An iceberg may have sent it to the ocean floor, but a team of researchers are warning a newly discovered bacteria may be erasing evidence of the wreckage of the Titanic.

According to Dalhousie University adjunct civil engineering professor Henrietta Mann, what now remains of the Titanic could be gone in 20 years or less.

The reason, she says, is a new bacterial species that has been discovered munching on the wreck.

Dubbed halomonas titanicae, the rust-eating bacteria was discovered in rusticles -- dark orange rust formations that resemble icicles -- that are covering the ship's submerged hull.

Mann, who made the discovery in conjunction with University of Sevilla researcher Bhavleen Kaur, says the discovery poses as many questions as it answers.

"We don't know yet whether this species arrived aboard the RMS Titanic before or after it sank," Mann said in a statement. "We also don't know if these bacteria cause similar damage to offshore oil and gas pipelines. Finding answers to these questions will not only better our understanding of our oceans, but may also equip us to devise coatings that can prevent similar deterioration to other metal structures."

In an interview from Halifax, the author of "Titanic Remembered" says this discovery was made possible by the submarine technology now used to probe the ocean depths.

"These bacteria had really never been looked at before because we couldn't get at wrecks that were in that very deep water," Alan Ruffman told CTV's Canada AM, explaining that the rusticle samples were collected by submersibles in 1991.

As for the prospect of losing the Titanic, Ruffman says he's not nearly as worried as the researchers.

"That wreck has been a pile of iron on the ocean floor for nearly 100 hundred years and I'm willing to bet if you and I were to live to be another hundred years older it would still be there in many, many shapes of the same," Ruffman said in an interview Tuesday.

Besides, he added, "Virtually every wreck in the ocean is reduced to nothing in a period of 50 to 60 years."

While H. titanicae could pose a "potential new microbial threat" to ships and offshore oil equipment, Mann nevertheless believes the discovery of this iron-oxide munching bacteria holds promise.

"We believe H. titanicae plays a part in the recycling of iron structures at certain depths," she said. "This could be useful in the disposal of old naval and merchant ships and oil rigs that have been cleaned of toxins and oil-based products and then sunk in the deep ocean."

The Titanic famously set sail in 1912 amidst claims the luxury liner was "unsinkable." That claim was proved wrong less than 600 kilometres south of Newfoundland, when the ship struck an iceberg and sank almost four kilometres to the ocean floor.

More than 1,500 passengers and crew perished in what still stands as one of the world's worst maritime disasters.

The Titanic wasn't located for more than 70 years, until a joint Franco-American expedition found the ship split in two pieces separated by a distance of some 600 metres in 1985.

The results of Mann and Kaur's research will be published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology on Wednesday.