Recent “Titanic” Photos Show Evidence of Human Remains

Recent “Titanic” Photos Show Evidence of Human Remains

A newly released photo from the North Atlantic site of the shipwrecked Titanic shows evidence of human remains, federal officials said.

In observance of the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking, a 2004 image was reissued to the public in its original version, which shows a coat and boots buried in the mud at the site two-and-a-half miles below the ocean's surface, where the legendary passenger liner now lies.

Dr. James P. Delgado, Maritime Heritage Museum at the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration director told Yahoo News through phone that the way the boots are placed together makes a "compelling case" that they certainly belonged to a human body.

The newly published image was first reported by the New York Times–which also noted that not all Titanic experts agree there are bodies at the site of the wreckage, first discovered in 1985. James Cameron, the "Titanic" movie dirctor, who has explored the site many times, said he's never seen human remains: "We've seen shoes. We've seen pairs of shoes, which would strongly suggest there was a body there at one point. But we've never seen any human remains."

Delgado said that the issue is more of "semantics." The researcher said of Cameron, "He's seen the pairs of shoes and clothing that's down there, and so when he sees that, perhaps he's not seeing what we see as archeologists."

Delgado added that when Titanic finder Robert Ballard first showed the photo in 2004, "the room went silent." He said the explorers who looked at it could tell it had once been a lost soul from the ship.

Posted by James Fried on Tuesday April 17 2012, 3:14 AM EDT. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0