Christmas Lectures 2022: Lecture 1/3 – Forensic science with Sue Black
The Royal Institution
131,370 views
A skeleton, found in a mass grave in Oxford, with no name and no story — until forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black and a team of specialists begin reading the evidence written into the bones in the first of the Royal Institution's annual Christmas lectures for 2022.
Watch the second lecture here: How forensic scientists solve a murder | w...
Watch the third lecture here: Christmas Lectures 2022: Lecture 3/3 'Livi...
Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe
Sue Black, joined by "Silent Witness" actor Emilia Fox , walks through how forensic scientists reconstruct a person's life and death from skeletal remains alone: determining sex from the skull and pelvis, estimating age from tooth wear and bone fusion, and calculating height from the long bones. Stable isotope specialist Professor Wolfram Meier-Augenstein explains how chemical signatures in hair and bone can reveal exactly where someone grew up and where they've lived — sometimes down to the country. And using ballistics demonstrations and real historical weapons, the team identifies the injuries that caused this individual's death: a healed blade wound to the skull, and two arrow wounds, one of them fatal.
Professor Dame Sue Black DBE is a forensic anthropologist, anatomist and academic and is currently the President of St John’s College Oxford, and Visiting Professor of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, having previously been Pro-Vice Chancellor at Lancaster University.
Having been a lecturer in Anatomy at St Thomas' Hospital between 1987 and 1992, Sue then spent a decade working for the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the United Nations, on the identification of victims and perpetrators of various conflicts. In 1999 she became the lead forensic anthropologist to the British Forensic Team in Kosovo and in 2003 she undertook two tours to Iraq. In 2005 Sue participated in the United Kingdom's contribution to the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification operation as part of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami international response.
As an author, Sue has published numerous works including her latest book, ‘Written in bone: Hidden stories in what we leave behind’. She was a founder of The British Association for Human Identification and The British Association for Forensic Anthropology; has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, The Royal Anthropological Institute and The British Academy; and is life-time Professor of Anatomy for the Royal Scottish Academy.
Sue is married with three children and features in a larger-than-life portrait by Ken Currie titled Unknown Man which hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, while crime writer Val McDermid used Sue as inspiration for a character in her book ‘The skeleton road’.
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction: a body with no name
1:56 Human or animal? Testing the audience with real bones
9:06 Meet the skeleton: SK2057
10:25 How forensic facial reconstruction works
13:50 How long has this person been dead?
16:29 Determining sex from the skeleton
23:00 Applying it: is this skeleton male or female?
28:47 Reading age from teeth and bone growth
32:31 Isotopes: how bones reveal where you lived
37:47 The verdict: a Scandinavian identity emerges
39:01 Reading trauma: gunshot, blunt force, and blade wounds
50:01 The injuries on the skeleton
52:04 The mass grave and a 1,000-year-old massacre
54:29 Revealing his face for the first time
57:03 Naming Johannes: the Viking from Oxford
We are very grateful to UKRI, Agilent Technologies and Horiba UK, for their generous support for the Ri to produce the 2022 CHRISTMAS LECTURES.
A very special thank you to our Patreon supporters who help make these videos happen, especially:
modsiw, Anton Ragin, Edward Unthank, Robert L Winer, Andy Carpenter, William Hudson
Don McLaughlin, efkinel lo, Martin Paull, Ben Wynne-Simmons, Ivo Danihelka, Kevin Winoto, Jonathan Killin, Stephan Giersche, William Billy Robillard, Jeffrey Schweitzer, Frances Dunne, jonas.app, Tim Karr, Alan Latteri, David Crowner, Matt Townsend, THOMAS N TAMADA, Andrew McGhee, Paul Brown, David Schick, Dave Ostler, Osian Gwyn Williams, David Lindo, Roger Baker, Rebecca Pan
--
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Listen to the Ri podcast: https://anchor.fm/ri-science-podcast
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#ChristmasLectures, #ForensicScience, #SueBlack, #ScienceEducation, #ChristmasLectures2022
20 Comments
This kind of presentation should be the BULK of what high school students receive. They need to be exposed to what jobs are out there.
Well done!
Christmas Lectures 2022: Lecture 1/3 – Forensic science with Sue Black
The Royal Institution
131,370 views
A skeleton, found in a mass grave in Oxford, with no name and no story — until forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black and a team of specialists begin reading the evidence written into the bones in the first of the Royal Institution's annual Christmas lectures for 2022.
