Enterprise High School students in Sue Peacock’s forensics classes have spent the last week reconstructing the human face.
“It’s as if the students found an unidentified body,” Peacock said. “Now they’re having to take the skull and determine the age, gender and race of victim.”
In recent weeks, Peacock has been teaching the students how to determine those factors by looking at different facial features.
Using a model skull, the students determined these genetic traits using their knowledge of bones, teeth and sutures, which are where pieces of the skull join together.
“You can determine gender by the shape of the eye sockets and thickness of the mandibles and age by sutures on the skull,” Peacock said. “Once they’ve studied the bone structure, the students use tissue markers to show the anatomical features, like the glands and muscles. Then they put everything together piece by piece and try to identify it.”
The students, who are mostly juniors and seniors, used crafting putty to rebuild the face around a skull.
“There’s a bunch of different methods for reconstruction,” Dalton Bradshaw said. “We’re using the Manchester method, (it’s a little more complicated).”
Bradshaw, Ashleigh Williams and Jacob Smithey were one of the groups working on a skull, but several classes have also gotten to participate.
“It’s been fun and really interesting,” Williams said. “We’ve all enjoyed it.”
Peacock said this is first time students at EHS have done a project like this one.
“It’s been fun for the students and we’re excited,” she said.
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