Giving Bones an Identity

October 7, 2013

Hour 9

Giving Bones an Identity

Introduction

A couple was doing their everyday routine and tripped on a skull. As they got closer, they recognized that it was a full body on the ground and they then called the police. When police made it to the scene, our forensic anthropologist team cautiously inspected the bones as much as we could and then we took them to our lab for a more in-depth inspection and testing. The bones alone provide information on the victim's specific traits such as predicting height, gender, ethnicity and age. The bones were from a 33 year old, African American woman. Her name was Jaclyn Matthews; she had been missing for three months. Our plan was to match the DNA to Jaclyn's bones.

Summary Findings

The examination showed that the skeleton belonged to an African American woman, between the ages 30-35. In order for us to find the gender of the skeleton, we measured the humorous, pelvis, skull, and tibia. We found that the pelvic cavity was a circular shape and wide showing the coccyx. If the pelvis showed the coccyx, the sacrum and was heart-shaped, it would be identified as male. The maximum epiphyseal breadth of proximal tibia was 68.5mm which fell just below the average length for females, which is 70.26mm. The maximum epiphyseal breadth of distal tibia was 43.2 which fell just below the average for females which is 46.31.

DNA Analysis

During the DNA analysis, we found that the skeleton in the woods was those of Jaclyn Matthews. The DNA from the skeleton was more identical to the missing person case.

Further Analysis The facial reconstruction technique would help this case, because it would help us identify the skeletal remains of an unidentified person. It will compose a face that the machine thinks fits the skull. There are numerous techniques to sculpture a face onto the skull, all of which rely on the reproduction of a potentially recognize face using the published soft tissue thicknesses in different racial groups. Another technique used is Morphological analysis which is when a computerized tomography (CT) can be used to give noninvasive quantitative, 3-dimensional detailed information on bone. The bone analysis laboratory uses a Sky scan 1172 desktop x-ray high-resolution microtomograph. One other technique is bone marrow aspiration in which specialists, a pathologist and or hematologist, microscopically examine slides containing stained smears of marrow samples- the fibrous network and fluid from a biopsy or the fluid from an aspiration. The number, size and shape of the cell types present are examined, as are the portions of mature and immature cells.

Conclusion

After all of the examinations from just