Characterization of bone diagenesis by histology in forensic contexts: a human taphonomic study

Abstract

The diagenesis of a bone in the postmortem period causes an identifiable deterioration in histology. This degradation is characterized by a collagenous alteration, which can be observed very early. In order to develop a method for determining a postmortem interval for medico-legal use, two ribs collected from six human bodies were studied prospectively over 2 years. Each bone was studied after staining with Sirius red to demonstrate the degradation of collagen as a function of time. This study demonstrated a time-based bone alteration characterized by the architectural degradation of the lamellar bone, without any microbial influence in this postmortem period. The staining was carried out by using Sirius red and correlated this alteration with a collagenic degradation by chemical hydrolysis owing to the affinity of this dye to the amino acids lysine, hydroxylysine, and arginine. Our work asserts that human bone samples that were studied in a controlled environment and analyzed for 24 months underwent a diagenetic trajectory whose main element was collagen hydrolysis.

The impact of burial period on compact bone microstructure: Histological analysis of matrix loss and cell integrity in human bones exhumed from tropical soil

“…permit species discrimination [1,43], time since death estimation [2,44], distinction of forensic and archaeological remains [2] and optimization of DNA-based analyses [21,45,46]. Inhumations, especially those made in tropical climates, such as those of Brazil, may provide peculiarity characteristics to bone microstructure, osteocyte cells presence and others.…”

Bone Molecular Modifications Induced by Diagenesis Followed-Up for 12 Months

“…A hypothesis could be based on an increase in the amount of collagen. In a previous work, our group showed by histology that the structure of the collagen matrix on the same samples was altered as a function of the burial time [ 9 ]. The alteration mechanism was identified as collagen hydrolysis.…”

“…Numerous studies have focused on the evaluation of diagenetic processes over long timescales (~millions of years) [ 4 , 5 , 6 ] but fewer over short timescales (between days and thousands of years) [ 7 , 8 ]. Bone diagenesis was evaluated by histology [ 9 ], chemistry [ 10 ] or physicochemical [ 11 ] approaches, allowing a better understanding of the complexity of the mechanism. Among the physicochemical approaches, vibrational spectroscopy (especially Raman spectroscopy) has shown its ability to provide decisive information on bone composition at the molecular level in physiological and pathological situations [ 12 , 13 ].…”

Differentiating human from non‐human bone fragments through histomorphological assessment of remains from Camposanto cemetery, Italy

“…This degradation at times made the boundaries of the secondary osteons unclear, increasing measurement difficulty for the more highly degraded samples. While polarising light microscopy was able to delineate osteon borders and lamellae for some samples, those with high degradation due to bioerosion were often not sufficiently birefringent for this visualisation method because of breakdown of the collagen matrix, likely due to chemical hydrolysis (Delannoy et al, 2018).…”