14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian oceanographers are puzzled by bizarre photographs showing the skeleton of a large mammal popping out of an iceberg drifted near the coast of eastern Newfoundland. The six images reveal what looks like a brown rib cage and spinal column, slightly bent, sticking out of the iceberg.
"Researchers throughout Canada, Greenland and Norway are unable to determine the origin of the skeleton. It's definitely unusual. It's not something that I've encountered before," said Garry Stenson, a marine mammal scientist with the federal Fisheries Department.
The skeleton could belong to a bearded seal, walrus or beluga whale, but the mystery cannot be solved without a direct analysis. "It would be really nice to get a copy, a sample, a hold of it, but at this point we're not quite sure what it is," he said.
"The photos were taken near Newtown, in Bonavista Bay, by Eli and Donna Norris on the weekend of May 26," said Ruth Knee, a friend who forwarded them to the Fisheries Department in hopes of identifying the bones.
The researchers are sure about the authenticity of the pictures and the backbone was roughly 2.4 metres (8 ft) out of the ice, thus the spine could belong to a large mammalian creature. The question is: did the animal fall into an iceberg crevasse, getting stuck, or did it simply die on an ice floe and got embedded later by other ice layers?
"It could be a walrus, for example, that died and is laying on its back and the pressure of the snow and the ice has flattened those ribs," he said.
The bones appear in good shape and could still have tissue on them. Their age is hard to tell, as ice could have preserved them for years. Unfortunately, the location of the iceberg is still unknown.
In July 2001, residents of St. Bernard's, in Fortune Bay, were astonished by a 7 m (23 ft) carcass that washed ashore. Its extremely decomposed state initially impeded its assignment, making the locals to dub it "the sea monster", but later DNA check proved it belonged to a sperm whale.