Chapters 3-4, Bolts of Bones, The Enfolding Earth Summary and Analysis

Maples's laboratory is full of dry bones but the bones can still tell stories to him and his students. Bones are often burned, boiled, desiccated, are bones of martyrs, murderers, and so on. Skeletons of all kinds are housed there. The lab is built according to Maples's design in 1991. The security is as tight as it can be, given the legal importance of the skeletons. It has a safety shower, three "odor hoods" and many ventilated enclosures. Sometimes the odors are terrible.

Full skeletonization can be very rapid, as quickly as nine days depending on the environment. Maples's friend, Bill Bass, helps uncover a decay rate facility to study just this problem. In Maples's morgue, they process thirty to forty bodies a year, all of which are...