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Ms Homendy said recovery workers were dealing with deteriorating weather conditions and that the wreckage had landed on an ice floe which is moving at a rate of five miles a day.

County Museum of Natural History diorama of a simple red room wedged between a taxidermied wolf pack in the mountains on one side and polar bears on ice floes on the other.

Polar bears are used to an ice-free season of about four months when they rely on fat reserves until ice reforms and they can hunt blubber-rich seals from the floes.

The sinking of the Endurance, months after the ship became trapped in ice, stranded Shackleton and 27 crew members on ice floes and dashed their hopes of becoming the first to cross Antarctica on foot.

Members of the public alerted the local authorities when they saw a man going onto an ice floe to approach the animal.