Microbes And How They Can Help In Pinpointing The Time of Death

Sprawled on her back in the dirt, with her head resting on one side, and her elbows bent as if she was about to prop up, is an elderly woman. She was already dead for three months, and her face was no longer recognizable.

She was among more than 150 corpses scattered beneath the trees, rotting in the open air or covered in plastic, on roughly three wooded acres.

This might look like a serial killer’s dumping ground for an outsider, but this was just another ordinary day at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Anthropology Research Facility. This facility, known as the “body farm”, is one of the first of only a handful of such facilities in the world where researchers study human decay and law enforcement officers train to retrieve human remains at crime scenes.

The dead woman was there to play her part in a developing frontier in forensic crime solving: analyzing and interrogating the suite of trillions of microorganisms and other creatures that are witness to our deaths.
“It’s an exciting time,” said Dawnie Steadman, director of the school’s Forensic Anthropology Center — through which the body farm operates — standing in the shade to escape the nearly 95-degree heat one morning in late May. “We’re in an age of technology where the microbes can help provide new answers about time of death, but also whether a body was moved, and medical conditions inside the body that can help identify a person.”

Post-mortem interval, which is the calculation of time since death, is an important aspect of forensic investigation. It is one of the focuses of body farm research.

When an individual is unidentified, the post-mortem interval can help investigators narrow down who they might be based on missing persons records. “If we say, well, this individual passed away at least a year ago,” Steadman said, “then we know not to look at recent cases.”

More details about this topic over at Undark.

(Image Credit: Rene Ebersole/ Undark)


Comments (0)

This gives perspective on the easy availability of food in developed nations.
That hunter earned his food and respected the animal he killed.
Gabriel, It really must be hard work bringing back such a large animal. I don't know how they would do it.
As far as it being more cruel, I agree that the animal experienced more fear because of the duration of the chase, but it is more heartless to shoot a creature for pleasure.
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I don't see how to romanticize that. Fighting for survival is understandable, but not developing a more cost-beneficial hunting method over the years isn't.

I loathe hunting, but if you have to do it to feed youself etc be practical and grant the animal a swift death. Dying of exhaustion sounds awful and it's also a waste of time and energy resources for the hunter.
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I'm sorry, the guy only has a 5 foot spear to hunt with, how else is he going to get his food? He respected his kill and did what he had to do to survive. I find it more disgusting seeing men put corn down at the bottom of a tree, sit there until something walks up then dispatch it with a large rifle. American hunters would not last in an area like this because they are too lazy.
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Doesn't it kinda defeat the purpose.. at least for the guy that has to run it down. Wouldn't running 8hrs after the thing burn up more calories than his share of the meat he'd get o_O
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You burn about 700 calories per hour running 6 mi/hr. Im guessing you would get at least about 80 lbs. of meat off of that animal. Just for comparison a 16 oz. steak has about 1200 calories.

You would come out way ahead even if that animal only has about 800 calories per pound.
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..."he respected his kill"

Do you guys get this stuff from watching "Pocahontas" or what? Before the La-Z-Boy was invented, nobody spouted this philosophical claptrap about what you ate and how you got it.

Chow down!
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There was an article a few days ago speculating that the reason we have relatively short toes is that "persistence hunting" was our primary technique of hunting in our evolutionary past. Interesting that the practice still exists!
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Yes, this is how humans hunted for about 2 million years up until the late paleolithic period. Yes, we are animals that evolved to run. The only animals who can match us are dogs and horses (our best friends!), and we can still beat them over several days.

"You don't stop running because you get old and die, you get old and die because you stop running."
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