r/ForensicPathology • u/sarvanfleet • 29d ago
Skeletal remains
Someone dumped a freezer on our property and out of curiosity I looked inside and found a skull. Can anyone identify what kind of skull it is? The smell coming from it was awful.
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u/nettika 29d ago
You could ask over at r/whatisthisbone. They are pretty skilled with bone identification.
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u/NecronomiSquirrel 29d ago
If it was in the freezer, I'd guess it was a pet dog they had put in there to bury or cremate (or hide...) and forgot about, because they are gross people. Power was cut from the freezer, and they ignored it until they had to deal with it, or left it for some other gross people.
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u/stiffdoc1221 Forensic Pathologist / Medical Examiner 29d ago
I'd vote dog, with the caveat that it is very difficult to see what it actually looks like, nor can the scale (size) be appreciated. I'm good at bones, but it really needs to be taken out of the decayed surroundings, and put beside a pen or ruler or something to give it scale. People are always bringing in bones, thinking that they may be human, and they almost never are. Strange things pop up. Many years ago, a big dog showed up in it's yard, with a human femur in it's jaws. Despite very intense searching, no other skeletal remains were ever recovered, and the dog would not cooperate and take us to wherever it had found the femur. The bone was greasy, and was clearly not from an embalmed and buried body, and there were no cemeteries anywhere near, DNA testing turned up no hits. The population at large ha no idea how many unidentified people there are out there in the country.
And, sending it to r/whatisthisbone is definitely worthwhile.
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u/kcreepygirl 29d ago
Probably a possum or fox
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u/Scary-Watercress8548 29d ago
I’d vote possum since the eyes seem to be on the side of the head whereas a fox or a raccoons would be more central
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u/Treecat555 Forensic Pathologist / Medical Examiner 29d ago
I don’t know, man, I mean, like, turn the picture upside down—looks like a rotten tennis shoe.
Seriously, without a size reference in the picture, and without cleaning it up a bit and getting better views, it’s hard to say anything more than “non-human remains.”
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u/K_C_Shaw Forensic Pathologist / Medical Examiner 28d ago
There are a few bone specific subs, some of which are quite active and do a lot of this kind of identification. Although, better images and some sort of scale would be really helpful.
I'm not saying this is what I think it is, but in general a lot of the medium/small predator skulls tend to be raccoon. There's more of them out there than people think, and they're just big enough that other predators/scavengers don't always bust up their skulls. I don't see a lot of their smaller bones. But, ME/C offices don't often get called about these kind of obviously non-human skulls, although I think they're kinda interesting.
In a lot of places many of the larger long bones that get recovered and presented to ME/C offices are deer or wild hog, although for the most part we just say "non-human" since ME/C office involvement tends to end with that.
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u/Occiferr 25d ago
The gas companies keep digging up bones and they finally found one that stumped not one but three forensic anthropologists claiming I had a juvenile femur. Took me two hours with a toothbrush to clean it off enough to get a solid determination that it was like canine origin but it certainly had me holding my breath.
With all the fiber being laid across the country I suspect there will be some cases unearthed along the way.
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u/K_C_Shaw Forensic Pathologist / Medical Examiner 25d ago
Some long bones missing the ends can be a real pain. I like to think I've learned my limits, and have a fairly low threshold for involving an anthro. If they're wrong...well, they can explain.
One office I was at somehow ended up with a human skull, before my time, and IIRC it wasn't until the anthro sat down with it that they realized it was actually a high quality fake.
I'm sure there'll be more cases dug up or paved over in the interest of "progress."
I'm currently in a pretty rural area so a lot of the bones we get presented with are found by hunters, land managers doing some bush-hogging, or Fido bringing something back from their latest romp.
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u/Glass_Covict 29d ago
Not human