BDN publishes feature on forensic anthropologist Sorg
Marcella Sorg, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Maine, was the focus of the Bangor Daily News feature, “This Maine scientist gets the call when bones are found in the woods.” When hunters or recreationists find what they think are human remains in the Maine woods, Sorg is the person law enforcement officers usually contact to make an identification, according to the article. Sorg said she is “virtually never” stumped. “It isn’t so much that I can identify all of the animals. It’s that I know what human looks like and what it doesn’t look like,” she said. Sorg also is a research professor with the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center and Climate Change Institute at UMaine, and directs the Chase Center’s Rural Drug and Alcohol Research Program, which monitors epidemiological indicators of substance abuse, particularly drug-related deaths, according to the center’s website. Sorg is the only forensic anthropologist with post-graduate qualifications in northern New England and typically works in Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and occasionally in Vermont and other states, the BDN reported. “I provide information about the identity of the remains — who it is — and if it’s unknown, what does it look like? Age, sex, ancestry, stature — that sort of thing,” she said. “And medical history. If I see evidence of a previous broken bone here, or that sort of thing.”