Somewhere out in the countryside, hidden behind a copse of trees, are fields full of dead human bodies. They’re called taphonomic research facilities, or sometimes “body farms”—sites where forensic scientists study how the human body decomposes. We took more than 40 bodies into our care last year, and more than 50 in 2023. We also track the damage to the bodies, like how bones broke, and that can be really helpful for crime scene investigations. We are always checking in with our students, because sometimes it’s hard to see a person go through that decomposition process.