Department of Forensic Science Collection, Virginia Commonwealth University

• • • About:  Fetal skeleton collection of 12-14 (12 very complete) fetal skeletons of known age and sex (18 weeks to full term) 

    • Location:  Richmond, VA

    • Contact: Dr. Tal Simmons (tlsimmons@vcu.edu) 

Bass Donated Skeletal Collection, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

• • • About:  Mostly adult skeletal collection (but juveniles are represented as well), as well as cremations and biological samples (hair, fingernails and blood cards)

    • Location:  Knoxville, TN

    • Contact:  Dr. Dawnie Steadman (osteo@utk.edu)

    • Website:  https://fac.utk.edu/wm-bass-donated-skeletal-collection/

    • Application: https://fac.utk.edu/research-requests-and-application-forms/ 

John A. Williams Skeletal Collection, Western Carolina University

• • • About:  Donated skeletal collection of modern human remains

    • Contact:  Dr. Katie Zejdlik (kzejdlik@email.wcu.edu)

    • Location: Cullowhee, NC

    • Website:  https://www.wcu.edu/learn/departments-schools-colleges/cas/social-sciences/anthsoc/foranth/forensic-anthro-facilities.aspx 

The University of South Florida (USF) Donated Skeletal Collection, USF

• • • About:  The University of South Florida (USF) Donated Skeletal Collection was established in 2014 to support research in forensic anthropology and legal medicine at the Florida Institute for Forensic Anthropology & Applied Science. This sample comes from the USF Human Donation Program in which human donors are buried or placed on the ground surface at the USF Facility for Outdoor Research and Training (USF-FORT). Once they are skeletonized and the first research module has ended, they are collected, cleaned, and placed in the permanent USF Donated Skeletal Collection.  To date, our program has accepted over 90 donors into the program, and 30 of these donors are now available for research in the collection. 

    • Contact:  Gennifer Goad (gmgoad@usf.edu/813-974-4219)

    • Location:  Tampa, FL

    • Website:  http://forensics.usf.edu/humandonation/ 

National Museum of Health and Medicine, various historical, anatomical, neuroanatomical, and developmental collections, Silver Springs MD

• • • About:  Skeletal Collections related to Civil War surgery, Anatomical Preparations, Paleopathology, Orthopedic Pathology, Veterinary pathology and other areas of civilian and military medicine, anatomy and pathology. N = 6486 specimens. 

    • Contact:  Dr. Kristen Pearlstein, Collections Manager (USArmy.Detrick.MEDCOM-USAMRMC.List.Medical-Museum@mail.mil)

    • Location:  Silver Springs, MD

    • Website:  https://www.medicalmuseum.mil/index.cfm?p=collections.index 

Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico Documented Skeletal Collection

• • • About: Established in 1984, the Maxwell Museum’s Documented Skeletal Collection has grown to include 308 individuals (as of 2018), including males and females, all ages, and many population groups. The skeletal remains are obtained through body donation, either by the individual before death or by the family of a deceased loved one. Information on the sex, age, population affinity, and cause of death is available for the majority of these individuals. 

    • Contact: via website at https://osteolab5.wixsite.com/osteolab/forms

    • Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico

    • Website: https://maxwellmuseum.unm.edu/collections/osteology

Texas State University Donated Skeletal Collection 

• • • About: Donated skeletal collection with documented demographic, occupation, and health information.  The collection is housed in a laboratory with a photography studio, white-light scanner, high resolution CT and digital radiography system, histology equipment, and basic osteometric equipment. There are also HRCT services available for use with this collection or for use with outside collections. There is an associated TXSTDSC bone histology collection available for research and dry bone histological services available for outside collections as well as consultations on forensic cases. 

    • Contact: Dr. Daniel Wescott (dwescott@txstate.edu)

    • Location: San Marcos, Texas

    • Website: https://www.txstate.edu/anthropology/facts/researchers.html

John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai'i

• • • About: Mann-Labrash Osteology Collection Willed Body Program with 211 human skulls and 27 complete skeletons identified as European, African, Asian, Hawaii, and Pacific Islander 

    • Contact: Bob Mann (mannr@hawaii.edu) 

    • Location: Honolulu, Hawai'i

    • Website: in progress

Human Remains and Osteological Collections at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum

• • • About: Today the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Collection is the most intensively studied research collection in the Smithsonian Institution. Many of the basic techniques for reading the age and sex of human remains emerged as researchers compared the detailed, identified "bone biographies" of the 1,700 individuals now in this collection, which was assembled between 1898 and 1967. 

    • Contact: Dr. David Hunt (email: huntD@si.edu), Collections Manager

    • Location: Washington DC

The STAFS Skeletal Collection

• • • About: The STAFS Skeletal Collection is comprised of more than 450 individuals predominantly of European ancestry, with a smaller proportion of individuals from African, Asian, and Hispanic ancestries, and includes individuals ranging from 10 to 105 years of age. Skeletal trauma is particularly well-represented in the STAFS collection, including multiple cranial and post-cranial examples of blunt-force, sharp-force, ballistic, and thermal trauma. STAFS supports many research projects every year involving the skeletal collection, and is one of the only collections within the US that reserves a proportion of the annual donations for destructive analyses (e.g., bone samples for DNA recovery, skeletal trauma studies). 

