What was believed to be the last detected position of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been disproven.
Officials announced Thursday that "pings" heard in early April near the coast of Perth, Australia were not from the missing plane.
Flight 370 disappeared on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. No debris or evidence of a crash site have been found.
Search efforts focused on an 850 square kilometer (330 square mile) area of the southern Indian Ocean near Perth, after what were thought to be black box pings were detected.
The U.S. Navy's Bluefin 21submarine spent nearly two months combing the area, but found nothing.
"The area can now be discounted as the final resting place" of the plane, the Joint Agency Coordination Center said in a statement.
On Wednesday, U.S. Navy Civilian Deputy Director of Ocean Engineering Michael Dean said that the U.S. and other countries involved in the search effort agree that the pings did not come from Flight 370's black box.
"Our best theory at this point is that [the pings were] likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator," he told CNN.
However, the Joint Agency Coordination Center said that Dean's comments were "speculative and premature," and that the agencies involved are still analyzing data from the Navy's Towed Pinger Locator.
"We may never know the origin of the acoustic detections," they conceded.
The search for Flight 370 has been suspended for several months, and will reconvene with new, more powerful sonar equipment, and a much larger search area—56,000 square kilometers (21,600 square miles).
A new potential crash site has been identified, but not yet revealed by officials. The Center told the Associated Press that the location "will be made public in due course."
For the families of the 239 people on board Flight 370, starting the search anew is heartbreaking.
Australian politician Tony Burke offered his condolences.
"The hopes of many have been dashed," he told Parliament.
