Texas vulture study upends forensics

[IWannaKnow]

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-vulture-study-upends-forensics-142318853.html

Texas vulture study upends forensics
By MICHAEL GRACZYK | Associated Press

SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) — For more than five weeks, a woman's body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field. Then a frenzied flock of vultures descended on the corpse and reduced it to a skeleton within hours.

Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted the absence of flesh and the condition of the bones as evidence that the woman had been dead for six months, possibly even a year or more.

"If you say someone did it and you say it was at least a year, could it have been two weeks instead?" said Michelle Hamilton, an assistant professor at the school's forensic anthropology research facility. "It has larger implications than what we thought initially."

 

[mysteriew]

It seems so simple that it is difficult to believe they have never studied vultures before. They are one of the most common consumers of decomp flesh that we have even joked on here about being nervous when we see vultures flying over and circling in one spot.