14C dating with the bomb peak:: An application to forensic medicine

Samples originating from the time period after 1950 can be radiocarbon dated utilising the C-14 bomb peak as a calibration curve. The applicability of "radiocarbon dating" of recent organic human material for the determination of the time of death of humans was tested. The radiocarbon results from hair and lipid samples from individuals with known date of death were compared with the results from two individuals with unknown time of death. An estimate of the year of death for the unknowns could be derived by this way. Due to the long turnover time of collagen in human bones it is not possible to use the radiocarbon content of bone collagen for a reliable estimate. In order to study the time dependence of the collagen turnover we tested "soft" chemical methods for the isolation of collagen from the bone matrix. First radiocarbon results of this investigation are presented. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.