DETERMINATION OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BODY MASS LOSS & TOTAL BODY SCORE WITH POST MORTEM INTERVAL USING LINEAR REGRESSION MODEL IN JUVENILE CARRIONS

Providing accurate and reliable measures of decomposition is paramount for forensic research where decomposition progress is used to estimate time of death. Mass loss is routinely used as a direct measure of biomass decomposition in ecological studies, yet few studies have analysed mass loss in relation to linear regression models on cadavers to determine its usefulness for modelling the decomposition process. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between body masms and total body score with post-mortem interval (PMI) and to develop a linear regression model that can accurately predict PMI. Mass loss was examined in decomposing pig cadavers with different modes of death; stab wounds, blunt force trauma, poisoning and compared with other common decomposition metrics, such as total body score and ADD. Pearson correlation analysis was used to deterime the relationship between decomposition and independent variables. The two measures of decomposition revealed two similar patterns of decmoposition on teh stabbed and blunt forcepigs, and contrasting pattern in the poisoned pig where TBS stablised at similar avlues, but mass loss differed greatly. TBS displayed similar patterns in the pigs, the TBS increasing more rapidly in pigs SJB and SJS compared with SJP but both eventually reaching similar TBS values in late decmoposition. Findings from the study showed that the mass loss statistically (P