Conspiracy theories take new twist | The Times obituary | Picture special

The mystery of Steve Fossett's disappearance deepened today after it emerged that search teams who reached the mangled wreckage of his aircraft in California's Sierra Nevada mountains could find no sign of the adventurer's body.

The shattered remains of Fossett's single-engined Bellanca were spotted during an aerial search last night about a quarter of a mile from where a hiker found his pilot's licence, two other ID cards and $1,005 in cash on Monday.

Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said that rescuers reached the plane on foot and confirmed it was Fossett’s aircraft but found no human remains at the crash site. Sheriff Anderson said photos of the site appeared to indicate that the plane had smashed head-on into a mountainside.

"The crash looked so severe I doubt if someone would have walked away from it," he told reporters."There was no body in the plane. We have not found any human remains at the crash site."

Fifty searchers and five dog teams will fan out across the area in an effort to find remains of Fossett, the record-breaking aviation pioneer who vanished on September 3 last year after taking off on a solo flight from a private airstrip in neighbouring Nevada.

His disappearance prompted the biggest search-and-rescue mission in US history - and an unprecedented internet trawl through Google Earth satellite images - but there was no sign of him until Preston Morrow, a ski shop manager from Mammoth Lakes, found his ID cards in the branches of a bush near the town.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board will also study the wreckage to determine what may have caused the crash.

Mr Morrow told reporters that he found Fossett's belongings by chance after taking a short cut through a forest. "I came across the ID card and the other card and the 100 dollar bills in the dirt and the pine needles and stuff and I went, wow," he said.

"There wasn’t a picture of Fossett, but there was a name and ID and stuff ... It didn’t pop in my head right at that time who that was."

Fossett, 63, took off from a private airstrip owned by the hotel tycoon Barron Hilton on September 3 last year.

As one of the world's most experienced aviators - he had set more than 100 records on land, air and sea - he did not leave a flight plan.

Search teams had already flown over Mammoth Lakes but it had not been considered a likely place to find the plane. Instead the search - which covered 20,000 square miles - was concentrated to the north of the town, based on sightings of Mr Fossett’s plane, his plans for when he had intended to return and the amount of fuel he had.

The hunt has investigated numerous sightings of wreckage, but so far all had proved to be unrelated to Fossett's disappearance.

A judge in Fossett's home town of Chicago declared him legally dead in February this year - as his wife had requested - but doubts had since been raised about whether he might have faked his own death, perhaps because of financial problems.

Among those suggesting that he could have done so was Lieutenant-Colonel Cynthia Ryan, the official spokeswoman of the Civil Air Patrol, which led the search effort.

She told a newspaper interviewer in July: "I know very few people here, friends in law enforcement, who buy this story like the rest of the world has. I've been doing this search and rescue for 14 years. Fossett should have been found.

"It's not like we didn't have our eyes open. We found six other planes while we were looking for him. We're pretty good at what we do."

Doubts were also expressed by a loss adjustor hired by Lloyds of London to investigate Fossett's disappearance, who questioned why there had never been any police inquiry.

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