The following excerpt is from a well-illustrated article posted in the March 9, 2012 edition of the dailymail.co.uk:
When the turret of the USS Monitor was raised from the ocean bottom, two skeletons and the tattered remnants of their uniforms were discovered in the rusted hulk of the Union Civil War ironclad, mute and nameless witnesses to the cost of war. A rubber comb was found by one of the remains, a ring was on a finger of the other.
Now, thanks to forensic reconstruction, the two have faces.
In a longshot bid that combines science and educated guesswork, researchers hope those reconstructed faces will help someone identify the unknown Union sailors who went down with the Monitor 150 years ago.
‘The whole idea is that a descendant might recognize them,’ Mary Manhein, director of Louisiana State University’s Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) told ABCNews.com. ‘Extracting DNA was not very successful. Those things are basically fossilized.’
The facial reconstructions were done by experts at Louisiana State University, using the skulls of the two full skeletal remains found in the turret, after other scientific detective work failed to identify them. DNA testing, based on samples from their teeth and leg bones, did not find a match with any living descendants of the ship’s crew or their families.
