Tennessee Body Farm

For more than four decades, Bill Bass has been one of the top death experts in the United States. He's best known for developing the Body Farm, a 2.5-acre plot of land in Tennessee filled with some 150 corpses in various states of decay. The farm -- officially known as the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility -- allows scientists to study decomposition and make better estimates of time of death in criminal cases.Forensic Anthropology Research Facility

What is at the Body Farm? They have clothed and unclothed bodies, in the sun and the shade, in water. They're in automobiles, trunks of cars, houses. What they’ve tried to do is reconstruct as many situations in which police find skeletal remains as possible.

Where do they get the bodies? They have over 1,000 people who have willed their bodies, actually their skeletons, to the anthropology department at the University of Tennessee. They also get unclaimed bodies from medical examiners. There is a form that a person can fill out to donate his or her body, It asks for things like medical histories, and a picture of the individual for facial reconstruction.form

What is a Body Farm for? Places such as the Tennessee body farm help scientist better understand the way human remains break down This allows scientists to better pinpoint time of death and other information about murder victims based on the way a body or skeleton looks, and the types of insects and chemicals found on the body.