how long do human bones last after death?
817499
As meatwad said, it depends a lot on where the bones are, and what they are exposed to after death.\n\nBuried underground and locked in a casket, bones could last for centuries or more.\n\nIn a shallow, acidic soil in a tropical climate, exposed to insects, constant rainfall, rodents, and fungi, the same skeleton could easily disintegrate to almost nothing in less than a year.\n\nLocked in frozen ground in the Arctic, or in a desert, or underneath layers of silt at the bottom a river, the bones could last for thousands of years.  In some cases, even long enough for the minerals in the bones to interact with percolating ground water and fossilize.  Fossilized bones, if they remain protected from erosion or mechanical damage can last millions or even hundreds of millions of years.
638437
They do decay, but slowly, since they're protected from the elements.  The hot dry climate of Egypt helps to preserve them because the bacteria that cause decay can't grow without moisture.  Organic objects (human and animal bodies) went thru a preservaton process before being placed in the tombs--the organs were removed, packed in preserving fluids, placed in jars next to the bodies, so all that was left was skin, bones and muscle, and even these might have been treated with a preservative; and then they were all wrapped up to preserve them further.  A lot of effort went into preserving human and animal bodies, it didn't happen by accident.
831275
The human body contains 206 bones!\n\nThe human skeleton is made of individual or joined bones (such as the skull), supported and supplemented by a structure of ligaments, tendons, muscles, cartilage and other organs.\n\nThe skeleton is not unchanging; it changes composition over a lifespan. Early in gestation, a fetus has no hard skeleton; bones form gradually during nine months in the womb. At birth, all bones will have formed, but a newborn baby has more bones than an adult. On average, an adult human has 206 bones (according to Gray's Anatomy, but the number can vary slightly from individual to individual), but a baby is born with approximately 300 bones. The difference comes from a number of small bones that fuse together during growth, such as the sacrum and coccyx of the vertebral column. An infant is born with pockets of cartilage between particular bones to allow further growth. The sacrum (the bone at the base of the spine) consists of five bones which are separated at birth but fuse together into a solid structure in later years. Growing is usually completed between ages 12 and 14, at which point the bones have no pockets of cartilage left to allow more growth.\n\nNot all bones are interconnected directly. There are 6 bones, the auditory ossicles (three on each side), in the middle ear that articulate only with each other. Another bone, the hyoid bone in the neck, does not touch any other bones in the body, and is supported by muscles and ligaments; it serves as the point of attachment for the tongue.Also some of the ribs called the floating ribs only hang by Muscle and are not attached to the spine.\n\nThe longest and heaviest bone in the body is the femur and the smallest is the stapes bone in the middle ear. In an adult, the skeleton comprises around 20% of the total body weight.
841233
Depends on a lot of things like temperature, humidity, if bacteria/fungus capable of decomposing are present, how large the person is, when the last time they ate was, fat decomposes at different speeds then flesh and muscle and cause of death. Usually, for an unburied body 8-12 days.\n\nAlso you can have other animals (and plants) that will speed up the process. \n\nLots of insects can devourer a corpse in under a week but this may not fall under your definition of decomp. \n\nSome chemicals like strong highly concentrated acids and bases can liquefy a body in a couple of hours.\n\nFor micro organism decomposition (bacteria, fungi, excreta.) keeping the corpse warm and moist a corpse can be gone in 5-12 days above ground.\n\nIf the body is buried it takes longer to decompose, if it is contained (like in a coffin) it takes even longer. "Although an exposed human body in optimum conditions can be reduced to bone in 10 days, a body that is buried 1.2 m under the ground retains most of its tissue for a year" (quote from the web page I list as a source)\n\nIf the body is embalmed it may take a several months before it is mostly decomposed.\n\nReally this all comes down to when and how you consider a corpse decomposed.\n\nThere are many different stages of decomp. These not all stages are present in all cases, for instance you can have external decomp and internal together or just one at a time.\n\n*---*---*---*\nWarning- this part in may be gruesome:\n*---*---*---*\nAssuming a body left untouched, died of natural causes:\n\nPale skin will show up with in minutes of death because blood has stopped circulating.\n\nTypically the internal flesh of the large intestine will start first. Our intestine is littered with rotting/decaying organic matter all the time (poop) and our body is only able to stop the bacteria from rotting us when we are alive.