Madrid: When the remains of Surrealist painter Salvador Dali were exhumed in Spain, forensics experts made a startling discovery: The artist's trademark moustache was still intact.

"The moustache kept its classic 10-past-10 position," Lluis Penuelas, secretary-general of the foundation that oversees Dali's estate, told reporters on Friday, referring to the artist's waxed and gravity-defying bristles, which Dali kept pointed upward, like the hands of a clock.

"Finding this out was a very emotional moment."

Narcs Bardalet, Dali's embalmer, said that upon opening the crypt, his body was found to be exactly as it was when it was interred 28 years ago.

"His moustache remains intact, marking 10 past 10, as he desired. It's a miracle," Mr Bardalet told local TV. "Dali will be with us for a long time".

The discovery of the moustache was a striking, if unintended, outcome of the opening of Dali's tomb, in a crypt beneath the museum that he had designed for himself in his hometown, Figueres, which has also become one of the Catalonia region's main tourism destinations.

Cranes lifted the hefty tombstone from the crypt on Thursday. The operation took place at night, with media banned and the building shielded to prevent drones spying. Just 15 people were present and all phones and cameras were prohibited. 

Madrid Officials in Spain say that hair, nails and two long bones were removed to find genetic samples for a DNA test that a judge ordered last month in a case brought by a woman who says she is Dali's daughter. The results of the test are expected in a few weeks, which should allow the paternity case to resume in September.

If paternity is established, Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old Tarot card reader, could then claim part of the estate worth hundreds of millions of dollars that Dali left to the Spanish state.

The foundation that oversees the painter's estate had unsuccessfully tried to appeal the exhumation order.

Marta Felip, mayor of Figueres, told RAC1 radio that the exhumation was "grotesque." She warned that the city hall, alongside the foundation, could in turn start legal action against Abel to get her to cover the full cost of the exhumation, should her paternity lawsuit falter.

Abel wants to be recognised as Dali's daughter, born as a result of what she has called a "clandestine love affair" that her mother had with the painter in the late 1950s in Port Lligat, the fishing village where Dali and his Russian-born wife, Gala, built a waterfront house.

Dali died at 84 in 1989.

Abel filed her lawsuit in 2015 against the Spanish government and the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation. In an interview shortly after starting legal action, she said that she wanted recognition as Dali's daughter and "after that, whatever corresponds to me".

Abel's mother spent several summers in Port Lligat, working mostly as a nanny for different families living near Dali's home.

Penuelas says the foundation regards the exhumation as "inappropriate" and Abel's claim as "baseless".

New York Times; Telegraph, London