Autopsies play a starring role on CSI, Bones, and many other prime-time dramas about medicine and forensics. They may very well be the medical procedure that Americans have been most exposed to via ...

Eager to see the man’s heart, House pushes Foreman to plunge a whirring saw into the patient’s sternum ... Autopsies play a starring role on CSI, Bones, and many other prime-time dramas ...

The older the person at death, the more pitted and craggy these bones will be. Forensic anthropologists will compare this against a database of standard markers to learn the age of the skeleton.

Those signals travel through nerves that run through your spinal cord, which is protected by bones called vertebrae. Then there's the rib cage and sternum, which protect the heart and lungs.