Researchers conducting newly permitted core drilling at Türkiye’s boat-shaped Durupınar formation say a drill bit broke after striking an unusually hard underground layer, prompting plans for laboratory testing to determine whether the material could include petrified or highly mineralized wood.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
An international research team investigating the boat-shaped Durupınar formation near Mount Ararat says it has encountered an underground layer hard enough to break a drilling bit, adding a new piece of evidence to its effort to determine whether the site could contain preserved remains of Noah’s Ark.
The discovery occurred during deep core drilling inside the formation in eastern Türkiye, where researchers are collecting samples from both within and outside the 157-meter, or approximately 515-foot, outline.
Andrew Jones, vice president of the Noah’s Ark Research Project, said drilling inside the portion of the formation that researchers believe would correspond to a vessel’s hull had already passed through approximately 4 to 5 meters of overlying material when the equipment encountered something substantially harder.
“In one of the holes drilled inside the boat, approximately 4–5 meters below the surface, the drilling system had already penetrated the overlying material, but at this layer, the operation stopped as we struck a layer so hard that the drill bit broke. Petrified or highly mineralized wood are both a possibility we want to investigate through third-party lab testing.”
Petrified wood can be harder than limestone, making the broken drill bit particularly interesting to the team, although the material has not yet been identified. Laboratory analysis will be required before researchers can determine what the drill encountered.
Jones has made clear that he personally believes the formation is connected to the biblical account.
“I believe this is Noah’s Ark, that’s why I’m putting the Durupinar site through the most rigorous testing possible.”
The Durupınar formation was first identified in 1959 by Turkish Army Capt. İlhan Durupınar and has attracted decades of debate because its shape resembles the outline of a large boat.
Many geologists have argued that the formation is natural, describing it as the result of geological processes involving landslide material, rock and limestone. Researchers with Noah’s Ark Scans, however, say the results emerging from the current drilling program warrant additional investigation.
The organization describes itself as an “international research initiative investigating the Durupınar formation in eastern Türkiye through permitted geophysical survey, soil science, core drilling, and targeted interior imaging.”
The project is working in partnership with Sivas Cumhuriyet University and says the 2026 campaign represents the first extensive permitted program to recover deep, dry core samples from both inside and outside the formation.
Previous drilling in 1988 reached only a limited number of locations and substantially shallower depths, according to the project. Researchers say those samples were also compromised by water used to cool the drilling equipment.
The current expedition is designed to avoid those problems and obtain continuous material that can be subjected to laboratory analysis.
The project explained its goals in a statement provided to the Gateway Pundit:
For more than six decades, researchers have debated whether the outline is a natural landform or the buried remains of a large wooden vessel.
Until now, work at the site has been limited largely to surface observation, photography, and geophysical scanning. A 1988 drilling attempt reached only a few holes and a fraction of the depth now being sampled. The 1988 core samples were ultimately corrupted with water used to cool the core drilling bit.
The 2026 expedition is the first program authorized to carry out a non-destructive, permitted scientific investigation that includes deep core recovery inside and outside the formation.The project’s immediate goals are twofold.
First, the team is collecting continuous cores for laboratory analysis this winter, including compositional, organic, and stratigraphic testing. Second, researchers plan to insert the custom-built GOPHER underground exploration drone into voids, tunnels, and corridors previously mapped by ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography, and related surveys. GOPHER, named for the “gopher wood” of Genesis, is equipped with a high-resolution camera, designed to enter narrow borehole access points without opening large excavation trenches.
GOPHER is a custom borehole exploration drone being prepared to enter subsurface spaces that researchers say were previously identified through ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography and other scanning techniques.
The team intends to lower the device through narrow boreholes rather than excavating large sections of the site. Its camera could potentially provide direct images of spaces researchers believe correspond to cavities, tunnels or corridors beneath the formation.
Jones said the drilling program has already reached depths of as much as 18 meters, or nearly 60 feet.
“For the first time in history, we are performing an extensive, permitted deep core drilling survey inside and outside the Durupınar Noah’s Ark site, recovering samples from depths of up to 18 meters, nearly 60 feet. So far, we have recovered layers of rich organic material that we believe could be the decayed top-tier remains of the Ark. We are encountering multiple cavities, including one filled with mud and water. No bedrock or solid limestone has so far been identified in the holes drilled inside the formation. These current findings challenge claims that this is simply a natural shape made of limestone or bedrock.”
Those conclusions represent the project team’s interpretation of its preliminary field observations. The recovered material has not yet undergone the third-party laboratory testing needed to establish its composition or determine whether any organic material has an archaeological origin.
Interest in the excavation increased earlier this year after Turkish authorities approved permits allowing the group to conduct the scientific investigation.
Lauren Witzke, co-producer of the 2022 film Died Suddenly, has joined the project as a fundraiser and producer. In a Sept. 15 update from the expedition, she described participating in the fieldwork after Turkish officials authorized the research. Video and images accompanying the update showed activity at the site.
Witzke explained her involvement in a Died Suddenly Substack post, saying she became interested in the site the previous November, contacted Jones and eventually joined the 2026 expedition with fellow producer Edward Szall.
“I can’t explain it, and I don’t know why… I just feel like God wanted me to do this,” Witzke said in the post. “Perhaps God preserved the Ark all these years because He knew that one day a generation would be so deceived by evolutionary lies and modern technology that they would need tangible evidence of His existence to undo the falsehoods their textbooks had taught them.”
Witzke has said she and others involved in the project believe physical evidence of the biblical Flood could challenge evolutionary explanations they reject.
Several days later, she provided another field update, saying radar surveys had identified three subsurface layers and what researchers interpreted as chambers, corridors, organized patterns and tunnels containing right-angle features. Images shared with that update showed the continuing work.
Those radar interpretations remain hypotheses until investigators can directly examine the subsurface features or obtain physical samples capable of establishing what produced them.
Dr. Cenker Atilia, an archaeology professor and president of the Noah’s Ark 2026 Scientific Expedition, said the combination of scanning, soil sampling and drilling has increased the team’s interest in the formation.
“In 2026, we conducted an extensive and scientific investigation of the site, including radar surveys, soil sampling, deep core drilling, and surface surveys. Every stage of our research has provided findings that increase our interest in the possibility that this formation may preserve evidence related to Noah’s Ark. Once the detailed soil analyses are completed, we expect to obtain important additional information that may bring us closer to understanding the true nature of the site.”
The laboratory work is expected to examine the composition, organic content and stratigraphy of material recovered from the core holes.
Those results will be particularly important for evaluating the unexpectedly hard layer that stopped drilling. Jones has identified petrified or highly mineralized wood as possibilities, but until the samples are independently analyzed, the team cannot establish whether the material is wood, rock or another geological substance.
The same applies to organic-rich layers and underground cavities encountered during drilling. Their existence alone does not establish that the formation is man-made or that it contains the remains of an ancient vessel.
The project is raising money for laboratory analysis, continued 2026 work and additional research planned for 2027. Tax-deductible contributions are being accepted through the project’s donation program.
Fieldwork in Türkiye is being conducted under the direction of archaeology professor Dr. Cenker Atila, with support from Prof. Dr. Ahmet Şengönül, rector of Sivas Cumhuriyet University, and Jones serving as vice president of the Noah’s Ark Research Project.
For now, the broken drill bit has supplied the expedition with another question rather than an answer. The team says the unusually hard layer, organic material and subsurface spaces will be subjected to further testing as researchers try to determine whether the boat-shaped formation is entirely geological or contains material requiring another explanation.
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