Methods

On October 22, a headless macaque (donated by Harvard Univerity after its natural death) was placed on a piece of slate in Dr. Pérez’s Taphonomy Lab at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  When the macaque was placed in the lab, it was frozen and had a sagittal incision in its abdomen.  Weekly visits were made to the lab by the 2018 Forensic: Myth and Reality Class.  On November 26, the macaque was removed from the slate and placed directly on the ground.  Motion sensitive infrared cameras captured any movement around the body during its decomposition.  At the conclusion of the class, Kara Koziol continued to make biweekly visits to the lab to record visible changes to the macaque.