This is the end of the last week of my Identifying the Dead class, and I have to say, it ended with a bang. It was so exciting to throw theories around who was the perpetrator and why. In the beginning of this week we learned who the victim was and towards the end who murdered her. Now if you read my post last week, I included the missing poster I made, and the victim looked almost exactly how the professional's missing poster looked like. But just because the victim looked like the official missing poster, does not mean the identification is over. What I mean by this is there is more work to be done.
Early in the class we learned about three primary identifiers; which are DNA, fingerprints, and dentition (teeth). Our victim was all bone and had been dead for five years, so DNA and fingerprints were not available. What as left was dentition. Even thought we all have teeth, just like we all have fingerprints, our teeth are distinctive down to the individual level. From cavities, fillings, missing teeth, the state of the 3rd molar (wisdom tooth), are all distinctive. For example, all adult humans have 32 teeth, I, who had braces and had to get teeth pulled, have 28. With our victim she had very distinctive cavities, and some of her 3rd molars were just erupting, and had a tooth missing, but this was most likely postmortem because there is no evidence of healing. The images below show what the dental chart of the victim (left), and the dental chart which was prepared by the dentist of the likely victim (right).
Early in the class we learned about three primary identifiers; which are DNA, fingerprints, and dentition (teeth). Our victim was all bone and had been dead for five years, so DNA and fingerprints were not available. What as left was dentition. Even thought we all have teeth, just like we all have fingerprints, our teeth are distinctive down to the individual level. From cavities, fillings, missing teeth, the state of the 3rd molar (wisdom tooth), are all distinctive. For example, all adult humans have 32 teeth, I, who had braces and had to get teeth pulled, have 28. With our victim she had very distinctive cavities, and some of her 3rd molars were just erupting, and had a tooth missing, but this was most likely postmortem because there is no evidence of healing. The images below show what the dental chart of the victim (left), and the dental chart which was prepared by the dentist of the likely victim (right).
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The rest of the class was with updates and news about the perpetrator. The perpetrator wrote a diary of the details of the murder, which we were given access to at the end of the class. If you enjoyed these past 6 weeks of me recounting this class, or are interested in taking this class, they are having it again next year: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/identifying-the-dead. It really is great fun. The last section of this week was truly saddening, because...it is over now. But my appetite is more than whet now.
Please feel free to comment on what you thought of the blog, or other physical anthropological subjects you would like me to cover now that the weeks are done.
Please feel free to comment on what you thought of the blog, or other physical anthropological subjects you would like me to cover now that the weeks are done.
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