1. _Nature_, a PBS program is presenting “Crime Scene Creatures” during May in the Northeast viewing area. It airs Sunday, 5/7 at 8 PM on Channel 2 and repeats on Saturday, 5/13 at 11 AM. The program uses actual and hypothetical crimes to show how insects, plants and other animals are used to determine when and how a person died. There will also be a segment on the false evidence that creatures might create on a body.

2. Speaking of false evidence, I was asked to consider false evidence that might be inflicted on bones by physical processes. I immediately thought of all kinds of abrasion, which could level raised places on bones indicating old injuries or occupational damage. If you remember sea glass, once a common finding on beaches near where I grew up, it takes about 10 years I read in YANKEE MAGAZINE to create its wonderful frosty appearance and soft edges - so there’s a kind of very rough time standard. Then I thought about the disarticulation of skeletons or skeletal segments that could be caused by being carried in flows and tumbled with sand or colliding with rocks, etc. In many situations, I think that as the bones slow and come to rest, they might all be oriented in the direction of the flow that dropped them - or perpendicular to the wave crests that carried or rocked them. The ability of the flow to carry them in the first place would be dictated by the volume and speed of the flow, which would determine its carrying ability. Consider, for example, in the fans and deltas formed under glaciers and when rivers enter bays or lakes, the silt is carried as long as the volume and speed allows, then is dropped off in characteristic patterns when the carrying capacity of the flow diminishes. I didn’t have a lot of time to go surfing for URLs, but here are a few I found to be fascinating on these and related topics.
http://medstat.med.utah.edu/kw/osteo/index2.html
http://paleo.cortland.edu/tutorial/Taphonomy&Pres/taphonomy.htm
I also found a site in which there was a discussion of a mass grave that revealed a massacre of Maya royalty. Researchers were actually able to tell that the wounds were from executions, not war. Seem to have misplaced the URL, though.
Lois