Monthly Archives: March 2019

What Can a Skeleton Tell You?

March 31, 2019Murder MysteryDetermining Ancestry from a skull, Determining height from bone length, Femur length, Forensic Anthropology, Reading Bones, Relationship between femur length and height, Skeletal Remainsadmin

Last week, I asked you if you discovered a skeleton or a pile of bones in the woods, would you be able to read the skeleton and understand its secrets? In my last post, I discussed how a forensic anthropologist determines gender from skeletal remains. This week, I’ll explain how a forensic anthropologist deduces the height and race of an individual by looking at his skeleton.

Race:

Anthropologists shrink away from the term “race” and instead refer to an individual’s ancestry. Humans are often a mixture of ancestries, so race can be difficult to determine from skeletal remains.

Skulls in people from European ancestry are generally long and narrow. The eye sockets appear rounded with squared margins. The narrow nasal aperture sits high on the face, and the nasal bridge is prominent and sharply angled. The teeth appear small and are spaced closely together.

Asian skulls have circular eye sockets and heart-shaped nasal apertures. The nasal bridge is less pronounced than it is in European skulls, and it is gently angled. Asian skulls have shovel-shaped upper incisors.

African skulls have rectangular eye orbits. The nasal aperture is wide, and the nasal bridge is flat. The jaw protrudes from the rest of the face, and the teeth are large and spaced wider apart than those in individuals with European or Asian ancestry.

Height or Stature:

A close correlation exists between the length of a limb and the height of an individual, and anthropologists have conducted numerous studies to measure the mathematical relationship between limb length and the known height of individuals. From these studies, researchers have developed mathematical formulas for various bones which can be used to estimate height. These equations vary depending on the ancestry and gender of the individual. For example, if you find a femur measuring 41 cm (16.14 inches) in length, then depending on the gender and ancestry of the individual, you will use one of the following equations:

	Male	Female
European	2.32 x Femur + 65.53 ± 3.94 cm	2.47 x Femur + 54.10 ± 3.72 cm
Asian	2.15 x Femur + 72.57 ± 3.80 cm	Use Male Formula
African	2.10 x Femur + 72.22 ± 3.91 cm	2.28 x Femur + 59.76 ± 3.41 cm

In the above example, if we have determined our skeleton is a male of African ancestry, then to calculate the individual’s height from his femur, we would use the following calculation:

2.10 x 41 + 72.22 = 158.32 cm ± 3.91 cm (or 62.33 inches ± 1.54 inches)

Similar equations exist for correlating height to the length of the tibia, fibula, humerus, ulna, and radius. If you have several bones available for a given individual, you can increase the accuracy of height estimation by applying the formulas to two or more bones.

Next week, I’ll explain some of the techniques forensic anthropologists use when examining skeletal remains to determine the age of the individual at the time of death. I’ll also explore whether it is possible to estimate the time since death from looking at skeletal remains.

Be sure to sign up for my free mystery newsletter, and I’ll see you back here next week.

Robin Barefield is the author of three Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter. To download a free copy of one of her novels, watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska.

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Bones

March 24, 2019Living in the wilderness on Kodiak Island, Murder MysteryForensic Anthropology, How to determine gender from bones, Karluk Bones, Robin Barefield, What Bones tell usadmin

If you stumble across a pile of bones in the woods, can you tell if they are human bones, and if they are human, did they belong to a male or female? How old was he or she at the time of death? Was the individual tall or short? What killed him or her, and how long ago did the person die?

While we might be able to identify human bones, most of us cannot answer many questions about the bones, and most of the answers elude even law enforcement officers, coroners, and trained medical examiners. Forensic anthropologists are the experts who interpret skeletal remains.

In my latest novel, Karluk Bones, Jane Marcus and her friends stumble across skeletal remains near Karluk Lake on Kodiak Island. They find a skull as well as a long femur, so they know at least some of the bones are human. The remains don’t appear to be recent, but they also don’t look ancient, and Jane and her friends argue about how old they might be. Jane reports the bones to the Alaska State Troopers, but Sergeant Patterson also can’t guess at the age of the bones, so he hands them off to a medical examiner who in turn sends them to a forensic anthropologist, and she is able to answer some, but not all, of the questions about the bones.

I love learning, and one of the things I enjoy most about writing fiction or non-fiction is having the opportunity to dig into a new subject and study it not only until I understand it but until I know it well enough to explain it to my readers. Using science to help solve the mystery of the bones in my novel proved trickier than I expected, and Ying, my fictional anthropology student at the University of Alaska, ended up relying on cutting-edge scientific techniques to provide answers about the human remains Jane and her friends found.

