IndexIntroductionVisual skeletal analysisBiological sex assessment via skullAncestral assessment via skullAlternative methodsConclusionIntroductionSeason 8, episode 11: “The Archaeologist in the Cocoon”, episode of the show Bones, begins with the discovery of a body wrapped inside a cocoon. This cocoon hangs on a tree branch next to a man who was trapped in the tree while skydiving. Dr. Brennan, an FBI forensic anthropologist, says the victim is human. He does this by taking note of the prominent brow ridge and sloping frontal bone found on the face of the body discovered in the cocoon. The remains were discovered after being left inside the cocoon for several days. Say no to plagiarism on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The crime scene is staged to look like an accident with the inclusion of a crashed car. The car was found to be clean. There was no visible evidence of blood spilled inside the vehicle that could be found at first glance. After opening the car seats and examining the interior it is discovered that they are completely soaked in blood. The vehicle is registered to Mr James Sutton, an adventurer and archaeologist. By comparing the medical records of the victim's facial x-rays provided by his doctor, the remains are eventually identified as him. After speaking with the victim's wife and his brother, it is discovered that the victim had rented a warehouse and had brought an important discovery to the United States. Ancient bones were found in the warehouse. Once the bones returned to the laboratory, it was discovered that the bones belong to a male Neanderthal, a female homo sapiens and a baby girl who is half homo sapiens and half female Neanderthal. Proving that they coexisted in the cave where they were found, they were the first interspecies pair of their species. It then turns out that Sutton had sold artifacts to a creationist who owned a museum but had never placed the artifacts there. The discovery that the victim was flogged because his wife's family was unhappy with their marriage causes the victim's brother-in-law to become the prime suspect. However, he was not the killer. The killer turned out to be the victim's editor, who killed him because he had published an article in a scientific journal and had not mentioned his name. She attacked him with a bookend, cutting his armpit and causing him to bleed to death. The episode ends with the story of the last moments of the ancient family whose bones were found by Sutton. The father died trying to protect his family, the mother died, and the daughter was left to starve. They all died huddled together and that's how Sutton discovered them in the cave. Visual analysis of the skeletonDr. Brennan immediately determines that the remains are not only human, but are the remains of an adult Caucasian male by pointing out his prominent brow ridge and sloping frontal bone on his skull. As a professional forensic anthropologist, Dr. Brennan has a trained eye for looking for certain traits in human bones, such as in the face or pelvis for biological sex determination and makes hypotheses about those traits. In this episode, as in most episodes, Dr. Brennan simply visually examines the bones to determine their biological profile. Looking specifically at the human skull for this article, we note that determining biological sex and determining ancestry through visual assessment of the skull are two separate techniques based on morphology but, due to their brief cross-interaction in the show and the relationshipthat skeletal remains have spatial and temporal determination biases; this article will explore each method at least in detail. Biological assessment of sex using the skull The idea of ​​sexing skulls by visual analysis was first recorded by Broca in 1875 and Acsádi and Nemeskéri followed in 1970 creating a numerical skull classification system with European origins, which the authors expanded in future published work to include diverse populations. Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994) standardized skull visualization assessments. Walker (2008) expanded these documents and data by digitizing their illustrations into diagrams and allowing non-forensic or osteology-trained volunteers to use this diagram to decide whether the remains were male or female. The diagram used contains a scoring system alongside labeling the skulls their mental eminence, orbital margin, glabellar area, nuchal area and mastoid process. All that is needed to make this method work is the eye of a professional with experience in human skeletal anatomy and osteology. “Physical anthropologists traditionally base their assessments of skeletal sex primarily on subjective visual assessments of the sexually dimorphic characteristics of the skull and pelvis (Walker, 2008).” Visually evaluating a skull to determine its biological profile requires nothing more than one's eyes and a mostly intact skull. human skull to assume the sex of the remains and since initial quantitative data or anthropometric tools are lacking it is a morphological method rather than a method based on the metric system. While Acsádi and Nemeskéri's work in 1970 was originally based on a small sample of European ancestry/population, Walker adds to this by including "304 skulls of known ages and sexes of people of European American, African American, and English ancestry, as well