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Last updated 12:53 PM on 4/18/26
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6 Terms

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Dublin Murder victim

  • Meier-Augenstein & Fraser (2008)

  • Severely mutilated and unidentified body in Dublin

  • Isotopes used to construct recent and long term history

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Findings

  • Carbon ruled out a North American Origin

  • Oxygen/Hydrogen values confirmed Dublin residence

  • Bone oxygen values pointed to the Horn of Africa

  •  DNA testing confirmed him as a Kenyan immigrant and next of kin was found

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Vietnam war casualties and border crossers

  • Bartelink et al (2018)

  • Uses isotopes to help identify unidentified human remains in two real-world contexts: Vietnam War casualties and undocumented border crossers found deceased in South Texas

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US solider findings

  • Carbon isotopes alone could distinguish US soldiers from Southeast Asian individuals with 96.7% accuracy, because Americans consume far more C4 plants (corn, sugar) than Southeast Asians

  • Oxygen/Strontium isotopes were able to narrow down even further

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Unidentified border crossers

  •  One individual was correctly linked to El Salvador using oxygen isotopes alone, while another showed isotope values inconsistent with Latin America, suggesting she may have spent her childhood in the US rather than Central America.

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Conclusion

  • SIA works best as a tool for eliminating regions of origin rather than pinpointing an exact location, and must be used alongside other forensic evidence