When Did This Guy Die? A How-To Guide [SURE Stories]

The following post was written by UHP student and SURE Award winner Kathryn Coté.
As a biological anthropology major, I was interested in studying skeletal material as part of my senior thesis.  Fortunately, the National Museum of Natural History has some of the largest skeletal collections in the world, and it’s only a few Metro stops away from campus!  Receiving a SURE Award offset the cost of my many Metro trips to the collections and allowed me to conduct research in forensic anthropology at the Smithsonian (thus furthering my endless quest to become Temperance Brennan from Bones).
For my thesis, I chose to study a method that uses morphological changes in the acetabulum (the socket on the side of the pelvis that articulates with the femur) to estimate age-at-death in adult skeletal remains.  The method was originally developed using a predominantly white male population, but research suggests that the acetabulum is highly population dependent as an age-at-death marker.  I calculated the accuracy of the technique across populations and sexes using black and white individuals in the Smithsonian’s Terry Collection in order to determine whether the method was broadly applicable.
Surprisingly, the method was equally applicable across sexes and ancestries.  Percent accuracy did not vary to a statistically significant degree between black females, black males, white females, and white males.  This is most likely due to the broad age ranges that the method uses to classify unknown remains.  However, with such broad age classifications and an average percent accuracy of 46.6%, the method remains insufficient for use in a medicolegal context, despite being equally applicable across groups.
Conducting independent research has been an extremely rewarding experience that has allowed me to organize every step of the research process.  I was responsible for conducting a literature review, identifying a quantifiable gap in the literature, designing an experiment to address this gap, finding researchers who were willing to support my project, efficiently carrying out my experiment, and interpreting my results.  This experience has allowed me to hone my research skills and I am extremely grateful to everyone at the UHP and NMNH that made this project possible.