by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
Most Americans are buried or cremated after they die.
For those who want something less clichÇ, there's the Maxwell Museum's Laboratory of Human Osteology.
The lab stores about 250 modern skeletons that were donated.
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It is also home to historic and prehistoric remains from about 3,000 people.
Heather Edgar, curator of the collection, said she has an exciting job.
"There are days when people call and say, 'Oh, I found this skull out in the desert,'" she said. "They're freaking out, and then it turns out to be a piece of dog skull or something. When I come to work, I might have a plan, but I never know what's going to happen."
The lab also stores skeletons from unsolved cases for the Office of the Medical Investigator.
The skeletons are used for anthropology classes and research.
The remains are donated by people who sign up before they die, or their families donate them afterward.
"They carry around a little card that says, 'Take me to the Maxwell Museum when I die,'" Edgar said.
The body is first taken to the medical investigator, where the flesh is removed from the bones.
When the laboratory gets the skeleton, the staff members remove body grease from the skeleton and slowly dry the bones.
The bones are stored in cardboard archival boxes on shelves in a room above the laboratory.
Each skeleton is assigned a number, which is written on the box and stamped on all but the smallest bones.
Most of the donors are well-educated and have a sense of philanthropy, Edgar said.
"The main reason bodies get donated is because they want to make a lasting contribution to society," she said. "Some people also do it because they can't afford a burial or something. We're a really cheap, easy way to dispose of a body."
The family or donor has to pay to have the body transported to the medical investigator, which costs about $75 in Albuquerque.
UNM professors and graduate students are on the donor list, Edgar said.
"I had somebody meet me at a party and say, 'I've been wanting to meet you. I'm one of your body donors,'" Edgar said. "That was kind of disturbing."
The museum is a good alternative for people who want to donate their bodies to science but have been rejected by medical schools or other programs.
Hospitals often reject donors because they have unusual medical conditions, Edgar said.
"They do that because they want people that are good examples of the general population," she said. "We study how people are unique. We're happy to take normal people, but we're happy to take abnormal people, too."
The laboratory only rejects donors who have blood-borne diseases, such as hepatitis or AIDS.
Graduate student Carmen Mosley, a lab assistant, said she enjoys working with the collection.
"The aspect of it that I like is that it's like a puzzle," she said. "You have all these pieces and information, and you have to figure out what it means."
The University of Tennessee has the only other collection of modern skeletons in the United States that is still accepting
donors.
The collection is valuable because there is detailed information about the people the skeletons came from, Edgar said. That makes it possible to do studies about things such as work-related stress on the skeleton,
she said.
The laboratory has information such as gender, occupation, age and handedness for most of the modern collection.
The names of the donors are on record, but the laboratory keeps them confidential.
Monica Mondrag¢n, a graduate student who works in the lab, said she's there because she likes skeletons.
"It's a really underestimated organ," she said. "It's so important, but you never see it. Most people don't really think about it being there."
