Episode 83

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Published on:

10th May 2025

Animal ForensiCon 2025: Morphology Assessment of Mammals with Verity Mathis

If you ever watched the show Bones, here is the real thing. Verity Mathis talks about the collection of species and how they can help with identification of unknown samples.

The 2025 Animal ForensiCon: The Animal Forensic Investigations Conference is a three-day event, offered in Daytona Beach Shores, Florida from May 7th to 9th, 2025. The conference is hosted by the University of Florida’s Veterinary Forensic Sciences Laboratory.

ForensiCon offers workshops and educational sessions on a wide variety of topics pertaining to criminal investigations, law, small animal investigations, equine and livestock investigations, and wildlife crimes. This conference is open to anyone interested in animal forensic investigations. Attendees will also have the opportunity to network with faculty, experts, and investigators

Transcript
DrG:

The last presentation was in the morphology assessment of mammals.

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And to talk to us about it is Dr.

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Verity Mathis.

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Hi.

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Welcome to the Junction.

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Verity Mathis: Hi.

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Thank you for having me.

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DrG: So can you let our audience

know about what it is that you do?

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Verity Mathis: So I work at the

Floor Museum of Natural History.

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I am the mammals

collections manager there.

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So I take care of all of our

research collections that we

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have that are of modern mammals.

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DrG: Excellent.

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So how does that, how does

that apply to forensics?

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Verity Mathis: That's a good question.

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So, um, we have skeletal material,

hair, bone for you name it.

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If it's a part of a mammal, we have it.

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So it's a very useful resource for

comparing things that you might find at

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a crime scene or at an investigation.

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If you have a piece of bone or

a piece of skull that you don't

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know what it is, natural history

collections can help you identify that.

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And it doesn't even have to be mammal.

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There's collections for

birds and snakes and.

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You name it, there's a collection for it.

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So we can help figure out what

you might have if you don't know,

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and if DNA is not available.

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DrG: You used the term during

the lecture, mammology.

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What does that mean?

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Verity Mathis: So mammology is

basically the study of mammals.

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So that's what we do.

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We study all aspects of mammals generally.

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Some of us have more

specialties than others.

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Um, but yeah, it's just the general

study and appreciation of mammals.

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DrG: What kind of

species do you guys hold?

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Verity Mathis: So we have a little bit

of everything from all around the world.

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So we have almost all the orders

of mammals represented except for

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two very small Australian orders.

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So we, you know, we have a lot of

rodents and bats and carnivores and

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huge number of whales and dolphins.

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Um, manatees.

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Panthers.

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We have a lot of representation from

a lot of, from the southeastern United

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States 'cause that's where we're housed.

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But we also have representation from

all over the world, from Central

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South America to Pakistan to Africa.

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So we have, I think a little over 1100

species of mammals in our collection.

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Um, so it's not representative of

everything in the entire world,

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but it's a good cross section.

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DrG: I have a friend that does forensic

anthropology and they go on excavations

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and they try to dig out bones and stuff.

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Mm-hmm.

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So basically what you do would be,

uh, probably say provide samples to

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be able to compare what they pull out.

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Verity Mathis: Exactly.

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Yeah.

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So we work a lot with anthropology

collections ourselves, so especially

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our, environmental archeology

collections and paleontology collections.

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So if they find a piece of a bone and

they don't know what it is, they can

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bring it to our collection and we can

help them decide what species it was.

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And so they know the context of what

the found, you know, like if it's

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domestic versus a wild animal, um, if

it's been worked or cut, we can kind of

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help figure that out and go from there.

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Yeah.

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DrG: Do you get calls from law

enforcement to help you identify remains?

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Verity Mathis: Uh, every once in a while,

so that's part of the reason why I wanna

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come here today to give a talk, is to

let people know that we are a resource.

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'cause we actually, we don't deal a

whole, whole lot with law enforcement,

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but we are there, we've done some stuff

with the US Fish and Wildlife Service

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in the past to give, um, opinions

on evidence that they've collected.

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But it would be good to let people

know that we are a resource for

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those, those things that they

might find at their crime scenes.

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DrG: I guess so, yeah, that was gonna

be my last question was gonna be where

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do you, where do you see this going?

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Verity Mathis: Yeah, so I mean, that's

just, you know, we're, we have these

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collections of mammals and we love to

have them be useful to people not only

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for research, I mean, the foundation

of research of these collections are

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for research purposes, but they, they

can expand beyond that in so many

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other capacities in terms of education,

outreach, and identification for.

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You know, crime scene

investigations, wildlife forensics,

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anthropological questions.

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Um, just to know that it

doesn't have to be, you know,

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a specific research question.

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It can be just a purely identification

kind of mystery that we like to solve.

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And so that's why we have these

collections just to kind of help

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maybe solve those mysteries.

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I don't know.

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Yeah.

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It's fun.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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DrG: Well, thank you so much for being

here, and thank you for what you're doing.

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I think it's, it's really cool.

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Verity Mathis: Oh, thank you.

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Yeah.

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It's a fun job.

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The Animal Welfare Junction
Veterinary Forensics
The Animal Welfare Junction is a podcast developed to bring awareness to different topics in animal welfare. The host, Michelle Gonzalez (Dr. G) is a veterinarian who provides affordable veterinary care in the State of Ohio, and also a Forensic Veterinarian helping with the investigation and prosecution of cases of animal cruelty and neglect.
The topics presented are based on the experiences of Dr. G and our guests and include discussions about real cases, humane projects, and legal issues that affect animals and the community. Due to the nature of the discussion, listener discretion is advised as some topics may be too strong for some listeners.

About your host

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Alba Gonzalez

Michelle González (DrG) was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Her passion growing up was to become a veterinarian. She obtained a B.S. in Zoology at Michigan State University and the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree at The Ohio State University, followed by a 1-yr Internship in Medicine, Surgery, Emergency and Critical Care at the University of Missouri-Columbia. In 2006 she founded the Rascal Unit, a mobile clinic offering accesible and affordable sterilization, and wellness services throughout the State of Ohio.
Dr. G is involved in many aspects of companion veterinary medicine including education, shelter assistance and help to animals that are victims of cruelty and neglect.
DrG completed a Master’s degree in Veterinary Forensics from the University of Florida and a Master’s in Forensic Psychology from Southern New Hampshire University. She is currently enrolled at the University of Florida Forensic Science program. She assists Humane organizations and animal control officers in the investigation, evaluation, and prosecution of cases of animal cruelty and neglect.