The latest in my ‘Learn Something New Every Day’ series… Taken from The Great Courses’ Trails of Evidence – How Forensic Science Works lecture series (Lecture 23 – Forensic Anthropology)
Despite all the mysterious woo-woo of what they do on shows like Bones, forensic anthropologists can apparently readily tell the difference between bones that were broken at (or before) time of death and bones broken after the body was found. It appears that bones absorb colour from the earth they’re buried in and all the exposed bits of bone (broken or otherwise) are stained.
When it’s newly broken by an earth mover who accidentally digs a bod up, that break exposes ‘new’ bone and it’s screamingly white.
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