Beginning with this post and continuing for the next two or three weeks, I will describe what a forensic anthropologist can deduce from bones.

Human or Non-Human

It is easy for us to recognize a human skull, and most laymen can identify many other human bones, but if you discover skeletal remains in the woods, human bones might be mixed with those of other animals. If a forensic anthropologist visits the scene, she can quickly separate human from non-human remains. If a forensic anthropologist is unavailable, then investigators must collect all the bone scraps and send them to an anthropologist to be sorted in the lab. Once they are in the lab, the anthropologist cleans the bones and attempts to provide a general physical description of the individual whose remains she is studying. The description includes:

Gender
Age at Death
Race
Height

The anthropologist also tries to try to determine the cause of death as well as estimate how long ago the individual died. This week, I will discuss how gender can be determined from bones.

Gender

The pelvis and the skull provide the most useful information for determining the gender of the individual.

Pelvis

Females have wider pelvises to provide enough space for the birth canal, and anthropologists use several definitive measurements to differentiate the pelvis of a female from the pelvis of a male. In most cases, though, a forensic anthropologist only needs to visually examine a pelvis to determine the gender of the individual. If the pelvis is available, it is the best bony structure to confirm the sex of the person.

Skull

Often, only the skull of an individual is found, but luckily, marked differences exist between the skull of a male and the skull of a female. An adult female’s skull remains slender and retains the smoothness of youth, while and adult male’s skull is more robust with heavier bones and larger muscle attachment areas. Females have a rounded forehead, while a male’s forehead slopes back at a gentle angle. A male has a more prominent brow ridge and square eye sockets, while a female has round eye sockets. Males have a square jawline, and a female’s jaw is pointed.

Since individuals vary, sex determination using only the skull is not as definitive as a confirmation made from examining the pelvis, but the skull usually provides the anthropologist with an educated guess at the gender of the individual.

Next week, I’ll discuss other characteristics a forensic anthropologist learns from reading bones. Meanwhile, be sure to sign up for my monthly Mystery Newsletter about true murder and mystery in Alaska.

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DNA Match Brings Justice for Sophie

March 17, 2019Murder Mystery, WritingAlaska State Troopers, Criminal DNA Database, DNA, Murder, mystery newsletter, Public DNA Database, Robin Barefield, Sophi Sergieadmin

Police have used DNA as a valuable investigative tool for the last few decades, but until recently, law enforcement agencies could only match DNA from a crime scene to a known criminal who had been convicted of a felony and forced to surrender a sample of his DNA to the national DNA criminal database. In the last few years, commercial databases have exploded in size as citizens willingly send samples of their DNA to companies such as Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and others promising to use your DNA to trace your ancestry or track genetic predispositions to diseases and conditions. Lately, when police fail to find a match in the national criminal database, they have begun submitting crime-scene DNA to commercial databases, hoping not necessarily for a direct match to an individual but for a match to a relative of their unknown suspect.

The best-known case for an arrest based on matching crime scene DNA to an individual’s familial DNA held in a commercial database is the April 2018 capture of Joseph James DeAngelo in Sacramento, California. De Angelo, dubbed the “Golden State Killer,” is believed to have committed at least 13 murders, more than 50 rapes, and over 100 burglaries in California from 1974 to 1986. When DNA held in evidence from one of the crime scenes matched the DNA in a commercial database of a distant relative of De Angelo, police had their first solid lead in the case in years.

When the news about the capture of the Golden State Killer broke, I imagine detectives around the country began considering their cold cases and wondering if they could use a similar technique with DNA they held in evidence. Troopers in Alaska wasted no time submitting DNA from one of the state’s best-known cold cases, and the results were no less dramatic than those for the capture of DeAngelo in California.

As many of you know, I write a monthly newsletter about true murder and mystery in Alaska. Several months ago, I wrote a newsletter titled, “Murder in a College Dorm,” about the 1993 brutal rape and murder of 20-year-old Sophie Sergie at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A janitor found Sophie’s partially-clothed body stuffed in the bathtub in a second-floor bathroom at Bartlett Hall, a dormitory on the campus of the university. Sophie had been sexually assaulted, stabbed in the face, and shot in the back of the head with a .22 caliber firearm. The murder occurred in April, just as students were taking final exams and preparing to leave campus at the end of the semester. Police interviewed as many students as possible, but the task overwhelmed them.

