As a public health precaution due to COVID-19, all Smithsonian museums are temporarily closed. We are not announcing a reopening date at this time and will provide updates on our websites and social media.
For over a century physical anthropologists in the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology have assisted law enforcement agencies and medical examiners in the retrieval, evaluation, and analysis of human remains in order to identify victims and solve crimes.
These are some of the tools forensic anthropologists at the National Museum of Natural History use to analyze human bones. What do the bones reveal about the individuals they belonged to? Video courtesy of the History Channel.