Search Team Finds Fossett Plane, Remains

Oct. 3, 2008 -- More than a year after the mysterious disappearance of adventurer Steve Fossett, searchers found the wreckage of his plane in the rugged Sierra Nevada, along with enough remains for DNA testing.

A small piece of bone was found amid a field of debris 400 feet long and 150 feet wide in a steep section of the mountain range, the National Transportation Safety Board said at a news conference Thursday. Some personal effects also were found at the site.

Officials conflicted on whether they had confirmed the remains were human.

WATCH VIDEO: A hiker finds Steve Fossett's ID, along with $1,000 in cash.

"We don't know if it's human. It certainly could be," Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said late Thursday, hours after the leader of the NTSB had said the remains were those of a person. "I refuse to speculate."

Asked about the sheriff's assessment of the physical evidence, NTSB spokesman Terry Wiliams reaffirmed NTSB acting Chairman Mark Rosenker's earlier statement.

"We stick by that. It's human remains," said Williams, who declined to say how the NTSB had arrived at that conclusion.

Fossett, the 63-year-old thrill-seeker, vanished on a solo flight 13 months ago. The mangled debris of his single-engine Bellanca was spotted from the air late Wednesday near the town of Mammoth Lakes and was identified by its tail number. Investigators said the plane had slammed straight into a mountainside.

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"It was a hard-impact crash, and he would've died instantly," said Jeff Page, emergency management coordinator for Lyon County, Nev., who assisted in the search.

NTSB investigators went into the mountains Thursday to figure out what caused the plane to go down. Most of the fuselage disintegrated on impact, and the engine was found several hundred feet away at an elevation of 9,700 feet, authorities said.

"It will take weeks, perhaps months, to get a better understanding of what happened," Rosenker said before investigators set off.

Search crews and cadaver dogs scoured the steep terrain around the crash site in hopes of finding at least some trace of his body and solving the mystery of his disappearance once and for all. A sheriff's investigator found the 2-inch-long piece of bone.

The remains are enough for a coroner to perform DNA testing, Rosenker said.

"Given how long the wreckage has been out there, it's not surprising there's not very much," he said.