Official Turkish Permits Result in the First Core Samples Taken From the Boat-Shaped Formation at Durupinar
Core samples are now going into Durupınar, the boat-shaped formation near Mount Ararat that has long stood at the center of claims that Noah’s Ark rests in eastern Turkey.
Noah’s Ark Scans said Sunday that its Turkish-approved 2026 expedition has begun what it describes as the first permitted core-sampling campaign at the site. The group says Prof. Dr. Cenker Atila of Sivas Cumhuriyet University leads the project with Noah’s Ark Scans.
Türkiye Today reported that the 2026 project received approval from Sivas Cumhuriyet University and permission from two Turkish ministries. Its work includes GPS mapping, ground-penetrating radar, soil analysis, and dry drilling.
The new cores will cut directly through the formation’s layers. The group says the program uses dry sonic drilling to recover continuous samples, unlike older attempts. Noah’s Ark Scans acknowledges that researchers attempted core holes there in 1987 and 1988, but says that effort produced no usable data.
That makes the samples the center of the 2026 investigation. The team plans laboratory analysis alongside radar, electrical-resistivity, and terrain-mapping data.
For decades, the argument rested on the formation’s striking outline and remote scans. Now the Turkish-approved expedition is taking physical cores from inside it.
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