Micayla C. Spiros

Michigan State University | MSU · Department of Anthropology

Throughout the forensic anthropology and archaeology disciplines, postcranial nonmetric traits have varied in name, descriptions, and scoring methodology. This research focuses on synthesizing the literature to select the most prevalent traits, standardize their definitions, and create corresponding line drawings for each trait. By defining and ill...

Ancestry estimation methods using macromorphoscopic (MMS) traits commonly focus exclusively on cranial morphology. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the value of postcranial MMS traits, highlighting a combined cranial/postcranial trait approach to ancestry estimation using quadratic discriminant function and a variety of machine learni...

Forensic anthropologists assist law enforcement agencies and medical examiner's offices with investigations involving human remains, providing insight into trauma analysis, the establishment of postmortem interval, and the estimation of biological profile data. Ancestry is considered one of the more difficult aspects of the biological profile, due...

If needed, we have included closed captioning to improve accessibility to this presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/beNuBylj0JY

The human interpretation of analytical outputs is a significant challenge in forensic science, making it vital to explore the application of protocols as we enhance our practices. This study assesses decision making in forensic anthropological analyses utilizing eye-tracking technology to quantify an observer’s estimate of confidence and reliabilit...

Forensic anthropologists working with cases that vary in stages of decomposition are often required to process and macerate remains to complete a forensic analysis. Maceration techniques vary between laboratories, and procedures to facilitate maceration of fetal and perinatal remains are lacking in the literature. This descriptive case study evalua...

If you are interested in participating in the working group to develop a pathway towards ethical digital pedagogy involving human remains, please email us! Amber Plemons - ampl228@uky.edu Micayla Spiros - spirosmi@msu.edu

This presentation will describe stakeholder relationships encountered by forensic anthropologists during the Georgian Recovery, Documentation, and Identification Project (GRDIP). This presentation will impact the forensic science community by describing additional responsibilities and encounters with non-forensic stakeholders involved in humanitari...

Mediante el análisis de rasgos no métricos, la ancestría se puede estimar a partir de restos completos o fragmentados. El método mas utilizado, que se ajusta a las guías de los estándares probatorios, aplica a datos de rasgos macromorfoscópicos (MMS). Estos rasgos se han usado para investigar grupos ancestrales, y se pueden usar para reducir la reg...

Traditional education in biological anthropology relies primarily on hands-on, highly visual experiences. Forensic anthropologists, bioarchaeologists, and osteologists in general should aim to collaborate in developing widespread digital pedagogy suitable for our discipline, increasing digital technologies used for education and training. Considera...

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This project explores shoulder girdle morphology in scapular dimensions using linear measurements and geometric morphometric methods. My research assesses these two methods of sex estimation to determine which of the two has the lowest error rates.

To examine the utility of combining cranial and postcranial macromorphoscopic traits a variety of classification models were employed to estimate ancestry. The samples represent American Black (n=81) and American White (n=173) individuals from both the Robert J. Terry Skeletal Collection and the WM Bass Collection. Classification models using up to...

This research project aimed to create a visual method for scoring a suite of postcranial nonmetric traits, to define and illustrate the traits being used in the method, and to compare these postcranial nonmetric traits between ancestral groups. A categorical scoring method was created to analyze the usability and frequency of post-cranial nonmetric...

Three-dimensional imaging is a quickly growing part of archaeological documentation, investigation, education, and public outreach. Cost and expertise barriers to using 3D software and equipment continue to drop. Nonetheless, many efforts in 3D archaeology are driven by graduate students or focused undergraduates who become part of dedicated 3D lab...