The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Vancouver Island Major Crime Unit are looking into the discovery made last week on Valdes Island, the Times Colonist newspaper in Victoria reported Friday.

Last August, two other right feet in men's size 12 sneakers washed ashore on two other nearby islands,and the RCMP wasn't able to match DNA from any police databases, the newspaper said.

"We'll be using pathology examinations and anthropology examinations to garner as much information as we possibly can about the remains," said Jeff Dolen, the province's assistant deputy chief coroner.

Gail Anderson, a forensic entomologist from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, told the Times Colonist it's common for hands, feet and the head to detach as a body decomposes in water but she said it's unusual for them to float.