\n\nWhen our digestive tract bursts it will release digestive enzymes that will digest our internal body most efficiently if our body is kept at living body temperature. This is where temperature can mean the difference in days and months of decomp. The body will release bile, which has a particularly awful smell. \n\nGas from bacteria make the corpse bloat up with hydrogen sulphide, methane, cadaverine and putrescine. Fat cells will liquefy and bacteria will thrive on them, the bacteria in our colon (large intestine) will have a field day. This is where the body will really start to stink.\n\nThe external flesh starts to decompose shortly after death this is because we have millions of bacteria on us all the time. Colonies of bacteria will form first in small circles in places that are the most moist and warm (mouth, arm pits, lungs). \n\nThe smell of the rotting corpse will attract Demetrius organisms like flies who will use their own vomit (actually regurgitate digestive enzymes) to assist in decomp with the purpose of making it easier for the fly to digest, and then they will lay eggs. When the larvae hatch it may be only a few days more until the corpse is simply bones, teeth, hair and finger/toe nails.\n\nOver time (many years) the bones will dry out, crack and crumble to become dust, and the corpse is no more.\n\nwww.deathonline.net lists the following stages of decomp.\nStages of Decompostion \nLiving\nInitial decay\nPutrefaction\nBlack putrefaction\nButyric fermentation\nDry decay\n\nwww.bbc.co.uk/health/ask_the_doctor/decompostionafterdeath.shtml states that "Decomposition in the air is twice as fast as when the body is under water and four times as fast as underground."
361398
average human body has 206 bones.  Some have one or two more or less.\n\nas for the joints, I've only had one today...
884176
120-day life span, an RBC makes about 75,000 round trips between the lungs and tissues. At the end of its life, it returns to the bone marrow where it is removed by the reticuloendothelial system (particularly the liver, bone marrow, and spleen). Despite the constant destruction and production of RBCs (about 300 billion are destroyed and replaced each day), the body is able to maintain a fairly constant number
804801
Death begins when the heart stops beating. Deprived of oxygen, a cascade of cellular death commences. It begins with brain cells and finishes with the skin cells. Death is therefore a process, rather than an event.\n\n When the heart stops beating\n\n1. Heart stops beating and/or lungs stop breathing.\n\n2. Body cells no longer receive supplies of blood and oxygen.\n\n    * Blood drains from capillaries in the upper surfaces and collects in the blood vessels in the lower surfaces.\n    * Upper surfaces of the body become pale and the lower surfaces become dark.\n\n3. Cells cease aerobic respiration, and are unable to generate the energy molecules needed to maintain normal muscle biochemistry.\n\n    * Calcium ions leak into muscle cells preventing muscle relaxation.\n    * Muscles stiffen and remain stiff (rigor mortis) until they begin to decompose.\n\n4. Cells eventually die and the body loses its capacity to fight off bacteria.\n\n5. The cells' own enzymes and bacterial activity cause the body to decompose - muscles lose their stiffness.\n\nTiming?\n\n    * Brain cells can die if deprived of oxygen for more than three minutes. Muscle cells live on for several hours. Bone and skin cells can stay alive for several days.\n    * It takes around 12 hours for a human body to be cool to the touch and 24 hours to cool to the core.\n    * Rigor mortis commences after three hours and lasts until 36 hours after death.\n    * Forensic scientists use clues such as these for estimating the time of death.\n\n What is rigor mortis?\n\nRigor mortis refers to the state of a body after death, in which the muscles become stiff. It commences after around 3 hours, reaching maximum stiffness after 12 hours, and gradually dissipates until approximately 72 hours after death. Rigor mortis occurs due to changes in the physiology of muscles when aerobic respiration ceases.\n\nMuscles are made up of two types of fibre. These fibres have connections between them that lock and unlock during muscle contraction and relaxation. These connections are controlled by a biochemical pathway within the cell, which is partially driven by the presence of calcium ions. The concentration of calcium ions is higher in the fluid surrounding muscle cells than it is inside the cells, so calcium tends to diffuse into the cell. High calcium levels inside the cell drive the biochemical pathway in the direction that maintains muscle contraction. To relax, muscle cells must expel the calcium ions from the cell and this requires energy molecules to pump them across the cell membrane.\n\nAfter a body has died, the chemical reaction producing these energy molecules is unable to proceed because of a lack of oxygen. The cells no longer have the energy to pump calcium out of the cell and so the calcium concentration rises, forcing the muscles to remain in a contracted state. This state of muscle stiffening is known as rigor mortis and it remains until the muscle proteins start to decompose.
