Human remains discovered near an Austrian glacier have been identified as those of a German mountaineer who died nearly 60 years ago, local police said Thursday.

Climate change has accelerated the melting of glaciers, with retreating ice freeing the bodies of climbers it had held for years, often decades.

The German’s bones, including part of a leg, were discovered last year in the province of Tyrol in western Austria.

He was reported missing in March 1967 after falling into a crevasse while crossing the Wasserfallferner glacier with his companion on skis, local police told AFP.

Search teams were unable to retrieve him from the deep crevasse at the time, and bad weather forced them to call off the rescue mission.

In August 2024, a local resident found the bones about 2,300 feet below a glacier in the Rotmoostal valley and notified the authorities.

After conducting extensive DNA analysis of the human remains, forensic experts were able to “attribute them to a 30-year-old German man from the Baden-Wuerttemberg region” who has been missing since 1967, police said.

“In recent years, the retreat of glaciers across the Alps — in this case the Wasserfallferner glacier — has resulted in the discovery of the remains of sometimes long-lost hikers,” police spokesman Erwin Voegele told AFP.

“Such discoveries have also taken place in neighboring Switzerland and Italy, but it is rare that remains can be identified almost 60 years after the accident,” added Voegele.

Austria is at risk of becoming largely “ice-free” within 45 years, the country’s Alpine Club warned last year, reporting that two glaciers had shrunk by more than 100 meters in 2023.

Melting glaciers reveal the remains of mountaineers and climbers

As glaciers melt and recede, which many scientists blame on global warming, the remains of mountaineers, skiers and other alpinists who disappeared decades ago are increasingly being found.

Last July, the preserved body of v American mountaineer William Stampfl — who disappeared more than two decades ago while climbing a snowy peak in Peru — was found after being exposed to melting ice caused by climate change. He was reported missing in 2022 when an avalanche buried his party on Mount Huascaran, which is more than 22,000 feet high.

In September 2023, the remains of a German climber who disappeared in 1971 discovered on a Swiss glacier.Two months before that, the remains of another German climber who disappeared in 1986. discovered in Switzerland. The police did not identify that climber, but posted a photo hiking boots and equipment sticking out of the snow that clearly belonged to the missing man.

In August 2017, Italian teams of mountain rescuers found the remains of mountaineers on the glacier on the south side of Mont Blanc probably dates from the 1980s or 1990s.

A month earlier, a shrinking glacier in Switzerland revealed the bodies of a frozen couple who disappeared in 1942.