Police recovered DNA from Sophie’s body, but DNA processing technology had not yet been introduced to Alaska in 1993. In 2000, investigators uploaded the DNA collected at Sophie’s crime scene to the FBI database but learned little other than the DNA belonged to a male. The sample did not match anyone in the FBI’s database.

In 2010, a cold-case investigator attempted to re-interview everyone who lived in Bartlett Hall when Sophie was murdered, including an ex-resident named Nicholas Dazer. The investigator asked Dazer if when he lived at the dorm, he had a gun that fired .22-caliber ammunition. Dazer said he did not own a gun, but he recalled his roommate, Steven Downs, had an H&R .22-caliber revolver. With little else to go on, the case again went cold, and few people believed it would ever be solved.

After authorities in California arrested suspect Joseph James DeAngelo in April 2018 by obtaining a familial match from comparing DNA collected at a crime scene to a commercially available DNA database, Alaska State Troopers decided to try the same thing with DNA collected from Sophie’s body in 1993. They sent the DNA from Sophie’s case to Parabon NanoLabs, the same facility used to analyze the DNA in the Golden State Killer case. On December 18^th, 2018, a forensic genealogist submitted a report comparing the DNA from the suspect in Sophie’s case to a likely female relative. The woman whose DNA was considered a familial match to the DNA collected from sperm left at Sophie’s crime scene is the aunt of Steven Downs. Downs was an 18-year-old college student living at Bartlett Hall when Sophie was murdered. Downs was also Nicholas Dazer’s roommate, the one who owned the H&R .22-caliber revolver.

Downs was arrested at his home in the small town of Lewiston, Maine and charged with the sexual assault and murder of Sophie Sergie. He denied any involvement in Sophie’s rape and murder, despite the fact a specimen of his DNA taken after his arrest matched a sample collected from sperm cells at the crime scene. His attorney said Downs would not waive his rights and did not agree to be extradited to Alaska. Downs is currently being held without bail in an Auburn, Maine prison until his next court hearing when Alaskan authorities expect to escort him back to Fairbanks to stand trial.

Will Sophie finally receive justice?

If you would like to receive updates on Sophie’s case as well as learn about other murders and mysteries in Alaska, please sign up below for my monthly Mystery Newsletter.

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Marine Reserves for Rockfish

March 10, 2019Fish, Kodiak WildlifeMarine Protected Area, Marine Reserves, Marine Reserves for Rockfish, Rockfish Conservation, Rockfish in Alaskaadmin

Should fisheries managers implement marine reserves to protect fragile rockfish populations? This week, I’ll tackle the controversial subject of marine reserves. What are they; do they work; and should they be employed to protect rockfish populations and help already depleted populations recover?

Two weeks ago, I discussed rockfish conservation, and last week, I explained how to implement the deep-water release technique for rockfish. If you missed either of those two posts, I suggest you read them to understand the biology and physiology of rockfish and why rockfish populations are fragile and subject to overfishing.

Marine reserves have been developed in certain areas where rockfish have been over-harvested. Before I start discussing the pros and cons of marine reserves, though, I want to differentiate between a few ecological terms I find confusing.

Marine Protected Area (MPA): This broad term covers a variety of management areas, including marine sanctuaries, estuarine research reserves, ocean parks, and marine wildlife refuges. Some MPAs are established to protect ecosystems, while others preserve cultural resources such as shipwrecks and archaeological sites, and still others are established to sustain fisheries production. Nearly all MPAs in the United States allow a variety of human activities, including fishing.

Marine Reserve: A Marine Reserve is a special, restrictive type of MPA where either no or only limited fishing (sport or commercial) and development are allowed. Marine Reserves are sometimes further divided into “Marine Reserves,” and “No-Take Marine Reserves.” When used together, these two terms usually mean managers allow some fishing for certain species in a Marine Reserve but place a ban on all fishing in a No-Take Marine Reserve.

When you add terms such as Marine Parks, Marine Preserves, and National Marine Sanctuaries to the mix, you end up scratching your head, wondering what each designation means. In this post, when I discuss marine reserves, I am talking about the implementation of a distinct area closed to all fishing.

Fisheries managers in the eastern North Pacific have designated several marine reserves in critical rockfish habitat where rockfish have been overfished. By prohibiting fishing in these areas, managers hope to rebuild overfished populations and protect spawning and nursery habitat. By closing an area to all fishing, biologists can protect rockfish not only from anglers who target rockfish but also from anglers who fish for other species and harvest rockfish as by-catch.

