THE BODY FARM

On a two acre patch of land in Tennessee behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center sits a research facility operated by Murray Marks, an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee. Marks is a Forensic Anthropologist, and his research facility, dubbed "The Body Farm", studies the decomposition of the human body in order to "help law enforcement catch killers".This research is enabling forensic scientists answer the question "How long has the victim been dead". The research is geared to determining "Time Since Death", or TSD, by studying the progression of decomposition in a controlled environment. Professor Marks and his research facility has been helping to train FBI agents and Medical Examiners for several years. Indeed, the first question most investigators will ask the ME at the scene of a "dumped" body will be "How long has he/she been dead"? By studying decomposition in a cadre of environments, Dr. Marks is capable of providing the research information that can determine the TSD in a more accurate manner.The University of Tennessee's Anthropology Department is nationally renowned in forensic anthropology. Dr. William M. Bass is the forensic anthropologist that started the "Body Farm" at UT. Since retired, he is the mentor to Dr. Marks and all those who study forensic anthropology. The Body Farm started in 1980. Dr. Bass, already a noted forensic anthropologist, was frustrated over the lack of scientific data available on human decomposition. "He became obsessed with wanting to study the whole postmortem continuum, rather than just glimpsing the snapshots in time that he had been seeing". Since then this research has produced groundbreaking data and technology.Thanks to the Farm, a pair of specialists invented a device that lifts fingerprints off a corpse, and the FBI has improved a ground-penetrating-radar device that detects buried bodies. The most revolutionary discoveries at the farm have come from studying the bugs and the flies that appear post mortem on a human body. So not only have they advanced the science of forensic anthropology, they have also rapidly advanced the science of forensic entomology - the study of insect science as it relates to human decomposition.