So, my plan was to publish the App, then sort out a website, then design a survey for users to let me know what they thought and then start publicising it. Thought I’d just send it to my brother Dave first though, as he teaches forensic anthropology, he sent it to his students – one of whom (another Dave) has energetically circulated it to assorted archaeologists and forensic anthropologists – as a result of which there have already been 100+ downloads and I’m getting feedback coming in from all directions!

So if you’ve wound up here as a result of one of Dave’s posts, my apologies if you’ve had no response yet to any queries, as I’ve been busy – working on my day job and getting the App ready to run on Android – will hopefully get round to visiting the various facebook groups involved soon. If you’re interested they are;

https://www.facebook.com/groups/307482916041720/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/skeletonsinthecloset/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BioAnthNews/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/8677170818/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/9399145995/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/20007038661/

Its taken longer than I hoped but Skelly-Pad is finally live on the AppStore – slightly clumsy name but it turns out there’s a musician called Dave Skelly who has albums published, so the simple ‘skelly’ I’d planned to use isn’t possible!

This initial version is free, it allows you to enter a complete skeleton and dental inventory for an Adult, with sex, stature and age assessments. There’s probably less detail than some people would like, doesn’t allow you to indicate proximal, medial and distal sections of long bones for example – but you can sketch on the skeleton diagram that the App produces to indicate these if you like.

The App has been designed to allow additional ‘types’ of skeleton to be defined so as time goes on I’ll add a version with p/m/d and also Juvenile and Infant Skeletons. If there are features or details you’d like to see included in a future version then please either comment on this blog or email cases@huntlancaster.fogbugz.com