A German sailor whose mummified body was found on a yacht adrift off the southern Philippines had died of a heart attack about a week earlier, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday.Police earlier named the victim as Manfred Fritz Bajorat, based on documents found on the yacht last Friday, but still do not know where he come from and where to go.

“The German national is estimated to have been dead for more or less seven days due to heart attack”.

The newspaper also published pictures of the man hunched over a table in the main cabin, and cited forensics experts who explained that a combination of tropical heat, dry wind and salty sea air can quickly preserve or mummify a corpse.

Police in the town of Barobo on the east coast of Mindanao island, where the corpse was taken, said the German embassy was arranging for a relative to fly to the Philippines to identify the body.

Local fishermen found the white-hulled, 13-metre (44-foot) yacht with a broken mast adrift on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean on Friday.