THE spine of a corpse in a forensic case can tell investigators whether the person was right or left handed.
Jennifer Synstelien and Michelle Hamilton at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville examined 100 skeletons known to be left or right handed, looking in particular at the curvature of bumps on the vertebrae that attach to muscles moving the shoulders and arms. They suspected that the extra movement in the favoured arm might change the curve of this bone.
Only around a quarter of the vertebrae had a curved bump, they told the American Academy of Forensic Scientists conference in…
