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It was a beautiful autumn day at UW Oshkosh.

And Jordan Karsten’s students ventured outside the classroom walls, opting for the colorful campus’s cordoned-off crime scene.

… A mock crime scene, right down to the skeletal remains poking out of one faux-victim’s “KISS” rock-and-roll band t-shirt.

“They’re learning how to recover human skeletal elements from forensic crime scenes,” Karsten said, in between drop-ins to student investigative teams.

Karsten’s human osteology tended to mock-up forensic scenes in a temporarily fenced-off area on campus between Halsey Science Center and Swart Hall on Oct. 8. Students recovered real human skeletal remains as part of the exercise, which honed their skill for identifying bones and measuring, mapping and documenting crime scenes.

“This is turning into a minor in anthropology for me,” said Jamie Mikrut of Lake Geneva, one of Karsten’s students. “… It’s kind of like ‘Bones’ is the inspiration – the TV show.”

Here’s a quick glimpse of the class project and learning experience as it happened…