Deterioration of Hair by Airborne Microorganisms: Implications for Museum Biological Collections

Selective biodegradation in hair shafts derived from archaeological, forensic and experimental contexts

“…There have been some limited attempts to understand the process of hair fibre degradation over forensic timescales, but much of this has been restricted to gross observations, usually at the fibre surface 25–31 . Fungal tunnelling, first recognized as a feature of bone degradation, 24 has also been described for hair recovered from forensic casework, 32 where the ends of degraded hair fibre are more severely degraded than the mid‐shaft region 33…”