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[Anna] Hi and welcome back with another great episode of "Fun with Bones and Bob!"
Just to be clear: bones, Bob, not the other way around.
Alright, now we have a skull, just to be clear
and Bob is going to tell us what he can glean from looking at this skull, and then
we are going to read the super secret diagnosis of what we think it is
and we're going to see who's right. Take it away, Bob! [Bob] Alright, thank you.
I think when we look at this skull, we can all recognize something is wrong.
We've got something that happened to this individual's face in the frontal bone, and you can see something
entered the skull right above the eyes, right in the middle of the eye and right above the right eye orbit.
And you can see what it's done here, it's got a fracture that ran all the way up
and it stopped at one of these sutures where the bones join.
So this is a little bone biomechanics, we don't have to get into that now, but this is a really interesting case
and just by five seconds of looking at this, we can tell what happened to this individual and Anna will tell us
[Anna] Yes, um.... believe it or not, I actually am a forensic anthropologist, okay
so I can actually tell you that this is the result of some sort of
very serious traumatic injury. It could have been a ballistic injury
or it could have been some type of shrapnel injury and we have to look closer.
Alright, today's word of the day, ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about "beveling."
So, sometimes we have to look at some of the trauma and see
if there's any beveling, that will help tell you if it's a ballistic trauma.
So, Bob, do you see any beveling, yea or nay?
Are we talking a gunshot, are we talking shrapnel because
a bullet is a high velocity weapon, but also you have mortar rounds
you have shrapnel, you have other things that you might see in a type of warfare situation
So this person obviously died a violent death, but did they die a violent death
perhaps in a warfare situation or a more domestic situation?
How and how could you tell based on that?
[Bob] Well if we're a forensic anthropologist looking at this, we're gonna, first of all
see all the damage that's caused to the face: most of the facial bones are gone, the nasal area's gone.
But what we do see is, aside from this fracture here
and a fracture that's outlined in black here on the side of the face
what we've got is we've got a circular hole right above the eye
and a circular hole like that typically is indicative of a gunshot wound.
So when a bullet goes through bone, it's gonna punch an oval or round
hole in the bone and when it exits the bone
like the skull, which it did not do here, it's gonna cause a bigger hole to form.
So we've got one small hole in the front above the orbit and that looks to be a gunshot entry wound
not an exit wound, so the bullet went into the skull and did not exit it. [Anna] Ouch. [Bob] Yes.
[Anna] Alright, so we think we have a bullet wound entry wound and not an exit wound. Alright!
Let's see what the card says: [clears throat]
"Large hole in anterior fossa of skull caused by
through and through gunshot wound, probably a rifle bullet
entering right orbital ridge with exit in left superior maxilla." Uh-huh-huh-huh....
So that's different... "Linear fractures of frontal bone, extensive damage to nasal cavity
both orbits and left superior maxilla." There you go.
"Death from brain injury and infection..." but here's the kicker, are you ready for this? [Bob] Yes!
[Anna] "....after two days." [Bob] After two days. [Anna] So
believe it or not, with all this, still took two days.
So turns out, there actually was an entrance wound and an exit wound
but couldn't actually see the exit wound here.
[Bob] And that's the difference between being a forensic anthropologist and a forensic pathologist.
So, the pathologist back then or whoever the surgeons were who dealt with this individual
they would've been able to witness that the bullet entered here
and I thought the bullet would've entered like this and blew out the face, which is typical.
But the doctor would've been able to surmise that the bullet entered like this
and went out the facial region. That's why there's no exit wound in the back of the skull.
[Anna] Interesting! I think that was a very, very special very informative episode of "Fun with Bones and Bob!"