as an ancient Native American sample of 156 individuals (2008).” The study based on a small population or ancestral sample comes from the skeletal selection of a church, a Smithsonian institution, and a natural history museum. Walker uses a wide geographic range of samples to eliminate any geographic bias from the method and strengthen its accuracy (2008). Different time periods in history and geographic region cause different patterns of sexual dimorphism to vary significantly. Traits that are sexually dimorphic in one population may be much less so in another, and this can change rapidly over a few decades (Walker, 2008). Over time, bias can affect the size of the sample population or steer criminal investigations in the wrong direction. direction. Despite the informal process of visually observing the skull with the naked eye, volunteers in Walker's study achieved high scores using the diagram originally created by Buikstra and Ubelaker and updated by Walker. Scores in modern human samples were close when compared to using discriminant function analysis (DFA). Ancestry Assessment Using the Skull Measuring the human skull can be traced back to the dawn of anthropometry. But Dr. William W. Howell created the skull dataset that is still used today. Although the actual technique of assessing ancestry via the skull may be metric or nonmetric, Howell's version was metric. Howells (1996) took sample measurements of a total of two thousand five hundred and twenty-four human skulls from twenty-eight different populations of males and females. twenty-six for females. Howells took these samples between the years 1965 and 1980. The sample size of the Howells (1996) study was two thousand five hundred and four samples. Of these specimens,one thousand three hundred and forty-eight were known or diagnosed as male and one thousand one hundred fifty-six were known or diagnosed as female. All of these specimens with a known sex were taken from dissecting room collections. This collection of measurements also includes five hundred and twenty-four “test” samples. These specimens include multiple scraps of prehistoric specimens and casts of prehistoric skulls. To do this Howell used both background and training in physical anthropology and used measurements taken from sites in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Howell took these measurements from complete skulls. Although I am not completely sure of the accuracy of this but William W. Howell's craniometric dataset is still used today by forensic and physical anthropologists. If it hadn't been at least partially accurate, it wouldn't still be used today. Given that Dr. Brennan was not allowed to cut significantly deep into the cocoon, initially only allowing visibility of the front of the skull protruding outside the cocoon which was tied to a very tall tree, I suppose evaluating the biological profile initial examination of the skull was his best course of action. Only because the skull was the only visible part of the remains and the body could not initially be moved. After the body is removed from the tree, the skull is X-rayed and the body is formally identified confirming his original suspicions. These were appropriate choices, however, later in the episode, Dr. Brennan finds a warehouse full of unidentified bones that belonged to the victim. He then proceeded to lick the bones to discover their porosity and geological origin. This was not an appropriate choice, not in any work situation should you lick bones. That said, people lick bones to figure out if they're bones or not, I've seen it done. For further entertainment, the body was wrapped in a cocoon, this is an extremely unusual (if not completely impossible) occurrence and there was no need for forensics. wrapped so high in a tree. This was supposed to provide additional shock value: the life and career of a forensic anthropologist is probably not that exciting. At least in the sense that it's not every day you get called because a cocooned body was found in a tree. Alternative Methods I'm not sure there would have been a better method of claiming that the body in the cocoon was human, at least not at the time Dr. Brenan first claimed that it was. Only the skull was exposed at the time, so that's the only way he could have decided it. To immediately state that the body was that of an adult Caucasian male is another story. I don't think you can decide so quickly that a body belongs to a certain race or gender. However, I have found some quotes that seem to prove me wrong. However, perhaps the quotes mean that this can be done with more evidence provided. “A trained eye and expert judgment are a forensic anthropologist's most valuable tools. The increase in experience will allow him to make sense of small tests.” (Hinkes 1993:52) “Anthroposcopy appears to be as accurate as anthropometry when in expert hands and when numerous traits are used.” (Rhine 1990:19) “Sometimes it is only the anthropologist's experience that tells him that there is an indefinable “something” in the skeleton that suggests one race rather than another.” (Stewart 1979:231) Once the body has been exposed, the pelvis can be used to determine sex. The pelvis is the best indicator when trying to determine the sex of a body or skeletal remains. The male pelvis has a narrower, heart-shaped pelvic inlet, while the female pelvis has one inlet.