*Edit 10/21/16: Fixed broken link to pdf, sorry. :C
tl;dr contents:
- Material Properties of Bone
- Classifying bone trauma by time of occurrence
- Types of bone trauma
- Ballistic
- Blunt force
- Sharp force
- Thermal
I’m not gonna include a lot of pictures because this is a topic that not everyone will want to see images of. You can google stuff if you want to see examples, or read my final paper where everything is cited.
Material Properties of Bone
Bone is divided into two kinds of osseous material. Cortical bone is about 80% of the mass of the exoskeleton, and forms a hollow cylinder in which the cancellous bone resides. The main purpose of cortical is for structure, while cancellous bone is spongy interior that is responsible for nutrient storage and transport.

A cross-section of a human femur, look at how cancellous bone is a lot less dense than the cortical bone.
Injuries to bone are classified based on when the injury occurs.
Ante-mortem trauma: Refers to trauma on the skeleton that occurs prior to the death of the individual. In-vivo bone exhibits healing, and edges of a fracture will be fairly smooth. As healing rates differ depending on the characteristics of the individual, the same injury may look different from case to case.
Peri-mortem trauma: Refers to trauma occurring around death. Fracture patterns observed in peri-mortem trauma can be similar to those seen in ante-mortem trauma, but have sharper edges since no healing will have occurred (in most cases). Patterns will show evidence of some terminal event, i.e fast collision with an object, but fracture edges will show characteristics of plastic deformation as the external fibers of the bone tissue begin to show micro-tears.
Post-mortem damage: Refers to damage occurring after death. Bone becomes brittle once it has dried out, and exhibits ceramic-like material properties. Fractures will be jagged and exhibit no healing, and may also be irregular. I.E: Fractures lack a common correlation to an event that caused the damage, such as those resulting from post-mortem bone shrinkage.
Types of Bone Trauma
Ballistic
Ballistic trauma on bone is usually the result of a bullet or an explosive, though this categorization may be applied to any fast traveling object that has collided with bone. Features that indicate possible ballistic trauma include the presence of a projectile that can be associated with bone, fracture patterns corresponding to a high velocity impact, or fragmentary foreign material found within the bone or the environment.
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