国家地理:Real-Life CSI: Corpse Farm CSI: 尸体农场

Imagine that a partly decomposed 1 body is found lying in the woods. Was the person murdered and how long could he have been dead? To find out, investigators 2 come here, a place known as the Body Farm. This 2-acre compound at the University of Tennessee is devoted 3 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 5. 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 6, Day 1, Day 2, Day 18 and Day 37 and Day 156. Look at that.

Doctor Murray Marks is a forensic 7 anthropologist 8. Once decomposition sets in, a normal autopsy 9 cannot be done and so the pathologist turns to the anthropologist to come up with some information.

To provide that information, Doctor Marks is compiling an unusual and for some stomach-churning reference work, an atlas 10 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's decomposed to this. It's a standard and 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 4 has been outside for 2 weeks and it is giving off 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. I mean, it's, it's a pungent 11 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 can 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 of death and invade the body.

What they look for are the orifices, the nose, the mouth, ears, the ground body inner face 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 millimeters 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. I'm I'm fortunate to be able to be a part of that. It's not nasty and it's not gross or awful to do, I mean it's a job that has to be done.


forensic: (a.) Relating to, used in, or appropriate for courts of law or for public discussion or argumentation. 法庭的
pathologist: 病理学家
stench: (n.) A strong, foul 12 odor; a stink 13. 恶臭