Murders, Mysteries, History Revealed in Bones

Aug. 1 -- — There are people, dead for thousands of years, who still cast their shadows in Doug Owsley's office.

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Owsley can read history, picture life-and-death struggles, solve mysteries, and understand how nature has changed — all from the study of bones. "There's nothing in the archeological record that can tell you more about people of the past than the skeleton itself," Owsley says.

Climbing Into a Time Machine

"One of the first things he said to me was, 'I work in different kinds of worlds,'" author and journalist Jeff Benedict remembers. "It was like climbing into a time machine."

That time machine is one with seemingly never-ending corridors where Owsley walks daily. He is one of the most prominent scientists in the world in his specialty, and his workplace at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History contains the nation's largest collection of human remains — approximately 30,000 skeletons, each one a unique story.

Benedict got so wrapped up in Owsley's world that he wrote a book about the discoveries Oswley has made and the mysteries he has solved called No Bone Unturned.

"He can tell you what kind of diet [a] person had by looking at the bone structure and other indications on the bone, and on the wear of a person's teeth," Benedict said. "And once you've figured out diet, you can start to figure out geography. Where did this person live?"

Owsley teaches visitors willingly how he begins to read the stories of the bones. For instance, there are sutures, like junction lines, in a skull that grow together as we age. "It's a fast way of looking at whether you're dealing with a child or a younger person versus an older adult," Owsley says.

He can also determine race and gender from a skull. Males have well-defined brow ridges, he says — "more slope to the forehead. Females tend to have less brow ridge development."

Civil War-Era Mystery

One of Owsley's latest projects was the mystery behind a Civil War-era cast iron coffin — a rarity to people in Owsley's line of work. The coffin was discovered when contractors excavated a site on which they planned to build an industrial park in Pulaski, Tenn. There was no grave marker, and no one was absolutely sure who the man in the coffin was.

But because other members of a family named Mason were buried at the site, there was speculation that the occupant may have been a Civil War soldier named Isaac Newton Mason, whose final resting place was unknown.

"I hope that it's Isaac Newton Mason," said Fran Mason, who accompanied the coffin to the Smithsonian with her husband Guy, a homicide detective in Houston, Texas. "[Then] we can take him back to Tennessee, and they'll put a marker on his grave, and it will bring it full circle."

The 150-year-old coffin, which weighed 686 pounds including the water that had seeped into it, came with a viewing plate. In the days when the coffin was made, said Owsley, the plate allowed family members to view the body without being exposed to odor or possible disease.