*ISLAMABAD – An Australian scientist has proved that human bodies movearound significantly for more than a year after death, in findings thatcould have implications for detectives and pathologists around the world.*
After studying and photographing the movements of a corpse over 17-months,Alyson Wilson told AFP on Friday that she found humans don’t exactly restin peace.
In one case study, arms that began held close to the body ended up flungout to the side.
“We think the movements relate to the process of decomposition, as the bodymummifies and the ligaments dry out,” she said.Researcher Alyson Wilson studied the movements of a corpse over 17-monthsand found humans don’t exactly rest in peace
To carry out her unusual form of people watching, Wilson took thethree-hour flight from Cairns to Sydney every month to check on theprogress of a cadaver.
Her subject was one of seventy bodies stored at the Southern Hemisphere’sonly “body farm”, which sits at a secret bushland location on the outskirtsof Australia’s largest city.
Officially known as the Australian Facility for Taphonomic ExperimentalResearch (AFTER), the farm is carrying out pioneering research intopost-mortem movement.
Wilson and her colleagues were trying to improve a commonly used system forestimating the time of death using time-lapse cameras and in the processfound that human bodies actually move around significantly.
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Her findings were recently published in the journal “Forensic ScienceInternational: Synergy”.
A better understanding of these movements and the rate of decompositioncould be used by police to estimate time of death more accurately.
She hopes the knowledge could, for example, narrow down the number ofmissing persons that could be linked to an unidentified corpse.
A better understanding of post mortem movement could also help to reducethe incorrect cause of death or misinterpretation of a crime scene.
“They’ll map a crime scene, they’ll map the victim’s body position, they’llmap any physical evidence which is found, and they can understand the causeof death.”
The CQ University criminology graduate says she started her unique projectafter a trip to Mexico to help classify Mayan-era skeletal remains. -APP/AFP
