University of Wolverhampton - Trotter of the Yard

Studies of cartilage in pigs' trotters could help investigators looking into suspicious demises pinpoint the time of death. Christopher Rogers, a PhD student in forensic science at the University of Wolverhampton, is researching how cartilage, which breaks down more slowly than other tissue, could be used to identify the time that has elapsed since a person died. He has been researching how cartilage deteriorates by burying pigs' trotters in soil to replicate the effect of human burials in shallow graves.