It’s back to school time and I thought it would be great to kick off the year with some fun facts about human bones. Let’s jump right in! Human adult skeletons are made up of about 206 bones. Babies are born with about 300 bones that began to fuse and harden together at certain […]Read More
Earlier today, I was reading a report published on Nature.com about the pathology of an 18th century singer named Gaspare Pacchierotti. What made this article particularly compelling was that the singer was castrated, or castrato. As I carefully read through the analysis and results of Pacchierotti’s remains, it occurred to me that Daenerys Targaryen’s Unsullied would make […]Read More
Most of us enjoy hearing stories about the squash-buckling pirates of the high seas in days long past! Often romanticized, their tales told of adventurers and rebels who lived and died by their own code. Johnny Depp and Disney has built a franchise off of these stories. However, life at sea was no picnic. Pirates […]Read More
I was in middle school when “The Craft” came out. The movie went as follows: A high school girl transfers into a seedy Hollywood high school and meets 3 outcasts. They befriend her as they soon discover that she may contain some magic and would be the perfect addition to complete their ‘circle’ (coven?). Anyway, the […]Read More
If you live in close vicinity to IKEA or decked out your apartment in MALM dressers and beds, you have owned several IKEA bags. I have them all over my apartment and reuse them for laundry, groceries, moving, etc. Yesterday, I stumbled across a news story in which a Swedish woman found IKEA bags filled with human […]Read More
Anthropologists have often been portrayed as brave, intelligent, and clever adventurers who infiltrate deep into thought-to-be long lost, untouched, primitive peoples and villages, or skillful explorers who uncover the mysteries of unknown civilizations, outwit booby traps, or foil the clumsily laid plans of greedy villains. Admittedly, Hollywood takes some liberties and pushes some boundaries, but […]Read More
I think one of the more interesting things that forensic anthropologist do is look at bone pathology. (Side note: I am biased. Skeletal pathology is my jam!) Pathology looks for abnormality- weird stuff. These abnormalities can tell a very rich story! Bones tend to operate, grow, and react with a fair bit of regularity within […]Read More
This image shows a bony ankylosis (fusion) that has occurred at the right knee. This type of fusion can be the cause of many diseases or trauma in which bone remodeling occurs as part of the healing process. As a result of the remodeling, two or more bones will fuse together.Read More
“Osteosarcoma is an aggressive malignant neoplasm arising from primitive transformed cells of mesenchymal origin that exhibit osteoblastic differentiation and produce malignant osteoid.” That is a fancy way of saying BONE CANCER Osteoblasts are cells that synthesize, or make, bone. Sometimes, it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. When there is not enough nutrient minerals, the osteoblast are dysfunctional and the bone doesn’t […]Read More
So far, I have been focused on the slave situation in NYC as it pertained to the African burial grounds in lower Manhattan. But let’s travel down south to discuss a really interesting connected event. Meanwhile in Georgia… In 1828, the Medical College of Georgia was founded. Like most medical schools of the time, being […]Read More
When I was helping out at the Smithsonian, folks LOVED the pathology section of the public forensic lab! Who doesn’t?! I, too, have sat around with the fam, watching NCIS, CSI, Bones, etc., and listened to them discuss the wounds and injuries of the found human remains. So, I’m going to help you out with […]Read More
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