At the University of Northern Iowa, Tyler O'Brien envisions turning some prime Iowa pasture into a body farm, where human bodies -- buried, stuffed in car trunks or exposed to the elements -- can provide scholars and criminalists with new data on human decay.
The Midwest offers a flat and open landscape exposed to wind, rain, sun, snow and extreme temperature shifts. It also offers an entirely new spectrum of plants, rodents and bugs, whose life cycle can provide clues about when someone was killed or when the body was dumped.
O'Brien is seeking a grant of $400,000 to $500,000 from the National Institute of Justice and other organizations to obtain the land and set up the project.
Bodies used at the farm would be donated by families in the region much the same as they donate a body for medical research. At the Tennessee body farm, more than 100 people have filed donor applications this year, up from last year, and more than 600 are on file from the past 10 years, according to Dr. Richard Jantz, director of the university's Forensic Anthropology Center.
Resources:
CNN
USA Today
Wired