美国国家公共电台 NPR To Solve Gruesome Desert Mysteries, Scientists Become Body Collectors

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

People are dumping dead bodies in the high desert of western Colorado. But they're scientists not criminal masterminds. NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell takes us to a place for forensic¹ research in Grand Junction², Colo. And a caution over breakfast - this story contains some, you know, gross stuff.

RAE ELLEN BICHELL, BYLINE³: It's squint-your-eyes bright out here. Everything is dry - the air, the crumbly dirt, the scrubby plants. The only movement comes from the wind, an occasional car on the nearby highway and the prairie dogs that come out to chatter⁴ at intruders. Melissa Connor, a forensic scientist with Colorado Mesa University, comes out here on a regular basis.

MELISSA CONNOR: So it's rolling sagebrush and saltbrush-covered land. We have the Grand Mesa off to our back, and there's still snow cover up at the high altitude.

BICHELL: This site is officially called the Forensic Investigation⁵ Research Station, but people sometimes refer to the small plot Connor is walking towards as a body farm.

And I smell something funny.

CONNOR: Really? I don't.

BICHELL: We arrive at a 10-foot-tall fence topped with razor wire with another tall gate in front of that. It keeps curious people, like me, from peering through the cracks.

CONNOR: Yeah (laughter), there's oh so many reasons for the big fans.

BICHELL: I'm not allowed past this gate, so I give the microphone to Eriek Hansen, a biologist who also works here. Connor and her research assistant, Chrissie Baigent, put me on a cellphone.

Actually, wait. Let me put this on first. So let me - yeah, like that.

(SOUNDBITE OF GATE BEING UNLOCKED)

CONNOR: So we're entering the facility. And Chrissie, we have how many bodies here now?

CHRISTIANE BAIGENT: We have approximately 35 on the ground right now.

BICHELL: The small plot contains row on row of human bodies, all donated. They're naked and lying face-up as if they were cloud-gazing.

CONNOR: So let's go down, take a look at some of them.

This is Mr. 1612. He came in late in 2016. The insects have found the incisions⁶ from the autopsy⁷ and laid their eggs there. And they're doing their thing.

BAIGENT: Aggressive wriggling⁸.

BICHELL: Bodies usually go from green to gray to black as generations of insects eat everything except the skeleton. But as Connor and Baigent know, that's not what will happen with Mr. 1612. Out here, the usual rules of decay don't apply. Instead of turning gray, for example, he might turn as bright orange as a traffic cone⁹. His skin will dry out and harden so much that bugs¹⁰ won't be able to chew through it. Mr. 1612 will likely become a mummy, decaying in slow motion.

Now to understand why the details of Mr. 1612's decay are important, you have to look 700 miles south to another dry climate, the Sonoran Desert. There, bones and bodies turn up on a weekly basis.

BRUCE ANDERSON: There are literally¹¹ thousands of migrants dying every year.

BICHELL: That's Bruce Anderson, a forensic anthropologist¹² with the Office of the Medical Examiner in Pima County, Ariz. Over the last 20 years, he says his office has worked on identifying the remains¹³ of almost 3,000 people. Some of them were alive 10 minutes before Border Patrol found them; others had been dead for decades. Many of them likely died trying to cross the border into the U.S.

ANDERSON: Doesn't matter to me if they're Americans or not. They're dead, and they have people looking for them and people that miss them and people that love them. So that's why we do what we do.

BICHELL: One crucial part of Anderson's job is figuring out time of death because often the only clue relatives can offer is when their loved one disappeared.

ANDERSON: So if a skeleton is found in the Sonoran Desert and we think the person died between one and two years ago versus¹⁴ five and 20 years ago, that can save a lot of time in going through missing persons reports from those two different time periods.

BICHELL: Narrowing down when a person died can mean the difference between identifying a body and having to bury it anonymously¹⁵. Back at the body farm, Connor is looking at another corpse¹⁶.

