DNA will find the answers

Skull remains a mystery, but one day …

IN a decade, forensic investigators will be able to easily use DNA to develop a picture of what a person looks like — right down to their race and eye colour.

Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine deputy director David Ranson says the huge growth in technology, particularly DNA phenotyping, is dramatically reducing the time it takes investigators to uncover DNA and work out who remains once belonged to.

Currently, discovering the identity of a person can take years, particularly if the remains are eroded or seriously destroyed.

It comes as forensic experts last week revealed they had not been able to determine the identity of a skull found washed up at a North Shore Beach in June, 2016.

Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine senior anthropologist Dr Soren Blau last week told the Geelong Advertiser extensive testing of the human skull had yielded some answers, but not all.

Dr Blau said the skull had been examined by an anthropologist, forensic pathologist, forensic odontologist and a molecular biologist at the institute where it remains.

“Based on the anthropological examination the individual was estimated to be a caucasian male aged in his late 20s,” Dr Blau said.

“To date the individual re- mains unidentified.”

Prof Ranson said the ability to recover DNA from remains depends on the environment the remains had been in and how badly they had eroded.

He said when examining remains forensic archaeologists wanted to find out three things — why a person has died, who the person is and how they have died.

Anthropologists will typically try to work out the age, height, stature, gender and race of the person by examining the remains.

Experts can grind bone dust off the remains and then try to extract DNA, which can hopefully be matched to DNA on file.

“If there is a skull, teeth and jaw then we can often refer to dental records,” Prof Ranson said. “If we can get a good DNA sample we can get matches … but it can also help exclude people.

“We are able to get a DNA match out of a much poorer sample than 10 years ago.”

Huge growth in technology, particularly DNA phenotyping, is dramatically reducing the time it takes investigators to uncover DNA and work out who remains once belonged to.