article_snippet.sent: The flight data recorder, or "black box," was found Thursday by recovery teams that have spent days since the March 24 crash scouring the mountainside in the French Alps where plane went down.
article_snippet.sent: A statement from the BEA on Friday said the BEA teams had immediately begun to investigate the BEA contents.
article_snippet.sent: Work is continuing to establish the precise history of the flight.
article_snippet.sent: But the missing "black box" was expected to yield important evidence about plane's final minutes.
article_snippet.sent: A female police officer digging by hand for clothes in a ravine that been searched previously found the flight data recorder Thursday afternoon about 8 inches (20 centimeters) below the surface, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin told reporters.
article_snippet.sent: Usually white with florescent orange, the flight data recorder lived up to the flight data recorder name as a black box because fire had darkened a black box with ashes.
article_snippet.sent: Authorities have also found 470 personal effects at the crash site, according to Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin.
article_snippet.sent: That view is consistent with French officials' claims Wednesday insisting that two publications, German daily Bild and French Paris Match, were wrong to report that cell phone video showed the harrowing final seconds from on board the flight.