Anatomy and Physiology: Dead Men Do Tell Tales

(This picture was taken from this site: http://www.42ndpage.com/science/).

One thing I found very interesting in William R. Maples' Dead Men Do Tell Tales is the large amount of information a bone can tell about the dead person if you know how to look at it.  For example, the author and a professor used a skull that was found in a lake and tied to a pole to figure out that the skull was a World War II trophy.  Using the scorch marks and other features on the skull, they were able to determine that the skull belonged to a Japanese man who was probably a soldier killed during WWII and his skull was taken by an American soldier as a sort of prize.  The soldier got tired of it, but needed a place to dispose of the skull so he threw the skull in a lake and tied it to a pole for good measure.  And all this was from a single skull!

Source: William R. Maples' Dead Men Do Tell Tales