Human identification through forensic skeletal analysis: three case reviews

Article Co-authors: Joe Adserias-Garriga*, Shelby Feirstein, Dakota Bell, Hannah Skropits and Dennis C. Dirkmaat (https://doi.org/10.1093/fsr/owae053)

Establishing a positive identification of human remains found in a forensic setting is often accomplished through DNA, fingerprints, or odontology. However, when these primary identifiers cannot be applied, practitioners can rely on combining points of concordance derived from other identification modalities, such as antemortem trauma, pathology, or unique skeletal morphologies, to build up a case for identification. In order to conduct these comparisons, forensic anthropologists must be well trained and experienced in human skeletal variation and antemortem trauma to properly evaluate a particular skeletal trait and understand its value with respect to personal identification. In addition to macroscopic analysis of skeletal features and standard radiographic images, recent forensic anthropological efforts of establishing personal identity from the skeleton have employed high-quality clinical imaging technologies.

This oral presentation will discuss our co-authored article, which presents three forensic anthropological cases in which positive identification was established on the basis of multiple antemortem to postmortem comparison modalities that included skeletal variation, antemortem fracture morphologies, trabecular patterns, dental traits, and implanted surgical devices. These cases use a variety of imaging techniques, such as cranial radiographic images, dental radiographs, computed tomography, photography, and 3D surface scans of the skeletal remains, to achieve personal identification.

NOTE: Co-authors are outside of U of M, but approval for presentation as second author has been received.

Maternal mental health (MMH) conditions are mental health conditions that occur during pregnancy and/or in the year after giving birth (Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance, 2025). These conditions are responsible for 23% of maternal deaths in the United States (Centers for Disease Control, 2025) and affect approximately 1 in 5 women (Fawcett et al., 2019). Unfortunately, while evidence-based treatment exists for many of these conditions, barriers to care exist, including (a) poor screening, (b) childcare limitations, (c) transportation, and (d) monetary constraints, amongst others (Place et al., 2024). Accordingly, traditional talk therapy is often inaccessible for these women, particularly disadvantaging minority groups who already experience MMHs at higher rates (MHHLA, 2025). While specialized evidenced-based care is likely to be required for some of these conditions and cannot be replaced (International OCD Foundation, 2025), the expressive arts therapy literature offers accessible interventions that may help to alleviate suffering in the postpartum period by helping individuals to explore and move through common environmental factors exacerbating symptomology, such as loneliness, identity changes, and beyond (National Institute of Mental Health, 20225). This presentation will provide a brief overview of the challenges of the postpartum period, situate expressive arts interventions as uniquely positioned to alleviate suffering during this time frame, and provide concrete examples of prompts that might address some of these unique challenges.

As global climate change accelerates worldwide, dominant political, economic, and scientific frameworks treat water as a passive resource instead of a relational entity and co-creator of human-environment relationships. The Great Salt Lake is desiccating due to consumptive water use and climate change impacts, and faces ecological collapse as soon as 2030. This research project examines how environmental activists at the Great Salt Lake use language of animacy and kinship metaphors to co-construct relationships with the lake. I ask: What do activists at the Great Salt Lake identify as their reasons for their shift in language towards language of animacy? How do activists perceive the influence of their use of language of animacy when referring to the Great Salt Lake on human-lake and human-ecosystem relations? I use a mixed-methods approach including photovoice, participatory mapping, and semi-structured interviews to understand the social, cultural, and emotional implications of this language of animacy. Drawing on ecofeminist and material feminist theories, this research contributes to broader literature on how language shapes environmental meaning-making, relational ethics, and environmental action. I demonstrates that language of animacy functions not only as a communicative strategy but also as a relational practice that shapes responsibility, care, and belonging in the context of an environmental crisis.

Evolutionary change is often framed primarily in terms of mutation and selection, yet this perspective overlooks a prior, testable question: which genetic changes are permitted to persist within the genome at all. This project presents a methods-driven pilot analysis that examines whether epigenetic regulation of DNA repair context constrains the retention of rare genomic variants, leaving a falsifiable signature in population-level data. The study uses de-identified, consented high-coverage Y-chromosome sequencing data and public phylogenies (e.g., FamilyTreeDNA, YFull). An explicit, a priori variant-selection rule is applied to define a class of rare lineage-discordant SNP states arising within a specified downstream phylogenetic interval. Variants are subjected to quality-control filters including coverage thresholds, exclusion of known error-prone contexts, and evaluation of persistence across descendant configurations. These variants are mapped onto phylogenetic topology and compared against early-diverging sister branches with comparable sampling depth. Under null models of technical artifact, unbiased homoplasy, or sequence-context–driven recurrence, such variants are expected to distribute broadly and unsystematically across lineages. In contrast, the constraint-based framework predicts structured clustering within a single downstream lineage and systematic absence from sister branches. These predictions are evaluated through lineage-by-variant matrices and topology-aware comparative analysis, providing explicit falsification criteria. Rather than proposing new mutational mechanisms, the framework treats long-term environmental stress as a boundary condition that may transiently relax repair canalization, expanding the space of permissible outcomes before partial re-canalization. Chromosome 2 fusion is presented as a macro-scale motivating case illustrating constraint-mediated fixation, while the Y-chromosome analysis constitutes the primary testable component. For GradCon, these observed outcome distributions are presented as a methods-focused pilot analysis motivating future experimental testing, rather than as completed mechanistic results.

After noticing a discrepancy in the nasalization of vowels in a published grammar about the Central Atlas (or Tamazight) dialect of Berber, the language of the indigenous people of Northern Africa, this study was conducted to understand the bounds and environments of the phonological process.  This grammar claimed that vowels would be affected by nasal consonants within the same syllable but lacked substantial evidence.  After compiling data from other grammars and phonological papers, this paper concludes that not only are vowels nasalized when occurring in the same syllable, but that the phonological change is across syllable boundaries, making linear explanations of the phenomenon insufficient.

By compiling phonetic and phonological data, it became easier to understand the phonological pattern.  For most of the data presented, the typical linear environmental rules could be created – stating that should a nasalized consonant occur directly before or after the vowel in question, the vowel would assimilate the nasalized quality of its neighboring phoneme.  But there were several cases where linear rules could not explain the nasal assimilation, but autosegmental analysis could.  Autosegmental, or nonlinear analysis, had yet to be applied to vowel nasalization in Tamazight.  In it, the root of the assimilating vowels borrow from the nasal quality of the root of the nasal consonants.  Additionally, when making this conclusion, it was observed that the schwa does not assimilate the nasal quality of nearby consonants, unlike other vowels in the language.

This study not only provided further evidence to substantiate the claim of nasalized vowels in the initial grammar, but it was able to use an advanced phonological theory to further examine assimilation relationships in Berber, a language that has been widely studied in the phonological landscape.  With this research, the process of assimilation in Central Atlas Berber (Tamazight) can be better understood.