CONNOR: Mr. 1401 - he's the individual we deposited here in January 2014.

BICHELL: This man died more than three years ago, but he's become a mummy. And because of that, it appears as if he's only been out here for a few months. Baigent, Connor and Hansen are working on new ways to measure changes in moisture, color and texture¹⁷ that, with the help of weather data, would let them back-calculate how many days a body like this has been outside.

ERIEK HANSEN: So if you went and looked at a rock and you saw the black lichen¹⁸ on a rock, that's sort of what the body looks like. It sort of has that texture, that color and that pattern that you'd see with lichen.

CONNOR: He has what I think actually is a black mold on some of him as well as - there are portions of the tissue that are much more parchment or vellum-colored.

BAIGENT: When you're looking at the whole body, it doesn't look like significant changes are occurring.

BICHELL: But, Baigent says, they are. You just have to look closely enough. If these scientists can get a handle on those details, it could help out their colleagues to the south, where thousands of bodies lie unidentified.

Rae Ellen Bichell, NPR News.

1 forensic   

adj.法庭的，雄辩的

参考例句：

• The report included his interpretation of the forensic evidence.该报告包括他对法庭证据的诠释。
• The judge concluded the proceeding on 10:30 Am after one hour of forensic debate.经过近一个小时的法庭辩论后，法官于10时30分宣布休庭。

2 junction   

n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站

参考例句：

• There's a bridge at the junction of the two rivers.两河的汇合处有座桥。
• You must give way when you come to this junction.你到了这个路口必须让路。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 chatter   

vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战

参考例句：

• Her continuous chatter vexes me.她的喋喋不休使我烦透了。
• I've had enough of their continual chatter.我已厌烦了他们喋喋不休的闲谈。

5 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

6 incisions   

n.切开，切口( incision的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Cruciate incisions heal poorly and are not required. 不需要愈合差的十字形切口。 来自辞典例句
• After two days red incisions appear on their bodies. 一两天内身体会出现粉红色的损伤。 来自电影对白

7 autopsy   

n.尸体解剖；尸检

参考例句：

• They're carrying out an autopsy on the victim.他们正在给受害者验尸。
• A hemorrhagic gut was the predominant lesion at autopsy.尸检的主要发现是肠出血。

8 wriggling   

v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）；蠕蠕

参考例句：

• The baby was wriggling around on my lap. 婴儿在我大腿上扭来扭去。
• Something that looks like a gray snake is wriggling out. 有一种看来象是灰蛇的东西蠕动着出来了。 来自辞典例句

9 cone   

n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果

参考例句：

• Saw-dust piled up in a great cone.锯屑堆积如山。
• The police have sectioned off part of the road with traffic cone.警察用锥形路标把部分路面分隔开来。

10 bugs   

adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误

参考例句：

• All programs have bugs and need endless refinement. 所有的程序都有漏洞，都需要不断改进。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The sacks of rice were swarming with bugs. 一袋袋的米里长满了虫子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

12 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

13 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

14 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

15 anonymously   

ad.用匿名的方式

参考例句：

• The manuscripts were submitted anonymously. 原稿是匿名送交的。
• Methods A self-administered questionnaire was used to survey 536 teachers anonymously. 方法采用自编“中小学教师职业压力问卷”对536名中小学教师进行无记名调查。

16 corpse   

n.尸体，死尸

参考例句：

• What she saw was just an unfeeling corpse.她见到的只是一具全无感觉的尸体。
• The corpse was preserved from decay by embalming.尸体用香料涂抹以防腐烂。

17 texture   

n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理

参考例句：

• We could feel the smooth texture of silk.我们能感觉出丝绸的光滑质地。
• Her skin has a fine texture.她的皮肤细腻。

18 lichen   

n.地衣, 青苔

参考例句：

• The stone stairway was covered with lichen.那石级长满了地衣。
• There is carpet-like lichen all over the moist corner of the wall.潮湿的墙角上布满了地毯般的绿色苔藓。