The search team hunting for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has discovered an underwater shipwreck in the Southern Indian Ocean, Joint Action Coordination Committee (JACC) revealed.

It said sonar contact was made with an object on the ocean floor on Dec 19 and high-resolution sonar imagery was subsequently captured on Jan 2, 2016 using an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV).

"The AUV captured high-resolution sonar imagery of the contact, confirming that it was indeed the wreck of a ship.

"The Shipwreck Galleries of the Western Australian Museum has conducted a preliminary review of some sonar imagery and advised that the vessel is likely to be a steel/iron vessel dating from the turn of the 19th century," it said.

However, there is yet to be any trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The JACC said some 80,000 sq km of the ocean floor has been searched and the full 120,000 sq km of priority search zone will only be completed by the middle of this year.

"In the absence of credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft, governments have agreed that there will be no further expansion of the search area," he said.

On March 8, 2014, Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 which took off from KL International Airport (KLIA) vanished from radar.

A flaperon from a Boeing 777, the same model as the missing plane, washed up on Reunion Island in July last year but the main debris has yet to be located.