nose-dived into the southern Indian Ocean.
But renegade scientists believe MH370 crashed into the Bay of Bengal near the Maldives.
Other MH370 conspiracy theories include claims it was shot down by the US military, it was hijacked by Edward Snowden, and that it was downed by ISIS.
It was the first tragedy for Malaysia Airlines and the first in a year of airline disasters which affected the world.
The airline’s flight MH17 was shot down in June last year as it flew over Russian-held Donetsk in Ukraine.
Russian rebels were accused of being behind the downing of the flight, which killed all 298 passengers, including 80 children and 15 crew.
Moscow accuses the Ukrainian Government.
The plane, which was a Boeing 777, like the MH370 aircraft, was downed by a missile fired from the ground.
In March, pilot Andreas Lubitz flew a Germanwings flight 9525 into the French Alps killing all 150 passengers and crew, including three Britons.
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