Bones

[RosalieL]

Hi everyone,

There's been some interesting discussion on the ASET email about bones in science, if they are replica or real, and what to do with them if they are found to be human.

I know a lot of labbies search here for info so I'm going to put it here in case it comes up in the future for anyone.

If you have human remains in your science department, contact the police and seek advice. 131444 is the non-emergency police assistance line Australia-wide. It is unlikely that the call taker will know what to do or how to respond, but ask them to find someone who does and get back to you. If they aren't interested, ask them to contact the state Coroner and get back to you.

Whatever you do, please do not dispose of them yourself!

https://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/ns ... wo%20years.

[Labbie]

wow that's interesting indeed.

[Anna Z]

Hi everyone,

There's been some interesting discussion on the ASET email about bones in science, if they are replica or real, and what to do with them if they are found to be human.

I know a lot of labbies search here for info so I'm going to put it here in case it comes up in the future for anyone.

If you have human remains in your science department, contact the police and seek advice. 131444 is the non-emergency police assistance line Australia-wide. It is unlikely that the call taker will know what to do or how to respond, but ask them to find someone who does and get back to you. If they aren't interested, ask them to contact the state Coroner and get back to you.

Whatever you do, please do not dispose of them yourself!

https://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/ns ... wo%20years.

yes, I can vouch for this, we had a scull come across our desk. Luckily we have contacts at Monash Uni and they sorted it for us. Also remember you are not allowed to photograph and distribute the images.

[macca]

Years ago (pre 2005) we had a box of bones complete with skull, clearly human going on the teeth alone. Marked as prepared in India. The Nun at the time asked me to contact the funeral directors $$$$$ she suggest they could be put in with someone else.

They had been in the cupboard for years. The HT at the time felt that the more we handled the remains we were attracting the spirit. So again I went to the Nun who suggested I bury them out the back where the old maintenance shed was. Thank god I didn't there is now a building there would have had to do some explaining.

We eventually sent them to Albury by taxi truck. He/She is now being used for teaching purposes for Nurses.

One of my favourite stories

[LabbieSeth]

We have a very large collection of bones and skulls here...
Might be worth going through them to check if any are human remains as I don't think they've been touched since the early 2000s so it wouldn't shock me.
However, how am I supposed to distinguish between human remains and that of an animal if it isn't a skull??

[PeterK]

By the strength of the voodoo curse you can cast with them. The ones the give the best result are more likely human.

[RosalieL]

Apparently there were a lot brought out in from India in the 60s? Could you imagine the uproar that would receive now! LabbieSeth it would be worth asking someone to come and have a look for you. Depending on where you are, that could be police from a forensic unit or academics from a university. I'm not sure if a veterinarian may be able to at least distinguish real from fake and possibly animal vs human at least for some bones.

[Pm706Narrogin]

We had a similar discussion on the WA DoE forum ages ago. Apparently the DoE provided a bunch of genuine skeletons to schools in the 70s (I wonder if they were from the same lot).

There was a good point brought up in that discussion that as Australia has only grown as a multicultural nation, we may have classrooms with a wide variety of cultural beliefs and that includes beliefs about death and treatment of the body. So even beyond all the legal implications, there are cultural ones too.

That came off the back of one school removing their skeleton for cultural reasons. They were in regional WA so had to get a visit from Mr Plod to confirm the skeleton was real. The police then filled out the paperwork to allow for transport to Perth. The school then had to get the skeleton hermetically sealed for transport.

I'm so glad everything we've got is fake

[Anna Z]

However, how am I supposed to distinguish between human remains and that of an animal if it isn't a skull??

I go with a phone call to the coppers first.

[bigmack]

However, how am I supposed to distinguish between human remains and that of an animal if it isn't a skull??

I go with a phone call to the coppers first.

Definitely.

A bit off topic , but my Step Father in Law ( who just died of cancer ) a few weeks ago informed me that he had a gun in his safe that needed to be disposed off . I thought I'd just take it to the Cops . My son said I should talk to them first .
Fortunately I did , because they told me I would have been charged with having a gun without being a registered Gun owner . Even though I thought I was doing the right thing . They came around very discretely and removed the weapon( which apparently turned out to be an air pistol but still required a License ) .

Fortunately they considered that being on his death bed it was not in the interest of public safety and he was not charged with having a weapon with out a license .

