Remember that skeleton hanging in the front of your biology — or art — classroom?
It's possible those bones are not plastic, but actual human remains. A lot of classroom skeletons, in high schools, universities and medical schools, are real.
My high school in Erie, Pa., has one that has been hanging in the back of the art room for years. Students use it to draw and sculpt and learn about anatomy. For this episode of Skunk Bear, teachers and administrators let us borrow the skeleton. We then used a bunch of scientific tools — usually applied at crime scenes and archaeological digs — to investigate this person's past: Who was this person? And where did the bones come from?
Follow Skunk Bear, NPR's science show, on YouTube and Facebook.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
