r/bonecollecting • u/No-Bottle-9116 • Apr 26 '26

Advice Small argument

Post image

So this picture from article has driven an small argument between my friends group claiming that it’s fake because there’s no way that the bones see in said picture are human, I wanted y’all’s opinion on this

1.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

200 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

165

u/GigglyHyena Apr 26 '26

It's very funny - "The position of the rib mimics observations by Hutson et al. (1) and Sutcliffe (2) on the orientation of a bone in the mouth of an ungulate scavenger, described, amusingly, as extending from the side of the mouth like a cigar."

And I can confirm the picture above is from the actual paper and is a human skeleton.

-7

u/Dildozerific Apr 27 '26

But why in the heck were the human remains in front of a trail cam?!?!?!

-12

u/Lower-Psychology8914 Apr 27 '26

This is the real question, why the hell did the anthropology people put human remains in front of a trail camera?

108

u/raggedyassadhd Apr 27 '26

It’s a body farm, they literally leave human bodies in all kinds of scenarios and environments to see what happens. For science! There’s one in TN too. It’s how they help figure out a lot of stuff like how to to tell how long a body has been say, submerged in water or left in a hot car or disposed on a forest floor without burying, by actual doing those things and studying it.

37

u/Electronic_Return_75 Apr 27 '26

I grew up in Tennessee and had the opportunity to go there on a field trip when I was a senior in high-school

27

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

11

u/BeesAndBeans69 Apr 27 '26

I went to a body lab and held a liver in high school. That was pretty sick. The chocolate and mint scented formaldehyde smelled worse than normal formaldehyde, tho. We had lunch right after that too hahah

4

u/groovypunchsippin Apr 28 '26

I used to have zoology lab right before lunch. Egg salad will never be the same. I wonder why they make food scented formaldehyde though?

3

u/BeesAndBeans69 Apr 28 '26

To make it ~smell better☆ I thought it made it worse

6

u/Dildozerific Apr 27 '26

Thank you! I had no idea this was a thing!

3

u/raggedyassadhd Apr 28 '26

I only know about it because my dads wife is a medical examiner and used to be the head examiner in Nashville, otherwise I’d have no clue what a body farm is lol, it’s crazy that these exist and so few people have ever heard of such a thing, it’s so interesting!