Authors: Mohamed R. Mahfouz, Natalie R. Langley, Nicholas
Herrmann, Emam ElHak Abdel Fatah
Abstract:
When mass graves are unearthed, the bones are often
commingled, presenting forensic anthropologists with the problem of sorting of
bone fragments in an effort to determine the number of dead, as well as their
age and sex.
Forensic anthropologists perform the task of creating a
biological profile to aid law enforcement in identifying unknown human
remains—an important first step in the criminal apprehension and conviction
process.
The report describes the research used to develop software
to reconstruct fragmented bones of four skeletal elements: the femur, humerus,
pelvis and skull. The software allows the user the ability to visualize
fragmentary elements, reject or accept elements, and merge elements to
determine a fully reconstructed bone. Features from bone fragments can be
matched to corresponding features on a "template" bone. The templates
are derived from a database of more than 2,000 scanned bone fragments from the
Morton Shell Mound, an ancient ossuary in Louisiana that has yielded approximately
24,900 human bone fragments.
The result of this research is a software that will enable
forensic anthropologists to provide a system to perform biological profile
assessments on isolated bones or bone fragments and to manage complex mass
disaster or commingled bone cases. The data management aspect of the
application will allow forensic anthropologists to digitally inventory complex
commingled scenes.
This authors state that the application will significantly
impact forensic anthropologists’ and crime scene investigators’ ability to
reconstruct mass disasters, commingled mass graves, and highly fragmentary
individual burials or surface scatters.
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