Forensic Anthropology lecture

On Friday the 23rd I attended the forensic anthropology lecture and they discussed a lot of interesting information. They discussed how the “Bones” and “NCIS” shows used methods that were not approved yet or way to expensive. The research forensic anthropologists do is mostly done in a lab and not outside in crime scenes. There are 10 questions that they follow, and each question has its own unique way of finding the answer. Forensic anthropologists don’t say what caused the death, well they find out and observe what happened to an individual, but at the end they are not the ones who “certify” the cause of death. The anthropologists can easily tell what bones are human and which ones are not. A thing I learned is that in California there are a lot of Native American bones that are not of a forensic value as well as the medical specimens. The Native American bones have to stay where they were at and they have an act known as NAGPRA. The anthropologists observe what kind of knifes or saws they use when there is an amputation which I find really scary. Also they have to find out how dead an individual has been and there are many ways to find that out, for example algor mortis is the temperature and rigor mortis is the position they died in, these ways can tell you how long a person has been dead. The age determination has also many ways to find out through the teeth and the cranial structure. The anthropologists also receive “trophy skulls” which are skulls that people keep in their houses and put candles on them. Another thing I learned is that there are 206 bones in the human body. In the ancestry of the skulls there is a huge difference between white, black and asian-amerindian. I learned many things in the lecture, everything was really interesting, but I would never be able to do anything in forensics because I will pass out. I’m glad I attended because I never knew anything about forensic anthropology.