Thanks for sharing this article, more pictures than I've previously seen from the expedition and suspicions confirmed about the VCR, not CVR tape.
Reminds me of Tom Mahood's classic online forensic aviation saga from two decades ago:
The Hunt for 928
More discussion of EA 980 here on PPRuNe:
http://www.pprune.org/aviation-histo...ml#post9547102
http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/57998...y-located.html