-
Asked by anon-274094 to Jonathan on 7 Dec 2020.
Question: What is it like investigating bones
- Keywords:
-
Jonathan Lewis answered on 7 Dec 2020:
It’s really fun.
When you look at a bone you might think it is a boring object that doesn’t do much. The truth is that a lot is happening in your bones at one time. Bone is constantly destroyed (by cells called osteoclasts) and made (by cells called osteoblasts) meaning that every 10 years you have a completely new skeleton!
Looking at these cell down a microscope is really cool because you can actually see them making bone and eating it.
Comments
Amy commented on :
I also investigate bones but in a completely different way. I’m a forensic anthropologist which means I help the police to find and identify skeletons to do with crime scenes. By look long at small changes in the shape and size I can determine if they were a man or a woman, how tall they were, their age and sometimes, where in the world they came from!
anon-274316 commented on :
What is the weirdest body that you have looked at, and what happened to them.
Amy commented on :
There are so many interesting cases where people had injuries or illnesses that effected their bones. One that I remember really well was a man who had a large piece of metal stuck in one of his bones. He had been injured by something that broke off in his bone but then survived the injury. The bone had healed around the metal!