Watch the second lecture here: How forensic scientists solve a murder | w...
Watch the third lecture here: Christmas Lectures 2022: Lecture 3/3 'Livi...
Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe
Sue Black, joined by "Silent Witness" actor Emilia Fox , walks through how forensic scientists reconstruct a person's life and death from skeletal remains alone: determining sex from the skull and pelvis, estimating age from tooth wear and bone fusion, and calculating height from the long bones. Stable isotope specialist Professor Wolfram Meier-Augenstein explains how chemical signatures in hair and bone can reveal exactly where someone grew up and where they've lived — sometimes down to the country. And using ballistics demonstrations and real historical weapons, the team identifies the injuries that caused this individual's death: a healed blade wound to the skull, and two arrow wounds, one of them fatal.
Professor Dame Sue Black DBE is a forensic anthropologist, anatomist and academic and is currently the President of St John’s College Oxford, and Visiting Professor of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, having previously been Pro-Vice Chancellor at Lancaster University.
Having been a lecturer in Anatomy at St Thomas' Hospital between 1987 and 1992, Sue then spent a decade working for the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the United Nations, on the identification of victims and perpetrators of various conflicts. In 1999 she became the lead forensic anthropologist to the British Forensic Team in Kosovo and in 2003 she undertook two tours to Iraq. In 2005 Sue participated in the United Kingdom's contribution to the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification operation as part of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami international response.
As an author, Sue has published numerous works including her latest book, ‘Written in bone: Hidden stories in what we leave behind’. She was a founder of The British Association for Human Identification and The British Association for Forensic Anthropology; has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, The Royal Anthropological Institute and The British Academy; and is life-time Professor of Anatomy for the Royal Scottish Academy.
Sue is married with three children and features in a larger-than-life portrait by Ken Currie titled Unknown Man which hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, while crime writer Val McDermid used Sue as inspiration for a character in her book ‘The skeleton road’.
--
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction: a body with no name
1:56 Human or animal? Testing the audience with real bones
9:06 Meet the skeleton: SK2057
10:25 How forensic facial reconstruction works
13:50 How long has this person been dead?
16:29 Determining sex from the skeleton
23:00 Applying it: is this skeleton male or female?
28:47 Reading age from teeth and bone growth
32:31 Isotopes: how bones reveal where you lived
37:47 The verdict: a Scandinavian identity emerges
39:01 Reading trauma: gunshot, blunt force, and blade wounds
50:01 The injuries on the skeleton
52:04 The mass grave and a 1,000-year-old massacre
54:29 Revealing his face for the first time
57:03 Naming Johannes: the Viking from Oxford
We are very grateful to UKRI, Agilent Technologies and Horiba UK, for their generous support for the Ri to produce the 2022 CHRISTMAS LECTURES.
A very special thank you to our Patreon supporters who help make these videos happen, especially:
modsiw, Anton Ragin, Edward Unthank, Robert L Winer, Andy Carpenter, William Hudson
Don McLaughlin, efkinel lo, Martin Paull, Ben Wynne-Simmons, Ivo Danihelka, Kevin Winoto, Jonathan Killin, Stephan Giersche, William Billy Robillard, Jeffrey Schweitzer, Frances Dunne, jonas.app, Tim Karr, Alan Latteri, David Crowner, Matt Townsend, THOMAS N TAMADA, Andrew McGhee, Paul Brown, David Schick, Dave Ostler, Osian Gwyn Williams, David Lindo, Roger Baker, Rebecca Pan
--
The Ri is on Patreon: Patreon: TheRoyalInstitution
and Twitter: Twitter: ri_science
and Facebook: Facebook: royalinstitution
and TikTok: TikTok: ri_science
Listen to the Ri podcast: https://anchor.fm/ri-science-podcast
Our editorial policy: https://www.rigb.org/editing-ri-talks...
Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter
Product links on this page may be affiliate links which means it won't cost you any extra but we may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through the link.
#ChristmasLectures, #ForensicScience, #SueBlack, #ScienceEducation, #ChristmasLectures2022
Dame Black is such a captivating lecturer whose passion for her work is so obvious. But most importantly, she appreciates life in a way that most of us can't, because she has an intimate knowledge of all the ways in which life can end.