15 Quotes by William M. Bass

Taphonomy – the arrangement or relative position of the human remains, artifacts, and natural elements like earth, leaves, and insect casings – is one of the most crucial sources of information to a forensic anthropologist at a crime scene.

And at that pivotal moment, the University of Tennessee came calling. So did forensic anthropology. My career as “Indian grave-robber number one” was over. My true vocation – as a forensic scientist – was about to begin.

When the Corps of Discovery dropped anchor at a Mandan village in 1804, they were met by blond-haired, blue-eyed Mandans – the offspring of native women and French explorers or trappers. On.

The body arrived soon enough: an unclaimed corpse from a nearby medical examiner. The guinea pigs? A cinch. Undergraduates will do anything for extra credit.

Flesh decays; bone endures. Flesh forgets and forgives ancient injuries; bone heals, but it always remembers: a childhood fall, a barroom brawl; the smash of a pistol butt to the temple, the quick sting of a blade between the ribs. The bones capture such moments, preserve a record of them, and reveal them to anyone with eyes trained to see the rich visual record, to hear the faint whispers rising from the dead. I.

It’s hot as blazes in South Dakota in August, and the prairie is a mighty big place to search. To do the job swiftly, we’d need a small army of workers. What we had, it turns out, was a very large army of very small workers: the ants burrowing into the prairie by the billions. The.

It’s not entirely clear why we have sinuses, aside from their role in providing a huge revenue stream for pharmaceutical companies and over-the-counter drug makers.

Every one of these lessons would serve me well in the years ahead as I began applying the secrets I learned from the long-dead to understanding the stories of the recently murdered. BY.

By now it was nearly noon and I was hungry, so we made a quick run to Mr. Burger, a tiny carryout place a mile down the road, and wolfed down lunch standing outside the cemetery shop. We positioned ourselves upwind from the coffin, but occasionally the wind would shift and the aroma of burgers would mingle with the aroma of the Bopper.