A Boy In A Bush Anthropology

This essay assesses a scene in the episode “A Boy in a Bush” from the first season of the TV series Bones, which aired on November 8, 2005. The plot of the episode follows an FBI Special Agent by the name of Seeley Booth, and a forensic anthropologist named Temperance “Bones” Brennan, who is the focus of the series. The episode is focused on how Brennan and her team analyze skeletal remains to create a biological profile for the victim, identify the victim, and find the killer.
Booth and Brennan are called to help search for human remains behind a mall, after an anonymous tipper reported the approximate whereabouts. The field where they are looking for the body is taped off by the police to protect the crime scene. Although several parties

Age estimations are given as a range because signs used to indicate age can differ between individuals, within populations, and across different populations (Anderson, 2016, Cardoso & Ríos, 2010). Determining an estimate of age is incredibly useful in identifying the victim.
Forensic anthropologists can determine ancestry by examining skeletal remains, which are grouped into three categories: Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Identifying ancestry can be useful, but it does have limitations. A problem with limiting investigations to people of certain ancestry is that people are frequently of mixed ancestry, which may result in contradicting information between what the police are looking for and the ancestry shown in the skeletal remains.
In addition, forensic anthropologists are involved in studying taphonomy, which is the study of any activity that affects the remains since the time of death to the time it is discovered. This includes decomposition, approximate time since death, any interaction with the environment, and other organisms that affect the condition of the body. This is useful in determining an accurate biological profile from limited resources, as the human remains are not always in full skeleton form (Anderson,

Though brief, the depiction of the crime scene appeared accurate as police tape had cornered off the area where they were searching for the reported human remains.
The scene where Hodgins is providing a biological profile of the victim appears relatively accurate, besides the fact that he is the entomologist and he is informing Brennan, the anthropologist. He estimated the age range of the victim and explained it by referencing epiphyseal fusion, which looks at long bone growth and growth plates. This is a true way of estimating the age of a person based on skeletal remains (Cardoso & Ríos, 2010).
The presence of forensic anthropology in this episode was strictly conversational and did not portray any of the scientists performing lab work. Therefore, it had very little portrayal of technology within the scope of forensic anthropology. In doing so, the episode stayed within the scope of realistic technologies used to perform the tests, and did not indicate that it was relevant to the time frame or