500-year-old ship found intact at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

Tucked away for 500 years on the floor of the icy Baltic Sea, a remarkably well-preserved Renaissance-era ship has just been unearthed by scientists, The New York Times reports. The vessel, Okänt Skepp (Swedish for “unknown ship”), first surfaced after a commercial company mapping the Baltic Sea unexpectedly recorded images of the ship on the sea floor earlier this year. Researchers then sent robotic cameras to photograph the rare find, which measures between 15 and 18 meters long and would likely have been a contemporary of Christopher Columbus’s fleet as he sailed to America. When they return to the ship, scientists plan to extract and test wood samples using carbon dating to nail down a more exact age.