Fishermen generally do not like marine reserves because they lose fishing areas. Reserves protecting rockfish are also controversial because studies suggest as much as 20% of rockfish habitat would have to be closed for a reserve to be effective. Also, reserves displace effort and place pressure on open areas.

Some reserves appear to have benefitted local rockfish populations, but biologists are still uncertain about the overall success of reserves for managing rockfish. Since rockfish do not reproduce until they are several years old, though, and since few larvae survive to reach adulthood, it could take years to realize the benefits of rockfish reserves. Are we willing to wait before we judge the efficacy of these protected areas?

I planned to write two posts on rockfish and ended up writing six. The more I learned about these interesting fish, the more questions I had. I hope I found a few readers who are as intrigued by rockfish as I am. Before tackling my next group of fish, I’ll write a few posts on other topics.

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Deepwater-Release Technique for Rockfish

March 3, 2019Fish, Kodiak WildlifeDeepwater Release, Deepwater-Release Technique for Rockfish, Protecting Rockfish, Robin Barefield, Rockfish Conservation, Rockfish in Alaskaadmin

This week, I ‘ll describe the deepwater-release technique developed for rockfish. In my last post, I wrote about rockfish conservation and talked about ways anglers can help preserve vulnerable rockfish populations. Due to their unvented swim bladder, rockfish are extremely sensitive to changes in water pressure. When an angler catches a rockfish in water deeper than 90 ft. (27.43 m) and reels it to the surface, the fish’s swim bladder rapidly expands, compressing internal organs and often pushing the stomach out through the mouth. These pressure change can also rupture blood vessels, tear the swim bladder, and cause bulging eyes or gas bubbles in the eyes.

Stomach protruding from yelloweye rockfish mouth — Distressed Rockfish

Sometimes rapid pressure changes cause physiological damage so severe it kills the fish, but in other instances, the fish can survive if the angler quickly returns it to the depth where it was caught.

Since a rockfish’s swim bladder rarely deflates on its own once the fish arrives at the surface, the fish cannot dive and instead floats until it dies or is eaten. Anglers sometimes mistakenly feel they can help the fish by either puncturing the stomach protruding from the fish’s mouth or puncturing the fish’s body to let air out of the swim bladder. This technique, called “fizzing” or “venting,” often leads to infection and eventual death.

Recently, biologists have developed a new deepwater-release technique to submerge rockfish as quickly as possible either to the depth where they were caught or 100 feet (30.5 m), whichever comes first. Research on this technique has shown a substantial increase in the survival of released rockfish. One laboratory study produced a survival rate of 96% for recompressed rockfish. Another study in the wild found only 22% of yelloweye rockfish released at the water’s surface managed to submerge, but 98% of yelloweyes survived when submerged to the depth where they were captured.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has now added the deepwater-release technique to its list of “best practices” for anglers to employ to minimize release mortality of rockfish. Biologists believe if they can convince anglers to use this technique, as well as follow other rockfish conservation methods, rockfish mortality will decrease significantly.

What is the deepwater-release technique? It is a simple procedure, but since time is critical, rockfish anglers should have the gear ready and be prepared to implement the technique as soon as the rockfish arrives at the surface.

Several deepwater-release devices, from simple to sophisticated, can be purchased, but you can also easily make your own deepwater-release device. Begin with a 3-lb. jig with a single hook and grind the barb off the hook. Next, take a fishing rod and attach the line to the bend of the hook. Assemble the device and have it ready to go before you start fishing. The fish is much more likely to survive if you minimize its time at the surface, so have the device assembled and make sure you know what to do before you catch a rockfish.

If you think you have a rockfish on the line, quickly reel the fish to the surface. The swim bladder will inflate regardless of your reeling speed. Remove the hook from the fish’s mouth and attach the release device. If using a homemade device, hook the barbless hook through the soft tissue of the jaw. Gently drop the fish back into the water and release the anti-reverse on the reel, allowing the line to free spool. Allow the fish to descend until either the jig hits bottom, or reaches 100 ft., whichever comes first. Then, give the rod a hard tug to release the fish. The faster you can perform this technique, the more likely the rockfish will survive.

Next week, I’ll discuss marine reserves as a possible management option to protect rockfish populations. Reserves are controversial because both sport and commercial fishing are prohibited in reserves, and many biologists question if reserves work as a form of conservation.

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y the way, Mary Ann’s books would make perfect Christmas presents!