Volume 14: Devastation Chapter 671: Continue the Dissection
"You mean, 'she'... has been living in this ruins nine hundred years before the new era?" asked Sergeant Ken.
Liao Xing nodded.
"'She' is a human being... at least judging from her external body structure, she is very close to humans?" Sergeant Ken asked again.
"They are extremely close. If it weren't for the pursuit of scientific rigor, it would be fine to just say they are exactly the same," Liao Xing corrected.
"And nine hundred years before the new era, only the advance team came to this planet, and those in the advance team, whether they died, disappeared, or successfully returned to the Ark... they were all men, there were no women, right?" This was Sergeant Ken's third question.
"It is possible that an advance team secretly brought women to Alpha in the early days. After all, there are some unethical experiments that cannot be made public... For example, whether humans can successfully conceive in the natural environment of Alpha, whether embryos can develop and grow in this environment, etc. But the 'participants' of such experiments will be strictly protected, and generally will not go to dangerous areas, so the possibility of disappearance is extremely low."
Sergeant Ken hesitated for a few seconds before speaking, "Continue the dissection... The force that this monster exploded with when it threw me off just now was very strong. If it was a malnourished human female, it would not have such strength."
"Yeah." Liao Xing didn't say much and directly took out the largest scalpel.
Dissection of the human body usually starts from the chest and abdomen. There are two commonly used knife techniques: one is to cut straight from the lower edge of the mandible along the midline of the neck and chest and abdomen, except for bypassing the navel, all the way to the pubic symphysis, which is called the "straight-shaped incision". The other is to cut from the mastoid process of the temporal bone on both sides along the shoulders, meet at the sternum, and then cut down to the pubic symphysis, then peel off the mandible and the skin on the chest and turn it up to expose the neck organs, which is called the "Y-shaped incision."
The advantages of the "Single-shaped incision method" are that it is fast and convenient, while the "Y-shaped incision method" will preserve the deceased's intact neck skin as much as possible. After the incision is sutured and clothes are put on, the marks are not easily visible from the front.
Now time is running out, and the 776 Special Forces Team does not need to bury the body of this "monster", so Liao Xing naturally chose the "straight-line cutting method".
The sharp blade cut through the pale skin without any hindrance, and bright red blood immediately oozed out from the wound.
Generally speaking, no matter how thin a person is, he or she will have some yellowish subcutaneous fat, but there was not a trace of fat under the skin of this corpse - if this level of "malnutrition" occurred in a normal human, this person would probably have died from various complications such as hypoglycemia, severe anemia, electrolyte imbalance, etc.... In other words, only a dead person can be this thin.
"The blood pressure of the corpse is very high. Wear protective clothing and be careful of splashing." Liao Xing reminded them, "I'm going to pull out Sergeant Ken's dagger. Blood may spurt out then."
Collins and Keno immediately put on protective clothing and full-face masks, and even wore rubber gloves that covered their elbows.
Only after both men were properly dressed did Liao Xing use tweezers to hold the hemostatic cotton, press the wound on the body, and slowly but steadily pull out the dagger that pierced the heart.
Although they were mentally prepared, the blood that spurted out several meters away in an instant still made Collins and Kino let out a low cry.
After the blood stopped spurting out, Liao Xing grabbed the edges of the incision on the skin and muscle with both hands and peeled it open to both sides.
"The heart is in good condition, but other organs are showing obvious signs of failure... Huh?!"
"What's wrong?" Sergeant Ken frowned and asked.
"The ribs of the corpse are severely calcified. This condition usually only occurs in the elderly." Liao Xing answered truthfully.
"From the appearance alone, you can't tell the age of this monster..." Collins muttered, "I even think it's a dried corpse that has been dried for hundreds of years."
Liao Xing did not respond, but continued with the work at hand in silence.
He took out a pair of pliers, cut off the calcified ribs one by one, took them out of the chest cavity of the corpse, and then skillfully picked open the fascia and muscles in the chest and abdominal cavity layer by layer.
"Heart, lungs, stomach... and kidneys... this is the pancreas and liver... large intestine and small intestine..." Liao Xing pointed out the organs one by one as if they were his own treasures. At this time, even Collins and Kino, who knew very little about anatomy, became more and more solemn.
If the appearance of this corpse only makes people suspect that this is a creature that is highly similar to humans, then its internal organs and even its skeleton tell everyone in the 776 Special Forces Team that this is a human corpse.
But when Liao Xing's gaze rested on the pubic area of the corpse, his hand, which had been holding the knife steadily, suddenly trembled.
"Bring the non-woven towels and hemostatic cotton balls," he ordered Collins.
The latter immediately found what he needed in the medical bag and handed it to him.
Liao Xing used these things to remove the blood and residual tissue on the pubic bone surface, then replaced it with an extremely thin blade and carefully scraped the bone surface.
"Dr. Liao...what is he doing?" Collins looked at Kino with some confusion.
"I'm not sure, but I feel like he's planning to use the bones to measure the age of this monster..." Kino whispered.
"Bingo!" Ke Lan, who was in Collins' perspective, couldn't help but give Kino a thumbs up in his heart. After all, the doctor was a doctor. Even in a field he was not good at, he guessed the correct answer at once.
What Liao Xing is doing now is testing the bone age of this "monster"'s corpse.
Generally speaking, it is relatively simple to measure the bone age of teenagers. You only need to take an X-ray of the wrist to detect the bone age through the epiphyseal line (that is, the cartilage at the end of the bone that has not yet developed into hard bone). But if it is an adult, the epiphyseal line at the wrist is generally completely closed, so it can only be tested through the hip joint or knee.
However, when a forensic doctor performs an autopsy and wants to determine the age of the deceased, the first choice is still the pubic symphysis.
The bone texture of the pubic symphysis, including the pelvis, changes with age. This is currently one of the most reliable methods for determining the age of a corpse. Although there will be some error, the error can basically be controlled within five years... and some more experienced forensic doctors can even reduce the error to plus or minus one year.
