Continuing Osteological Research with Fairmont State University’s Human Skeletal Collection

Abstract

Human skeletal remains have been used at some point by most institutions involved in natural science education, though many real remains are slowly being replaced in classroom use by plastic models. Unfortunately, most antique teaching skeletons still in collections today were obtained during an ethically gray era, resulting in a lack of documentation and accountability. Since their purchase, many of these skeletal remains have been disassociated and damaged due to improper storage, the selling of partial skeletons, and mishandling. Projects such as this one at Fairmont State University are being performed to rehumanize and reassociate individuals using a variety of osteometric and macroscopic analysis techniques and create osteobiographies for them. Fairmont State University’s collection has been determined to contain a minimum of 43 individuals, 28 of whom were able to have profile information restored. Current ethical and legal standards related to the treatment of teaching skeletons are nearly non-existent in the US, but projects such as this one can bring attention to the historically immoral treatment of these individuals.