We usually think of icebergs as craggy chunks like the one from Titanic, but IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck caused a stir after he captured photos of the flat, sharp-cornered specimens.
"I thought it was pretty interesting; I often see icebergs with relatively straight edges, but I've not really seen one before with two corners at such right angles like this one had," Harbeck said in a NASA post.
These nature-made frozen slabs have an official name: "tabular icebergs." Because of its smooth surface and clean edges, the rectangular berg likely only recently broke off the Larsen C ice shelf, which famously released a Delaware-sized chunk of ice last year, now dubbed A68.
"The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf," NASA tweeted.
In the new photo (at the top of this article), Harbeck captured a slightly less rectangular iceberg around the same area. Look closely and you can see a corner of the now-classic rectangular iceberg as well as A68 in the distance.
"I was actually more interested in capturing the A68 iceberg that we were about to fly over, but I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and fairly photogenic, so on a lark, I just took a couple photos," Harbeck added in the NASA post.
These calving events are like a long fingernail that eventually snaps off at the end, University of Maryland Earth scientist Kelly Brunt explained to LiveScience.
Such a break can create nearly perfect geometric edges, similar to when a glass plate shatters and creates straight edges, sea ice specialist Alek Petty told NPR.
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="K9Z8UH1555992571"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I6Z5JpsItEs?rel=0?enablejsapi=1" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Mayer said his department was working with the Riverside County Sheriff and the District Attorney's office to build an animal cruelty case against the woman.<br></p><p>"There is no excuse for dumping puppies," Mayer said. "Especially in today's age when we or other shelters would be willing to get these animals to foster parents or rescue partners. This was a shameful act."</p><p>The puppies, which are believed to be terrier mixes, were initially cared for by the department's veterinary team. Southern California group <a href="http://meoowzresq.org/" target="_blank">MeoowzResQ</a>, which normally specializes in cat and kitten fostering, has agreed to take over their treatment. The puppies need to be bottle fed and closely watched for a few weeks, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/woman-caught-video-tossing-plastic-bag-full-3-day-old-puppies-near-coachella-1402289" target="_blank">Newsweek reported</a>.</p><p>The department emphasized that there is never any need to abandon puppies, Newsweek reported. There are shelters open on weekdays in the county which have re-homed around 5,000 dogs between 2017 and 2018, according to department data.</p><p>It is not yet known how severe a penalty the woman will face for her actions. California animal cruelty laws allow for both misdemeanor and felony charges.</p>According to the <a href="https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/pets-numbers" target="_blank">best estimates</a> of the <a href="https://www.humanesociety.org/" target="_blank">Humane Society of the United States</a>, six to eight million cats and dogs enter shelters in the U.S. each year. Around four million are adopted from shelters annually, and sadly three million are euthanized. Of those euthanized, around 2.4 million were healthy and could have been treated and adopted.