In the woods outside Huntsville, Texas, scientists are trying to determine whether they can use the microbes that live on the human body as microscopic witnesses that could help catch criminals.
It's a strange scene at the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science Facility. At first, it's easy to miss the human bodies scattered among the tall pines, wild grass and weeds.
Jessica Metcalf, a microbial ecologist at the University of Colorado, says the mapping of changes in bacteria on human remains at the facility in southeastern Texas "is really pushing the envelope of microbial forensic science."
"We hope microbes can tell crime scene investigators how long a person has been dead," Sibyl Bucheli of Sam Houston State University explains, as she leads a group of researchers and visitors from NPR through a tall, chain-link fence surrounding the facility and down a dusty path to her research plot.
