From flesh to skeleton: an air burial in photographs

This series of photos purports to document a Tibetan air burial.  A dead human body is brought out to an open area, prepared, then presented to a hungry flock of birds, who devour the flesh.  A skeleton remains, and receives further treatment.

Some of the images might be disturbing, even for Infocult stalwarts, so we'll make do with this classic trope, the death birds winging in towards a grim feast:

The second page of the series offers what seems to be a different instance of that funereal event.  We can notice the Gothic conjunction of doom and ruin in this selection:

I was astonished at the regularity of the revealed spine...

(thanks to Randy McCall)