Dismemberment and Toolmark Analysis on Bone: A Microscopic Analysis of the Walls of Cut Marks

Forensic anthropology may be fundamental in gaining important investigative information in cases of dismemberment: a thorough anthropological survey including the micro- and macromorphological and metrical analysis of marks/lesions found in bones and the microscopic search of residues within the lesions can play a crucial role in providing answers to questions often related to causes and modalities of death as well as to dismemberment tools and methods used. In dismemberment cases, in fact, one of the main objectives is to identify sharp tool classes used in the dismemberment and eventually correlate one specific presumed tool with specific cut marks found in bones. But sometimes additional information may be required as described in the case presented here, for which there has been the need to set up a judicial experiment whose results highlighted again the many lacunae still existing in this field and the need to expand research on toolmark analysis