Complexities and remedies of unknown-provenance osteology

Unknown-provenance osteology is the rule rather than the exception at most well-established university anatomy laboratories. This circumstance results from the difficulties associated with processing skeletons and consequent historical reliance on external skeleton supply - one common source is the Calcutta bone trade that operated at its peak from 1930 to 1985. This trade shipped tens-of-thousands of skeletons across the globe each year (notably without accompanying consents), potentially exceeding 2 million skeletons in total, dwarfing numbers associated with body-snatching that gave rise to the Anatomy Act in Britain. These events are extraordinary in anatomy’s history, yet it receives next to no acknowledgement in the scientific literature and countermeasures to address this situation have drawn little attention. Herein, we review articles from the popular press to provide an overarching account of the Calcutta bone trade and supplement this review with osteology from The University of Queensland’s (UQ) anatomy rooms. We outline novel and positive steps taken at The School of Biomedical Sciences to recognize and decommission unknown-provenance osteology (in all probability derived from the Calcutta bone trade) to a memorial assemblage - an action made possible via the simultaneous establishment of a new osteological collection of indefinite body donors. While the memorial assemblage cannot undo events of the past, this action awards these unknown and potentially misappropriated individuals levels of respect not previously afforded. This approach is not only favourable from an ethical standpoint, but it also offers substantially improved osteological morphologies to benefit student learning