Good News, Bad News from Latest Titanic Expedition
Whether or not you've seen the 1997 movie Titanic, you'll probably know the scene in which Jack stands behind Rose at the front of the ship.
It's one of the most memorable images from the Oscar-winning film, with the characters — played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet — looking out to sea.
Of course, most of us know what happened next. The front of the ship — known as the bow — and the rest of the huge vessel ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
And a team of researchers from the company that holds the salvage rights to the real-life wreck have discovered that a large piece of those railings on the bow have fallen away.
This is thought to have happened in the last two years.
RMS Titanic, a US-based company, has released images from its recent expedition to the 112-year-old wreck. It was its first trip to the remains of the ship since 2010.
The pictures show a site that continues to change more than a century later.
A bronze statue — not seen in decades and feared to be lost for good — was also among the discoveries made by the company on its expedition this summer.
The 60-centimeter-tall statue of the Roman goddess Diana was last seen and photographed in 1986, just a year after the wreck was first discovered.
"The discovery of the statue of Diana was an exciting moment," said Tomasina Ray, from RMS Titanic.
But she said they were sad to see that parts of the ship had decayed in time, and this has made the company even more determined to preserve the Titanic's legacy.
The crew spent 20 days at the site in a remote part of the North Atlantic Ocean and returned to the US on August 9. They captured more than 2 million of the highest resolution pictures of the site ever to exist.
The team also fully mapped the wreck and its debris field with equipment that should improve understanding of the site.
