"I was originally skeptical until we could get the photograph authenticated," Shawn Henry, a former FBI assistant executive director who is now helping privately investigate the Earhart disappearance, told The Washington Post.

For the man on the left, "the hairline is the most distinctive characteristic," Ken Gibson, a facial recognition expert who studied the image, told the Today show.

Henry said he traveled to the Marshall Islands and interviewed the son of a man whose father repeatedly told others he had witnessed Earhart's plane land at Mili Atoll in 1937.

Last year, a Pennsylvania-based group called International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) repositioned the spotlight on an alternate theory: With their fuel rapidly depleting, Earhart and Noonan used celestial navigation to land on a remote coral atoll named Gardner Island, about 400 miles south of Howland Island, their original destination.

Just last month, the group launched an ambitious expedition to try to prove its theory, sending researchers and a pack of forensically trained border collies to Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro.