2015/04/17

ASU News April 15,2015: ASU team unlocks clues in unidentified human remains

Like something out of “CSI” or “Bones,” researchers at Arizona State University are working to solve the mysteries of unidentified human remains – and just as on those TV shows, science plays a key role.

Gwyneth Gordon, an associate research scientist in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, will soon be making a trip to academia’s most distinctive research facility: the University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility, the original “Body Farm.”

At the facility’s open-air crime labs, decomposing corpses are left out in the elements, some on the ground and others in shallow graves. Gordon will collect samples from the cadavers and samples of soil and groundwater; in May, she’ll do the same thing at Texas State University in San Marcos. more