Essay On Rigor Mortis

This conclusion lines up with what the textbook states about determining a time of death. The textbook lists many factors that can affect body decomposition including temperature, rainfall, and humidity (Lyman 284). Obviously it would be extremely difficult if not impossible for investigators to factor in all these variables given the fourth months between when the body was dumped until it was found. This makes it clear that investigators could not truly determine an exact time of death.

Once the body took its last breath, a series of things begins to occur. First the body itself shuts down completely. Then soon after the heart stops pumping blood through the body, and because of oxygen loss, cells are dying promptly. Now different cells die at different rates, depending on the importance of the cell, and what the cell is. An example of this is that brain cells within minutes, while the skin can survive over 24 hours after death (What Happens to the Body after Death 1). Due to death the blood of the body, then begins to settle in the closet part to the ground of the body, giving the body discoloration, (typically a grayish white looking tone) and darkening

Forensic scientists can identify the body through dental records, DNA samples or if the fingers are intact, fingerprints.

This caught my attention right away and hooked me in. Along with being a topic I was quite interested in (reference to last nonfiction book report), the first two sentences got me wondering. What could be told from a murdered person’s body? I already had a lot of background information from research and watching shows on mystery and homicide but this question led to a million answers. Some answers were cause of death, manner of death. time of death, weapon used, etc, all of which were related because this was sparked from the thought of a dead person and my ideas. From this, I read on to determine what could be told from an expert’s point of view.

Sometimes the person returns to a previous stage. Death is emotional and it is natural to experience emotions. It would also have a psychological affect on an individual as knowing you’re going to die may be frightening.

The distribution of skeletal remains tell the scientists how long the bones or individual has been there. The most challenging part for me would have to be finding the little pieces of the puzzle, the missing link or where the body originally was.

A dead body that has been exposed to the elements such as water, air, temperature and weather, will decompose quicly and will attract much more insect activity. Colder temperatures slow decomposition, while warmer temperatures rather speed up the process of decomposition. If a body is available to insects, than the insects alone can reduce a fully fleshed body to skeletal bones withing a two week time period. Key factors to consider are: temperature, availability of oxygen, cause of death, trauma, humidity or wetness, rainfall, body size and weight, clothing, the surface where the body was resting, and the foods/objects inside the digestive tract of the

Immediately after death the body will begin to lose heat, and the liver temperature can help to determine when a person passed away (Young & Ortmeier, 2011). This first stage after death is referred to as the “fresh” stage. While the body is cooling down, it is also experiencing liver mortis, or the pooling of blood. Since the heart is no longer functioning, the blood begins

The physical appearance preservation of the bog bodies is normally in prime condition. Because of this condition it means that scientists and archaeologists are able to study the features of the body and conclude things like the development of physical evolution from the ancient body to bodies of modern society. They can also obtain information on the cause of death of the body by seeing things like, for example, the Tollund man, who had a rope around his neck that concluded he had been hung to death. And by concluding causes of death, it can also be seen if the body was of sacrificial or a ritual demonstrating what burial practices were in place.

Once the heart stops circulating blood throughout your body, that blood has nowhere to go so gravity pulls the blood down to the lowest point it can. The pool of blood starts immediately after death and is noticeable after a couple of hours. For example, if you have a victim who hung themselves, you would see that the blood build up is in the fingertips, toes and earlobes. Livor mortis is highly unreliable and little to use in determining time of death, but it is very critical to if a body has been moved.

After someone dies, the body’s muscles contract the same way they do when someone is alive. When someone stops breathing and their body can no longer acquire oxygen for the body, muscle cells lack oxygen so they can not use aerobic respiration to produce ATP. When the muscle cells runs out of ATP, myosin and actin filaments can no longer release from a contracted state and calcium cannot be bumped back out of the muscle. Since the body cannot release from its contracted state, the muscle of the body stay stiff and diffiult to move, causing rigor mortis.

An autopsy is an examination of the body after death. It usually consists of an external and an internal examination of the body. The external examination also documents identifying features such as scars, tattoos or other markings which may assist in the identification of the body. The internal examination looks at the internal organs to document any natural disease processes and/or injury .Its purpose is to learn the truth about the persons health during life and how the person really died, These situations include, violent deaths such as homicides, accidents, and suicides. Other categories are suspicious deaths, sudden and expected deaths, deaths in children and infants, prisoners, persons under the care of an institution,

As stated before, when the body dies the soul dies as well. Lucretius follows this by providing evidence to support this claim. He first affirms that “[the soul] is made up of exceedingly fine particles” which explains why, despite the physical nature of the soul, “when the whole soul has now left the entire body, / still the external configuration of the limbs / preserves itself unchanged and not a speck of weight is lost” (3.68; 3.215-217).

But how do you tell what the bodies are getting to? I’ll tell you! There are forensic scientists that study bodies and then try to figure out how, when, where, and why whoever had this body, died! And how do these scientists do it, you ask? I don’t know! But what I do know, is that the scientists look at the height and weight of the skeletons, and then determine what age they were, so that they can then identify who the person was, and what they looked like. By doing this these special scientists

A post mortem change is the term used to describe any changes which are observed in a subject after death has occurred. Post mortem changes which may be observed in a cadaver include algor mortis, rigor mortis, liver mortis, post mortem blood alterations and subsequent clotting, purification and autolysis (Unknown, 2013). However, histological tissue samples may undergo a series of alterations which causes alterations in tissue structure to occur. Alterations in tissue structure may encourage disparity between expected staining and the subsequent reactions to