Dumped body (Illinois State Police case Highway 64). Animal scavenging on face and left arm. This victim was subsequently identified as a prostitute and drug user with arrests in both Illinois and Missouri.
Fig.1 Dumped body.
The phenomenon of postmortem animal interference with human bodies or their remains is a substantial part of the taphonomic processes a body undergoes after death and animal depredation occurring after death is routinely encountered in forensic pathology. Postmortem injuries can be inflicted by all kinds of animals, irrespective of their size or environmental origin, whether from land, sea, or air. The discrimination between antemortem injury versus postmortem artifacts generally presents no difficulties because of the total absence of hemorrhages and reddening in the tissue adjacent to the wound margins and the lack of any vital reaction under the microscope.
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