1021219
Because to keep your bones healthy, you need to bare weight on them. Since you are essentially weightless, prolonged time in space would cause the bone matrix to start to break down and become "brittle" over time.
958872
The bones don't dissappear, they just fuse together.  Adults have a solid skull, but babies have the skull made of several different sections, which makes it slightly flexible, and capable of growth.\n\nThe joints also have a number of "bones" which join other bones.  These are called the Ephyses (sp?) all animals have them, so if you're cooking up like the hank, or the shank of a cow or pig or something, you can see them.  Near the joint, the bone has all these lumps, and if you cook it forever, they'll usually fall off into the separate bones.  \n\nWhen a creature reaches full size, these ephyses fuse to the rest of the bone.  Actually, each one has a different range of time when they fuse, and archaeologists can study which ones have fused to determine the age a skeleton was when the person died.\n\nSo now you know.
160718
I found my husband after he killed himself with a rifle shot to the head. I asked the mortician if he could put him back together again enough to let his children (and any of his family who wanted to) "say good bye" to him. When the children and I got to the funeral home, I was so grateful to see my husband sort of in one piece in the casket (the mortician did a great job with what he had left) that I grabbed his hand. I was so surprised that it was soft and gave when I squeezed it, because I had always thought the same thing ... that he would be hard and stiff like a statue or something.\n\nAfter rigor mortis "lets go" the body returns to a softer form. The following is what I found on the site listed in the sources section below:\n\n"Rigor mortis refers to the state of a body after death, in which the muscles become stiff. It commences after around 3 hours, reaching maximum stiffness after 12 hours, and gradually dissipates until approximately 72 hours after death. Rigor mortis occurs due to changes in the physiology of muscles when aerobic respiration ceases."\n\nSo if the funnerals you have been to were very soon after the death, the body may not have had time to release the rigors. My husband died on a Tuesday morning, and the Funeral was on Friday, so he was soft again ... more like a real person than a hard statue. He is the only dead person I've ever touched.
2357
It is a myth that hair keeps growing after we die. As our bodies begin to decompose after death we loose moisture and skin begins to shrink but hair and nails do not shrink therefore making it appear to be growing.
552213
I have dug many graves and a lot of it depends on whether there is a vault over the casket, ground water, soil types, and embalming fluids.It takes quite a while, because on the surface there are scavengers, but underground there aren`t but bacteria.I have relocated bodies and six or eight years after the burial they are still recognizable as human with a white mold covering them. I would say that a body buried with no vault might last quite a while before becoming a skeleton.
524098
I'm not going to give you the comforting fiction here. I'll just tell you the truth. Nothing happens to people after death. The last thing that happens to a person is the experience of the body failing and then ceasing to function. All the body systems, including brain processing, stop functioning. The individual loses consciousness for the last time. That final experience is the end. The person's lifeless body is then removed, etc. But THE PERSON no longer exists.
51559
As an infant, you're born with around 300 bones.  As you grow, many fuse together and you're left with 206 as an adult.  And more than half of your bones are contained in your hands and feet.  That's a lot of bones!
613043
Probably not.  Though I've lost the reference, I remember reading once that large animals (wolves, saber-toothed tigers, mammoths, etc.) would only have to get stuck and die together once a decade to produce the number of bones that have been found there.
84887
Long bones in adults don't produce blood cells (except for the parts closest to your shoulders and your pelvis).  Their marrow is filled with fatty tissue. (My theory is that long bones aren't used for blood cell production so that our evolutionary ancestors could lose an arm or a leg without jeprodizing their abiltiy to make blood cells)\n\nIn children, however, all bone marrow is devoted to the production of blood cells until the age of 5 or 6.
354938
There are 206 bones in the human body.