MH370 Debris Discovery Claims Dismissed

Claims that wreckage from the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 may have been found in the Bay of Bengal have been dismissed by Australian authorities.

Marine exploration company GeoResonance reportedly said it had detected elements on the ocean floor consistent with material from a Boeing 777 aircraft.

"We identified chemical elements and materials that make up a Boeing 777," company representative Pavel Kursa told Australia's Channel Seven.

"These are aluminium, titanium, copper, steel alloys and other materials."

But his colleague David Pope downplayed the find. He told the broadcaster: "We're not trying to say that it definitely is MH370, however it is a lead we feel should be followed up."

Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein confirmed the new information would be analysed but Australian authorities who are at the forefront of the search dismissed any link.

"The location of MH370 suggested by the GeoResonance report (in the Bay of Bengal) is not in the Australian search and rescue zone," a spokesman for Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre said.

The search for the missing plane is concentrated in an area of some 21,600 square miles (56,000 sq km) of the Indian Ocean.

Marine experts have deployed an unmanned deep-sea submarine to scour the sea bed in an effort to locate the black box recorders from the missing aircraft.

But Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has conceded that after 56 days of searching it is possible that no trace of the missing aircraft may ever be found.

"Of course it's possible, but that would be a terrible outcome because it would leave families with a baffling uncertainty forever," he said.

"The aircraft plainly cannot disappear - it must be somewhere," he added.