Forensic anthropologists played a key role in identifying the bodies of victims of the recent plane crash near Buffalo, N.Y. Dawnie Steadman, an associate professor in the department of anthropology at Binghamton University, was one of the anthropologists.

The Feb. 12 plane crash killed 49 people, including all of the passengers and crew, and one person on the ground.

“I’m motivated by helping a family,” Steadman said. “Any family, anywhere, get that closure that comes with knowing what happened to their loved one.”

Steadman, as well as many of the other forensic anthropologists who began work in the immediate aftermath of the crash, is part of a group called DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team). DMORT is part of the National Disaster Medical System, which operates under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Steadman has been a member for over a decade.

Besides the crash of flight 3407, Steadman had been involved in several other high-profile cases throughout the years.

“I was involved with the efforts to locate victims from World Trade Center,” Steadman said. “And I was also involved in assisting with the identification of individuals from the Noble, Ga., crematorium incident.”

Steadman has also been involved in many local cases, including helping to bring closure to the disappearance of murder suspect Lester Harris Sr. in 2001. Steadman was able to identify his remains after Harris disappeared for four years, following police suspicions that he shot and killed his daughter.

In 2006, Steadman identified the remains of Edward E. Hatton, a developmentally disabled man who died of hypothermia after walking away from a state-run facility.

Aside from being part of DMORT, Steadman is also a member of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology (ABFA).

Steadman began in pre-med, she said, then became interested in anthropology and how to combine the two. Biological anthropology, specifically, forensic anthropology, was the result.

“What it is is an application of all the principles of skeletal biologies applied to medical legal problems, such as estimations of age or stature,” she said. “We look for any typologies that might be specific to person: healed fractures or diseases that shows up in bones. That helps to identify the individual.”

For any students interested in pursuing forensic anthropology, or just anthropology in general, Steadman offered the following advice:

“The key to doing forensic anthropology is to get a very broad education in the hard sciences as well as social sciences, so I encourage them to take biology, genetics and chemistry, as well as biological anthropology and sociology.”

Though there aren’t many forensic courses at BU, Steadman said, she teaches a 300 level class, as well as an overview course at the 200 level.

“Usually that’s the place where students interested in some field of forensics can learn about the specific fields and find out what their interests are,” she said.