R+33-45+NT

Bare Bones: Forensics 101 -A forensic anthropologist tend to see bodies that are past their prime. They are bloated, blasted, burned, buggy, rotted, sawed, gnawed, liquefied, mummified, or dismembered. Some are skeletonized. -Flesh decays; bone endures -The bones capture moments,preserve a record of them, and reveal them to anyone with eyes trained to see the rich record. -When you examine a body in a forensic case, the ultimate goal is to make a positive identification. If possible, you also want to determine the cause of death. -Before you can tell who someone was and how they died, you start with the Big Four: sex, race, age, and stature. -There's an easy test for prognathism. Take a pencil and press one end between your upper lip and the base of your nose. Holding that end in place as a pivot point, swivel the pencil downward. If it contacts the lips and teeth but can't touch the chin, your skull is prognathic and probably Negroid; if it can touch both the base of the nasal opening and the top of the chin, your skull is orthognathic (flat) and probably Caucasoid. -skulls and their features correspond quite consistently to three main groupings: Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid. -The cranial vault is a complex assembly of seven separate bones, the frontal bone, or forehead; a pare of parietal bones, which forms the skull's upper sides and rear; the temporal bones, low on either side; the sphenoid, forms the floor and part of the sides, and the occipital bone, the skull's heavy back and base, which rests atop the first cervical vertebra and channels the spinal cord to the neck. -The joints where the cranium's seven bones meet are called sutures. They have a serrated or zigzag look, like ragged stitches. When we're born, the joints are actually formed of cartilage, but as we age, the cartilage turns to bone and the sutures smooth over. -Although people's height or stature can vary, their proportions are all pretty much the same.