Hair and Teeth Biomarkers Reveal Location of Birth, Death - NIJ Publications Update

Through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, NIJ has made available the following final technical report (this report is the result of an NIJ-funded project but was not published by the U.S. Department of Justice):

Title: Isotopic and Elemental Analysis of the William Bass Donated Skeletal Collection and Other Modern Donated Collections (pdf, 69 pages)
Authors: Nicholas Herrmann, Zheng-Hua Li, and Monica Warner, with contributions from Willa Trask, Daniel Weinand, and Miriam Soto
Abstract:

Isotopic and elemental characteristics of human bone, teeth, and hair have been demonstrated as useful biomarkers for forensic anthropologists and criminal investigators. These biomarkers trace locations and movements of the individuals, and aid in the identification of human remains. This project analyzed multiple isotopes (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, strontium, and nitrogen), and trace elements in modern human bone, teeth, and hair from the William Bass Donated Skeletal Collection (WBDSC), the Maxwell Museum Documented Skeletal Collection (UNMMM), and the Texas State University-San Marcos Forensic Research Facility (TSU-SM).

The data from this study suggest that isotopes found dental enamel from the WBDSC collections are reflective of individuals’ birth locations, whereas isotopes in hair keratin are influenced by individuals’ death locations, which is consistent with several other isotopic studies of forensically derived human samples. This suggests that the application of the dual isotopes could provide a better picture of a person’s residential history.

This project generated a national isotope database derived from the WBDSC and the other donated skeletal collections. The study also provided forensic anthropologists and criminal investigators a comparative isotopic database of known residence from various sampled tissues. In addition, the authors evaluated the effectiveness of implementing multiple isotope analyses to estimate the movement histories of modern humans for forensic cases.

As existing donated collections and several new body donation programs nationwide grow, it is essential that reliable residential histories be collected from the donors and that isotopic data be gathered (specifically adequate hair samples for research requests). These expanding collections, combined with recent forensic isotope surveys and recently published isotope data, will provide a much better picture of the isotopic and trace element variation across the United States. It is anticipated that this study will provide a foundation for future research within these collections.

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