 Hello, today we're here at the Osteology Laboratory at North Carolina State University and we're going to take a quick tour. So you're going to get to see what it is that forensic anthropologists do and where exactly they work. So they don't just hang out in basements, they actually have labs. Let's check out this lab. Good morning. How are you guys? Great, how are you? Good, good. What can you do for you? Well, we just want to take a quick tour of the lab and see what it is a forensic anthropology space would look like or an anthropology space in general. I'd be happy to show you. All right. The first thing that you want to notice is the amount of windows we have. This huge amount of window space allows for a lot of light to come in, which is really helpful when we're trying to see really minute things on bones. Speaking of bones, every osteolab has skeletons. We have 19 full skeletons, that's full people. And so sometimes they're laid out. We have to be very careful, hence the foam, cranial doughnut, but we have lots of people here for comparative studies, metric studies that we do, trying to estimate sex, all sorts of stuff. Okay. And so what are the bones here in case our viewers don't know? Sure. Right here we have the tibia. This actually happens to be a right. We have a left femur. We have the skull or the cranium, which everybody should be most familiar with. And then we have a left and a right oscoxa. This is part of the pelvis. What sort of tools are in this lab that would be useful to the researchers? Oh, man. We have lots of tools. Aside from the comparative samples that we have, which is a tool in and of itself, we also have something that's called a digitizer. This is really handy and when it's hooked up to a computer, you can use it to take measurements on skulls. So what you do is you would take it and place it on a point and it maps it in a XYZ dimension. It allows you to basically build a map of a skull and when that's done, we can enter the information into certain computer software and it will tell us with a certain degree of certainty, ancestry and sex and all sorts of things, it's really exciting stuff. And then we also have a microscope that we're able to, essentially, what you do with a microscope. Look at things really close up. It allows us to have histological studies, which is looking at the small structures in bone. Also, we have a space for cameras to take good pictures. The camera is currently put away, but I mean, this allows us to take pictures for articles that we want to publish, stuff like that. And of course, you have your standard computers, which have software that are really, really handy. And what are in these boxes here? These should be calipers, different kinds of calipers. Caliper is a measurement tool. This one happens to have batteries taken out, but it allows us to take really, really finite measurements. So if I had a bone, I could measure down to so many millimeters and enter that information into either software to find out more information about it, or I could use it for study purposes. All right. So can you tell us a little bit more about the boxes that we saw over here coming in? Sure, absolutely. What we have here are complete skeletal samples. So A is a person, B is a person, so on and so forth. They're from different ancestral backgrounds, different sexes. I think G and H are actually some of our females and I think L is a female, if I remember right. We have anything from Southeast Asians to African Americans, which is really helpful because it allows us to see different morphological features on the skull that indicate certain ancestral groups. We also have certain pathological samples. This of course is a cast, but you can see the lesions. We can use this information to compare if we have another skeleton that comes in with the same markings. So this actually is, I believe, caused by syphilis. We also have at our disposal a huge array of literary works. Most of these are the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, so we have articles upon articles over the years at our disposal to use. So it's really, really handy. All right. And what do we have? I noticed there are some bends along the far wall. What are in those bends? Instead of having full skeletons, we have individual bones. For example, if a student wants to come in and they want to know more about upper limb bones, they can dig around in these boxes. They're labeled and it allows them to pull out specific bones. This is a humerus. This is the bone right here. And they can look at all of the features on it. They don't have to be inundated with a whole bunch of other bones that they're not worried about at that moment, but it allows them to really look and see what they're trying to learn about that specific bone. For example, this little tiny hole right here in the electronon fossa, that's called deceptal aperture. You can use certain features like that to possibly associate sex. They say that women have it more than men, but you can find a whole bunch of different features on it that like discrete traits, so non-metric traits. That would be one of them. All right. What's in these cabinets? If you don't mind me asking again? It's very similar to the idea of the bin system. We have individual bones in here. Most of them are vertebral bones and rib bones. So for example, I have the 10th rib. I pull it out and a student can physically know that this is the 10th rib, which can be kind of difficult to assess based on how the rib cage works. So that way, when they're trying to study specific ribs or specific vertebrae, they know that what they're pulling out to study is actually true. I notice you guys have some really large spacious tables. Are those really necessary? They are entirely necessary. If you take out an entire person, a whole skeleton, and lay them out, this still may not be enough space. We need a lot of space to lay them out anatomically how they should be laid out. That way they can be used for studies or measurements or anything like that. They take up a lot of space. So it's really handy to have specifically four of them, so a lot of students can be working all at the same time. So this is where then most of the anatomical studies and graduate student research would be going on. But what happens through those doors? Could you give us just an idea of sort of what goes on behind this closed door here? See, this is the dark side, as we refer to it. This is actually our forensic analysis lab, and a lot of open cases go on in there, forensic cases, actual things that matter to the actual public, homicides, suicides, anything like that. We'll come into this lab, so obviously it's very restricted, not many people are allowed in there. I think I recently read an article that said that this is one of the top labs in the nation. Is that correct? That's correct. That actually came out, I believe, a couple of years ago in popular science. We were one of the top labs in the country as far as university associated. And so it was very exciting for us. We were really excited. One last question, and then I'll leave you to your work. So is there any advice that you would give to a student who's considering anthropology or forensic anthropology as a future profession? Absolutely. My biggest concern would be to start reading now. You know, if you're interested, kind of try and immerse yourself in the world as best you can. The more that you understand terms, the more that you try and understand statistical analysis, that kind of stuff, the better equipped you'll be for future study. You can always look for universities that have programs that promote this kind of stuff. There are quite a few in North Carolina, but of course, go pack. You know, I have to support this university, but I would just say do your best, read as much as you can, and don't give up because it's a very competitive field. So if you don't get in somewhere right away, keep trying. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a lovely tour. We're very excited to see your lab.