http://192.168.2.6/english/CSI_ 尸体农场.rm

Imagine that a partly decomposed body is found lying in the woods. Was the person murdered and how long could've they been dead? To find out investigators come here, a place known as the body farm. This 2-acre-compound at the University of Tennesee is devoted to studying what happens to the body after death. The scene isn't for the squeamish. On any given day the ground is strewn with some 50 corpses. For the scientists who work here it's an open air laboratory of decay.

What is unique about the facility is that we can look at this process of decomposition, day 1, day 2, day 18 and day 37 and day 156. Look about that. . .

Doctor Mary Marks is a forensic anthropologist. Once decomposition sets in, a normal autopsy can not be done and so the pathologist turns to the anthropologist to come up with some information.

To provide that information, Doctor Mark is compiling an unusual and for some stomach turning reference work, an atlas for law enforcement that would display bodies in every stage of decay.

What happens is you pull out the atlas and you compare your body that is decomposed to this. It's a standard. It will provide, I think, a gold standard for the process of decomposition.

The work at the body farm is important to solving crimes but it's also gruesome. This corpse has been outside for 2 weeks and it is giving off of a powerful stench.

It's not like garbage. It's not even like a dead animal. It’s not like a mouse that’s behind your wall that dies. It's a pungent sweet smell.You'll never forget it.

The researchers focus on details that would revolt most people such as blackened skin, an important clue in establishing time of death. The darker the flesh the longer the body has been dead.

You see the head is darker, that arm is a little bit darker, a sign trying to show all the variation throughout the body.

Few people want to think about what flies and maggots do to a body, much less study it.

But doctor Marks knows these scavengers are as regular as clockwork. The first flies will arrive within half an hour after death and invade the body.

What they look for are the offices, the nose, the mouth, the ears, the ground body interface

where it's gonna be shaded.

Inside the body the flies lay eggs and 24 hours later the eggs produce the slithering flesh

eating insects, maggots. They are an important clue for doctor Marks. When the maggots reach 15 milimeters in length they have been fed for about 1 week.

The better I am sitting over on that hill watching these processes the better the crime scene investigators are gonna be and the more evidence they will have to give as far as finding suspects. And I'm fortunate to be able to be a part of that. It's not nasty and it's not gruesome or awful to do I mean it's job that has to be done.