An Oregon-based archaeologist is the latest scientist attempting to find Amelia Earhart’s long-lost plane and solve the baffling 88-year mystery surrounding her and flight navigator Fred Noonan’s disappearances.

Dr. Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute in Eugene, has assembled a team of about 10 scientists will launch an expedition this summer to the remote island of Nikumaroro in the western Pacific Ocean to find Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra. 

After years of acquiring and analyzing satellite, video and drone imagery, Pettigrew believes a metallic and reflective visual anomaly, called the Taraia Object, on the north shore of the Nikumaroro lagoon alongside the Taraia Peninsula is the main body and tail of the missing aircraft.

Pettigrew, who has participated in previous expeditions to Nikumaroro, where some believe Earhart landed her plane and died, said he is aware of the “frustrating history” of the decades-long search for the explorers plane.

As a scientist who considers every piece of evidence, he said his team has a lot of data to support his hypothesis.

“Other people have looked and failed but sooner or later someone is going to succeed, and what we have here is maybe the greatest opportunity ever to finally close the case,” he told The Post.

“We have a lot of very strong evidence. We’re not going to be able to prove it, of course, until we go there and take a look at it. That’s part of the excitement of what we’re doing. We’d be really excited to come back with proof.”

The pioneering female aviator, a household name at the time, disappeared with Noonan, her flight navigator, on what was to be a record-setting trip around the world in 1937.

The pair set off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, with plans to refuel on Howland Island before continuing their journey to Honolulu and their final destination of Oakland, Calif, but faced a strong headwind in Lae when Earhart’s radio transmissions eventually went silent. 

The US Navy and Coast Guard conducted a 16-day search for the missing duo without success, and Earhart was officially declared dead on Jan. 5, 1939. 

“The story of Amelia Earhart has implications of significance that goes well beyond just the mystery; her life story is a lesson for all of us,” said Pettigrew, who considers himself an Amelia Earhart aficionado.

“It’s an important story for us to remember and an opportunity to learn more about those times. Having that knowledge and having that evidence, what choice do we have? Do we ignore it and not go look at it? I don’t think so.”

Despite many attempts and millions of dollars spent over nine decades, neither Earhart’s remains nor the wreckage of her plane have ever been located – with the latest million-dollar expedition by Tony Romeo and his Deep Sea Vision team debunked in November.

Romero, a South Carolina-based deep-sea explorer, captured a sonar image of an aircraft-shaped object he believed was Earhart’s plane in the Pacific Ocean, which was later confirmed to be a rock formation. 

One well-publicized theory about her disappearance is that Earhart died a castaway after landing her plane on the remote coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean – a hypothesis Pettigrew hopes to disprove with his “strong and multifaceted” evidence. 

Pettigrew theorizes Earhart landed on the Nikumororo northwestern reef flat – with her aircraft sinking alongside the Taraia Peninsula, where it eventually became embedded in and covered by water-deposited sediment. 

His team didn’t offer an explanation about Earhart and Noonan’s deaths – but Pettigrew explained human remains believed to be Earhart’s were recovered from the island in 1940.

Pettigrew said the suspected aircraft was effectively invisible until storm currents uncovered it in 2015 – and has since grown progressively less defined and unrecognizable over the years but remains in very shallow water. 

The archaeologist cited subsequent research that identified what could be the same object near the same location in aerial photos shot by the New Zealand military in 1938.  

“After following TIGHAR’s Nikumaroro research for decades and then going there with them in 2017, I developed great respect for the Nikumaroro Hypothesis, even in the absence of absolute confirmation in the form of DNA or clear evidence of the missing Electra,” Pettigrew added. 

“Now, by inspecting the Taraia Object, we may finally get that absolute confirmation. Someone has to go there and look, which is exactly what we plan to do once we have the necessary financial backing.”

Pettigrew said his expedition has since raised about $400,000 in donations since the summer and hopes to bring in another half-million before jetting off to inspect the Taraia Object.

His archaeological team hopes to travel to the island in August.

“We have to go and look,” Pettigrew said.

“My feeling is, we’re sticking our necks out and maybe we’ll come back empty handed but it won’t be for a lack of trying. We’re making that effort and I think it’s obligatory.”