A record drought in Las Vegas has led to the discovery of dead bodies in a dried-up reservoir, thought to have been dumped there by mafia gangs.

Officers in Lake Mead, on the border of Nevada and Arizona, are working to identify “human skeletal remains” found over the weekend, just days after they were alerted to another body which had been stuffed into a barrel and thrown into the water.

Now, divers are being offered rewards if they recover any other bodies, in the hope that cold cases can be solved and families of missing people can get closure.

The remains have become uncovered as Lake Mead’s water level dropped to 1,055 feet, the lowest since 1937, a year after the Hoover Dam created the reservoir on the Colorado river.

At 120 miles long, Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the US and at capacity, can hold 9.3 trillion gallons (36 trillion liters) of water. It was full as recently as 2000, but water levels have dropped by 70 per cent since then.

Last week, a man’s body was found in a recently uncovered barrel, where he was apparently put after being shot.

Read more: yahoo