Egle Procuta
CANADIAN PRESS

  HAVANA — A Canadian-led expedition's contention that a temple-like structure exists on the seabed near Cuba is gaining scientific credibility.

  Manuel Iturralde, one of Cuba's top geologists, plans to tell an international conference of geophysicists in Havana tomorrow there is no geological explanation for
  the megalithic stone formations found in about 700 metres of water some four kilometres off the western tip of the Caribbean island.

  Iturralde said while it's too early to say definitively that the structures are man-made, evidence is growing.

  More studies are needed to determine whether the symmetrically arranged formations, which occupy an area of about 20 square kilometres, are indeed the ruins
  of a sunken city. But, Iturralde said he found physical evidence of "significantly strong seismic activity...that has not been previously recorded."

  The deep-ocean exploration team — led by Paulina Zelitsky, president of Advanced Digital Communications and a Soviet-trained offshore engineer who worked
  in Canada for 30 years — stumbled on the site while combing the ocean floor for sunken galleons in July, 2000.

  Most scientists have rejected the idea of a lost city, but Iturralde's seismic data coincides with a theory that an earthquake may have led to the sudden sinking of
  an island that once lay between the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, at the western tip of Cuba, and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

  Iturralde said it if the hypothesis proves to be true, it would change the entire understanding of Caribbean history.