No matter where the body is buried, the microbial network behind the cadaver’s decomposition remains essentially the same. Researchers from Colorado State University (CSU) and the University of ...

Research on decomposition often focuses on environmental factors like temperature or humidity, but researchers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville have taken a closer look at contributions ...

Research at body farms—research facilities dedicated to studying what happens to human bodies after death—supplies law enforcement with valuable information about the process of decomposition in ...

“Wait, let me get this straight,” my 14-year old said. “Your naked body would just rot on the ground? No thank you!” This might actually be a teenager’s ...

Few people decide when they’re children that they’d like to study the chemistry of death for a living. But Maiken Ueland set herself firmly on that path when she was a teenager—and she hasn’t looked ...

Students Victoria Deal, Carlee Green and Kadri Greene clean the bones of a donor in the processing lab. Few bear witness to human decomposition. We embalm and seal bodies in caskets, and bury them six ...

People have long wondered whether modern-day human corpses take longer to decompose due to the addition of preservatives in the food chain. The claim dates back to at least 1991, when an article was ...

Researchers investigated how the process of human body decomposition affected microbial life of the surrounding soil microbiome. One factor that may play an important role is body mass index (BMI), ...