BEIJING, March 14 -- Chinese researchers have detected a "seafloor event" near the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam, an area suspected to be linked with the missing Malaysian jetliner MH370, a university announced on Friday.

The event occurred at about 2:55 a.m. local time on Saturday, about one and a half hours after the plane's last definitive sighting on civilian radar.

The area, 116 km northeast from where the last contact with the Boeing plane was recorded, used to be a non-seismic region, according to a research group on seismology and physics of the earth's interior under the University of Science and Technology of China.

The seafloor event could have been caused by the plane possibly plunging into the sea, the research group said.