Skeletal manifestations of bear scavenging

In many partially or fully skeletonized forensic cases, postmortem animal d amage is simply attributed to rodents or carnivores: little effort is made to determine the general size or assign a genus to the scavenger. As one of the largest wild carnivores to inhabit mountainous and forested al ras thr oughout the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada, black bears (Urs us americanus) must be considered possible suspects when skeletonized remai ns are located showing marks of carnivore damage. Since 1995, three cases o f known bear scavenging have been referred to the Maxwell Museum's Laborato ry of Human Osteology by the New Mexico Office of the Medical investigator for skeletal analysis. These cases comprise a total of seven individuals, a nd all of the remains were deposited in high altitude forests of New Mexico along the western border with Arizona with a minimum of 4 months exposure before recovery. When analyzed, all cases shared a similar pattern of eleme nt survivorship and damage. We suggest that bears can be distinguished from members of the canid family, the other common scavenger of human remains, based on the representation of skeletal elements at the scene. Rates and pa tterns of damage are not as accurate as element recovery in the discriminat ion of scavenger genus. Use of this information should allow forensic anthr opologists to better understand the postmortem taphonomic processes that sh aped the skeletal remains, and hopefully prevent misdiagnoses of perimortem trauma on elements not typically scavenged by canids.