NCJ Number
164051
Journal
Gazette Volume: 58 Issue: 11 Dated: (November 1996) Pages: 10-14
Date Published
1996
Length
5 pages
Annotation
The handling and analysis of human skeletal remains requires great care by police to facilitate accurate identification and analysis by a forensic anthropologist.
Abstract
Police need to understand what information the skeleton can provide, as well as the methodology that may be used to obtain such information. The adult human skeleton has 206 bones. The protocol used by the forensic anthropologist can be outlined as a series of questions. The answers to these questions indicate whether the bones represent a human, one or several individuals, the time of death, the age and gender of the person, the person's race, the person's height and weight, signs of injury or disease, and the cause and manner of death. The forensic anthropologist can obtain information on all of these questions to varying degrees, based on the completeness and the condition of the bones. Photographs