Forensic Geology on EARTH Magazine

Benchmarks: October 1904: Mineralogy solves a murder

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 09:25:43 -0400

Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/mbbirdy.

Early forensic geology case makes headlines

In a bean field outside the city of Freiburg im Breisgau on the western edge of Germany’s Black Forest, Eva Disch lay dead, strangled. Her blue and red silk scarf may have kept the chill off her neck earlier on that October day in 1904, but now it was wound too tightly, a tourniquet around her neck. The only clue to the death of the local seamstress was a dirty handkerchief discarded near her body. With little evidence to go on, investigators turned to Georg Popp.

Geologic Column: How T. rex got its street cred back

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 09:50:15 -0400

©J.M.Lujit, cc-by-2.5-nl licentie van auteur.

You wake up hungry in the middle of the night and remember that chunk of Spam in the refrigerator. You sneak down, ease open the fridge door and find that, embedded in said Spam, is a set of dentures. How do you react? With a Brando-esque utterance of “the horror, the horror”? Of course not; you have scientific smarts to fall back on.

CSI La Brea: Tiny traces reveal big secrets of the tar pits

Tue, 15 Oct 2013 11:11:47 -0400

Kathleen Cantner, AGI

The La Brea tar pits in the middle of Los Angeles are known for turning up spectacularly preserved specimens of dire wolves, saber-tooth cats and woolly mammoths. But how long it took for the animals to sink down into the sticky tar after they became trapped has long been a mystery. Now a new study looking at the traces left by hungry bone-eating insects is providing a minimum time span for burial, as well as confirming some long-held suspicions about when the tar pits were at their most lethal.

Hidden graves give up their secrets to geologists

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 09:55:50 -0400

As of April 2013, more than 61,000 people were registered as missing in Colombia, many of whom are feared to be victims of the country’s narcotics-fueled gang wars and, presumably, buried in clandestine graves. Now a new study comparing the most effective remote sensing tools for finding hidden graves may help bring justice for victims and closure for families.

Bare Earth Elements: GSA highlights, days 2 and 3

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:16:32 -0500

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — EARTH’s Tim Oleson is in Charlotte, N.C., this week for the Geological Society of America’s (GSA) annual conference. He is blogging about interesting talks and activities he’s attended, so keep checking back to get the scoop. Read his first report from the conference here. You can also follow the action by following @earthmagazine on Twitter.

Cold case files: Forging forensic isoscapes

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

This isoscape - or isotope map - shows the distribution of the stable hydrogen isotope deuterium in precipitation across Europe. If researchers know what the correlation is between the deuterium isotopic values of human hair and the deuterium isotopic values of source water, in conjunction with a sequential analysis informed by the hair's growth rate, they can roughly trace a person's recent geographic trajectory. Gabe Bowen, Purdue University

Researchers at the Stable Isotope Forensic Laboratory examined strands of a John Doe's hair to determine where he had spent the last few months of his life to help identify him and solve his murder. Kemp and Meier-Augenstein

Helen Kemp, Wolfram Meier-Augenstein (pictured below) and other researchers at the Stable Isotope Forensic Laboratory at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland work to create isoscapes: maps that show spatial distributions of stable isotope ratios in different parts of the world. Kemp and Meier-Augenstein

In November 2006, someone left a badly beaten man at a hospital in Gwent, South Wales. The victim was severely injured and died shortly thereafter without revealing his identity. All the Gwent police knew about the John Doe was that he was Asian, or of Asian descent, and possibly Vietnamese. There was no record of him entering the country. His fingerprints provided no further information on his identity. The trail went cold.

Old plutonium reveals new secrets

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

Buried treasures come in many forms. Few, however, can help prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists. But a glass bottle discovered in an old safe buried at the Hanford Site in eastern Washington turned out to contain crucial clues that could help scientists develop new ways to track the spread of nuclear materials.