This week mark the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the first piece of physical evidence in the case of the missing Malaysian Airliner, MH370. When the badly damaged right flaperon washed ashore on La Réunion, a French island in the western Indian Ocean, on July 17, 2015, it immediately caused a worldwide sensation. Scientists realized that the barnacles found growing on the flaperon could provide important clues as to where it had drifted from — and that, presumably, would at last reveal the plane’s crash site. At a time when the seabed search had proven frustratingly empty, they hoped that this information could provide the key to finally solving the case. But scientists were missing an important piece of context: a robust understanding of how exactly Lepas anatifera barnacles grow when floating in the open ocean. For years, that understanding proved elusive. However, using data from the Atlantic Oceonographic & Meteorological Laboratory in Miami and the assistance of volunteers living by the ocean’s edge, I’ve finally been able to collect specimens of known age that put the growth of the flaperon barnacles in context and reveal when the object went into the water. It turns out that scientists’ initial expectations were way off the mark.

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