    • Contact: Haeli Kennedy, Lab Manager, stafs@shsu.edu 

    • Location: Huntsville, TX 

    • Website: http://ifrti.org/STAFS/index.html 

William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology

• • • About: Extensive human remains collection. Current moratorium on Native American and Native Hawaiian human remains, but there are other collections there as well. 

    • Contact: George Crothers (email: george.crothers@uky.edu), Museum Director

    • Location: Lexington, KY

    • Website: https://anthropology.as.uky.edu/museum-anthropology 

Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. Medical School

• • • About: Documented skeletal series available for research and forensic specimens available for teaching/training purpose 

    • Contact: Dr. Christine Pink (Christine.Pink@med.wmich.edu) and Dr. Jered Cornelison (Jered.Cornelison@med.wmich.edu) 

    • Location: Kalamazoo, MI

Coimbra Identified Skeletons Collections

• • • About: Composed of 505 identified skeletons. Dates of birth range from 1826 to 1922, and dates of death range from 1904 to 1938. Ages at death range from 7 to 96 years. 498 of the 505 individuals were collected from the main cemetery in Coimbra, Portugal, while 7 are from dissected cadavers. Nearly all individuals are of Portuguese descent. Occupations and causes of death are available.

    • Location: University of Coimbra, Portugal

    • Website: http://www.highfantastical.com/skelcoll/results.php?region=europe&time=modern 

Kristen Skeletal Collection

• • • About: This collection is curated in the Biological Anthropology Research Unit (BARU) and was derived from the cadaver dissection programme at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences between 1957-2015. It contains 1161 skeletons with known records. Most individuals were born between 1920 and 1950 and the age-at-death for these individuals is mostly between 40 and 60 years. 

    • Location: Cape Town, South Africa

    • Website: http://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/healthsciences/Clinical_Anatomy/Pages/Biological-Anthropology-.aspx 

    • Contact: Mandi Alblas, aa2@sun.ac.za 

Raymond A. Dart Modern Cadaveric Human Skeletons

• • • About:  The R.A. Dart Collection is the largest human skeletal collection within Africa and comprises an approximate total number of 3000 documented skeletons. These skeletal remains have associated recorded demographics (i.e. age, sex and population affinity), most of which are of South African descent. The collection caters to a wide variety of disciplines such as forensic anthropology, population biology, human variation, dentistry, medicine, clinical anatomy, forensic pathology and palaeoanthropology. The inception of the collection dates back to the early twentieth century and to this date, is constantly being supplemented with human skeletal remains on an annual basis, predominantly derived from the School’s Body Donation Programme 

    • Contact: Dr. Anja Meyer (anja.meyer@wits.ac.za), Dr. Brendon Billings (brendon.billings@wits.ac.za)

    • Location: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    • Website: https://www.wits.ac.za/anatomicalsciences/collections/the-raymond-a-dart-collection-of-modern-human-skeletons/

Andronowski Skeletal Collection for Histological Research (ASCHR)

• • • About: The Andronowski Skeletal Collection for Histological Research (ASCHR) was initiated in 2017 to provide a resource for the study of skeletal microarchitectural variability with advancing age and between the sexes. Bone procurement has focused on two sites commonly used in histological age-at-death estimation: the mid-shaft sixth rib and anterior femoral mid-shaft. Our primary objective is to use this unique skeletal archive for histological and imaging research, with the goal of furthering knowledge of human bone biology. ASCHR currently boasts skeletal elements from nearly 400 individuals, including the left femur, sixth rib, and various cranial bones. Specimens in the collection have been procured from donors ranging from 19 to 105 years-of-age at death with a roughly equal sex distribution.

    • Contact: Dr. Janna M. Andronowski, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, (jandronowski@mun.ca)

    • Location: St. John's Newfoundland, Canada

    • Website: https://www.andronowskilab.com/andronowski-skeletal-collection

Forensic Anthropology Skeletal Trauma (FAST) 

• • • About: The Forensic Anthropology Skeletal Trauma (FAST) database provides skeletal trauma data for education, training, and case comparison applications. FAST is an ongoing project that will continue to be updated with skeletal trauma on various regions of the human body from known loading mechanisms. 

    • Website: ibrc.osu.edu/fast-database 

    • Contact: Angela Harden, PhD; The Ohio State University; angela.harden2@osumc.edu 

The New Mexico Decedent Image Database

• • • About: The New Mexico Decedent Image Database provides researchers with access to >15,000 whole human body computed tomography (CT) scans and a rich body of associated metadata.