Point being , Police have rules to follow .

[Labbie]

WOW interesting reading, bigmack

[mtg]

This is seriously one of the best threads ever!!! I have lots of bones. But no human remains. I did have an appendix and a cartilage at one point, long since disposed of. I did collect skulls after a bush fire to go with my existing animal ones. We have porpoise bones and rabbit, from a kit all Vic gov schools got in the 60's, and a complete cat skeleton. The rest are either fake or stuff we have found.

[RosalieL]

By the strength of the voodoo curse you can cast with them. The ones the give the best result are more likely human.

[Marama T]

I have a ginormous skull collection at home. Loads of animals, no humans. There was a real human skull at a school I worked at in the past, and I realised it was probably the remains of some poor Indigenous person, so I steered well clear.
The cops use forensic anthropologists for bone ID - try googling one near you to help out. You could probably just send pics.

[Pm706Narrogin]

This is seriously one of the best threads ever!!! I have lots of bones. But no human remains.

Well now that you mention it, before I worked in schools, I was in a lab that had a lot of bones. I would also routinely be putting them in acid

And this is all perfectly legal. Provided, of course, the bones in question are nearly 350 million years old and you're using the acid to extract them from the limestone they're contained in

[RosalieL]

This is seriously one of the best threads ever!!! I have lots of bones. But no human remains.

Well now that you mention it, before I worked in schools, I was in a lab that had a lot of bones. I would also routinely be putting them in acid

And this is all perfectly legal. Provided, of course, the bones in question are nearly 350 million years old and you're using the acid to extract them from the limestone they're contained in

Well that sounds like a fun job! Where were you based?

If i had my time over again I would have pursued forensics. It's one of my few regrets in life. It was only offered at one of the Sydney unis back when I finished high school and I had zero intentions of living in Sydney EVER! So I didn't do it. Not that I can complain about where I've ended up and how I got here (still not Sydney ). No regrets there!

[Pm706Narrogin]

My background is in geology and environmental science. I actually have degrees in both - Applied Geology and Environmental Biology being the official titles.

I extended the geology degree into an Honours year where you get to do a year-long research project supervised by research staff at the university. The fossil nut in me couldn't resist combining the two degrees with palaeontology. So I spent a year trying to correlate part of the far north of WA with one of WA's more well-known fossil sites in the Gogo Formation.

It's quite a fun lab experience. We were looking for shark teeth. So you'd coat any exposed teeth in your limestone samples with a consolidant called Butvar B-76 dissolved in ethanol. That strengthens the teeth and prevents them from dissolving in the acid bath. You then soak them for 24-48 hours in 10% acetic acid, rinse the sample off and sieve the residue in the bottom of your container. Once that dries you run all the loose grains under a microscope and pull out any teeth you find.

The old acid bath treatment is starting to go out of fashion. A lot of samples from Gogo come in nodules that preserve mineralised soft tissue and the consolidant doesn't protect that. These days CT and synchrotron scanning is the go to get a 3D understanding of the fossil while not destroying the soft tissue.

In the end we couldn't do a lot of correlation as a lot of samples had nothing in them and the ones that did had few shark teeth. It was dominated by crushing teeth of holocephalans, close relatives of sharks who survive today as the chimaeras. The problem with these teeth is the one species with similar teeth that has been found with those teeth still in the jaw, the teeth all look very different. So unlike the sharks, you can't say with a lot of confidence whether it's all one species or multiple species.

It was enjoyable but career-wise unless I wanted to do a PhD and likely do a fair bit of moving around (like yourself Rosalie), then it wouldn't have been a viable career. I started with teaching but COVID turned the whole world upside down and I found myself in the lab. Teaching adjacent but earning consistent money. I enjoyed it enough to stay.

So here I am! Although I haven't told a lot of our teachers my background. We're just moving into plate tectonics with our year 9s and there was a fair bit of tectonics both in my undergrad and honours (you can use the fossils to back up tectonic data to reconstruct past continents). Maybe I should subtly drop little bits of knowledge and see where that leads

[Anna Z]

The cops use forensic anthropologists for bone ID - try googling one near you to help out. You could probably just send pics.

DO NOT TAKE PHOTOS AND SEND ... This is a big no no. Coppers will understand if you call them out and find out they were not human after all.