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by Jeff Benedict (Author)
"A fast and exciting read. . . . This survey of Owsley's career will appeal to both science and legal buffs." --Publishers Weekly
The story of the Smithsonian's brilliant forensic anthropologist and the 9,000-year-old skeleton that sparked his landmark lawsuit against the U.S. government
When he is not studying ancient skeletons, Doug Owsley is enlisted by the State Department and the FBI to identify remains. He has worked on some of the most notorious tragedies in recent history--Bosnia, Waco, 9/11 and Jeffrey Dahmer's victims among them. When an anthropologist in Kennewick, WA, calls Owsley to help study a 9,000 year-old caucasoid skeleton, he gets caught up in a battle against the Justice Department and Indian tribes who claim the skeleton is Native American and should be buried and not analyzed.
Owsley, backed by scientists worldwide, files suit against the government and is now at the forefront of a landmark case--currently pending a ruling in the U.S. District Court--that may alter repatriation laws and have a significant impact on the classic views of Native Americans, migration patterns, and anthropology, as well as our understanding of prehistory.
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A curator for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Doug Owsley painstakingly rebuilds skeletons, helping to identify them and determine their cause of death. He has worked on several notorious cases -- from mass graves uncovered in Croatia to the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon -- and has examined historic skeletons tens of thousands of years old. But the discovery of Kennewick Man, a 9,600-year-old human skeleton found along the banks of Washington's Columbia River, was a find that would turn Owsley's life upside down.
Days before Owsley was scheduled to study the skeleton, the government seized it to bury Kennewick Man's bones on the land of the Native American tribes who claimed him. Along with other leading scientists, Owsley sued the U.S. government over custody. Concerned that knowledge about our past and our history would be lost forever if the bones were reburied, Owsley fought a legal and political battle for six years, putting everything at risk, jeopardizing his career and his reputation.