    • Contact:  Heather Edgar, Associate Professor (hjhedgar@unm.edu)

    • Location: New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator (and online)

    • Website: mmdid.unm.edu

Wellcome Osteological Research Database

• • • About: Here you can find summaries of cemetery sites excavated across London, as well as download osteological data about the human remains curated at the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology. Photographs of samples from some sites, and additional paper-based records on individual excavated remains, are available in the appropriate period section. 

    • Location: Museum of London, Online

    • Link: https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/collections/other-collection-databases-and-libraries/centre-human-bioarchaeology/osteological-database 

PATRICIA

• • • About: Patricia, a radiographic data bank, was established through grant 2008-DN-BX-K152 from the National Institute of Justice. Patricia complements the Forensic Data Bank at the University of Tennessee, which has data primarily from adults.

    • Contact: Stephen Ousley (sousley@mercyhurst.edu)

    • Website: https://www.statsmachine.net/databases/radiographic_database/

Forensic Anthropology Database for Assessing Methods Accuracy (FADAMA)

• • • Website: https://www-app.igb.illinois.edu/sofadb/index.php

Maxwell Orthodontic Case File System

• • • About: This collection was started by a donation of orthodontic records from approximately 5000 patients from a retiring orthodontist in Albuquerque, NM (Dr. James Economides). The purpose of the collection is to provide a case file system of a variety of orthodontic problems along with the associated treatment histories, X-rays, oral images, dental casts, and outcomes, in a population of patients with a broad racial and ethnic background not frequently encountered during orthodontic training. 

    • Website: https://hsc.unm.edu/programs/ocfs/

Howells Dataset

• • • About: The William W. Howells Craniometric Data Set consists of craniometric measurements taken from 2524 human crania from 28 populations. Up to 82 measurements were obtained from these crania.  Dr. William Howells compiled these data between 1965 and 1980, and published on them in three monographs. Some details about the history of his data and the measurements may be found in his publication from 1996's American Journal of Physical Anthropology 101:441-442 

    • Contact: Ben Auerbach (auerbach@utk.edu)

    • Website: https://web.utk.edu/~auerbach/HOWL.htm 

Goldman Osteological Dataset

• • • About: The Goldman Data Set consists of osteometric measurements taken from 1538 human skeletons dating from throughout the Holocene. Dr. Benjamin Auerbach obtained all of these data during three solo research trips beginning in September 2001 and ending in July 2003. These trips were made possible as part of a research fellowship provided by generous funding from the Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Prize; the data set is named after this organization 

    • Contact: Ben Auerbach (auerbach@utk.edu)

    • Website: https://web.utk.edu/~auerbach/GOLD.htm

Forensic Anthropology Data Bank (FDB)

• • • About: The Forensic Anthropology Data Bank (FDB) was started in 1986 with a grant from the National Institute of Justice. The FDB contains extensive demographic information for many cases, including place of birth, medical history, occupation, stature, and weight. The skeletal information for cases includes cranial and postcranial metrics, suture closure information, various aging criteria scores, non-metric cranial information, perimortem trauma, congenital traits, and dental observations. In addition, we are currently collecting 3D coordinate data for cases that come through The University of Tennessee and other contributing agencies and institutions.  At this writing, the FDB has nearly 3400 cases. Over 2400 are from cases with definite sex and ancestry. Many of these have been measured and sent in by various forensic anthropologists around the country, and we have traveled to various institutions that house sizable collections of contemporary skeletons and measured them ourselves. The 400 cases analyzed by J. Lawrence Angel over a period of 25 years make up the largest single component of the database. Those who have contributed to the FDB have made a major contribution to the understanding of contemporary skeletal variation. Over 100 forensic anthropologists have contributed one or more cases.

    • Contact:  Dr. Richard Jantz (rjantz@utk.edu)

    • Website:  https://fac.utk.edu/background/

Robert J. Terry Anatomical Collection Skeletal Collection Database

• • • About:  Demographic and osteometric data from the Terry collection in the Smithsonian

    • Website: https://smithsonian.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Terry_Collection_data/11412846

Macromorphoscopic Databank (MaMD)

• • • About: Data on cranial macromorphoscopics from known individuals.

    • Website: https://macromorphoscopic.com/databank/

Cranial Nonmetric Traits Database

• • • About: Cranial nonmetric trait data representing Native America and Greenland, Northeast Asia, Eurasia, Africa and the South Pacific were collected by Nancy Ossenberg during museum surveys 1963-2003. Record count = 8016, Variable count = 84

    • Website: https://library.queensu.ca/data/cntd/

Human Fossil Teeth

• • • About: The aim of this web site is to provide comprehensive standard dental metrics for a large dental sample from the earliest hominins to modern humans. Much of the human fossil record is made up of teeth and their measurements are scattered in different journals -- some old and hard to get even in these "e-days". There are many still unpublished specimens. For many researchers it is difficult to assemble a data set for comparative studies and there is always the problem of inter-observer error. Our attempt here is to provide a data repository for comparative dental data using standard length/breadth crown metrics and root measurements when available.  

    • Website: http://anthropologicaldata.free.fr/webteeth/tablesandbibliography.html