See What Happens When The Freezer Breaks?

Ever defrost the freezer and find stuff you can't identify? Well this tops any mystery meat you may have waiting in your ice box. In what I find at once very cool and sort of delightfully gruesome, scientists are puzzling over some big, and as yet unidentified animal bones dangling from an iceberg adrift off Newfoundland's northeast coast. What looks like a vertebral column and ribs can be seen in the image along with a brownish stain in the surrounding ice.

I've seen funny things come out of ice in the past … but we've never seen a skeleton hanging halfway out of an iceberg, commented Garry Stenson, a St. John's-based scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Stenson has forwarded photos of the skeletal remains to some zoologist colleages and is awaiting a reliable ID on the critter. So while loss of polar ice due to global climate change is a bust for polar bears and iceberg watchers, it may potentially be a boon to forensic scientists and paleontologists as the ice releases a treasure trove of stinky cadavers.