Cenker Atila said researchers at the Durupınar site in eastern Turkey recovered charred wood fragments about 30 feet below the surface, adding fresh material to the Noah's Ark discovery investigation. The team has sent the pieces for carbon-14 dating and species identification.
The Noah's Ark Research Project has spent the last year collecting soil samples at the site near Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey. The formation has been under study with deep-core drilling, ground-penetrating radar and laboratory analysis, while scientists have reported organized patterns and possible chambers and corridors beneath the roughly 515-foot-long formation.
Cenker Atila and Durupınar
Atila, the archaeologist overseeing the investigation, said to News Digital from Turkey that "the team recovered the fragments some 30 feet beneath the surface of the Durupınar formation." Exclusive photos shared with Digital show several darkened, cracked fragments that researchers identify as charred wood, and some of the pieces appear to show visible grain patterns and growth rings.
Durupınar was identified in 1959, and the site has drawn speculation for years over a possible connection to Noah's Ark. In 1996, geologists Lorence Gene Collins and David Franklin Fasold argued that the Durupinar Formation was a natural rock structure, setting up the divide that still shapes how new material from the site is read today.
Carbon-14 dating and species tests
The recovered fragments have gone into laboratory analysis along with hundreds of soil and core samples already under study. Carbon-14 dating should show whether the wood is ancient or more recent, while species identification can indicate what kind of material the team pulled from underground.
For now, the fragments have not been independently linked to Noah's Ark, and laboratory testing has yet to establish their age or origin. That leaves the new find useful as physical evidence from deep below the formation, but not as proof of the claim attached to the site.
Hundreds of samples remain
The next step is the lab work already underway on the wood and the broader sample set. Until those results come back, the Durupınar site remains a place where researchers can document what is buried there, but not yet what it means for the Noah's Ark question.
