Drought exposes WWII shipwrecks and mammoth fossils along the Danube

Water levels on the Danube have fallen to record lows, uncovering the rusted hulls of at least 20 World War II German vessels near the Serbian port of Prahovo and a collection of woolly mammoth bones near Ruse, Bulgaria. The ships, part of Nazi Germany's Black Sea fleet scuttled in September 1944 to impede Soviet advances, have long remained submerged because of the explosives they carried.

Local boat operator Ivica Gavrilovic said interest in the wrecks is high but access remains difficult. "People still don't know how to access the ships themselves," he told a family on his boat. Residents such as Krsta Brandic noted that the low water has halted large-ship traffic on the river.

The exposed wrecks come as governments in the region implement electricity-conservation steps to keep power plants operating amid the heat wave. Experts link the extreme drought to broader climate trends.

In Bulgaria, museum director Nikolay Nenov identified a jawbone, tusk fragments, a shoulder-blade piece and a femur belonging to a young woolly mammoth that likely lived in a marshy environment during the Ice Age. He said the bones are unusually well preserved and appear to come from a single animal, offering valuable insight into the species that disappeared about 4,000 years ago.