Meet Our Board-Certified Forensic Anthropologist
Our forensic anthropologist, MariaTeresa A. Tersigni-Tarrant, Ph.D. is board certified forensic anthropologist (D-ABFA) and board-registered death investigator (D-ABMDI). In addition to her casework, Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant is an award-winning instructor and has taught at all levels of education including undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. She has provided training and education through hands-on activities and short courses to various law enforcement and medicolegal entities. These courses are typically focused on forensic anthropology and death investigation. She provides community outreach by speaking to elementary, middle, and high school students about forensic anthropology, death investigation, forensic science, and anatomy.
Skeletal Identification Services (SIS) is a full-service forensic anthropology consulting company based in Texas. SIS specializes in crime scene recovery of human remains; human skeletal analysis, including biological profile assessment and trauma analysis; and time since death estimation. SIS has provided skeletal remains recovery as well as skeletal analysis of fully skeletonized human remains in addition to decomposed, burned, buried, mummified, highly fragmented, and full-fleshed human remains.
Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant is the Chief Forensic Anthropologist at the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office in San Antonio, Texas. In this capacity, she assists with the identification of decedents using skeletal radiographs, analysis of humana and non-human skeletal remains during the postmortem examination, and assists the Bexar County Medical Examiners with skeletal trauma interpretation at autopsy.
She serves as a forensic anthropologist on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s Team Adam, as well as serving as adjunct associate professor in the Department of Pathology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine (SLUSOM).
Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant serves as a forensic anthropologist consultant for various other medicolegal entities in Texas, Georgia, Michigan, and Missouri. She was elected president of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology (ABFA) in 2019 and served in that capacity until July 2022. She has also served as the past president and Board of Director’s member of the ABFA. Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant also spent over ten years as the Co-Director of Forensic Education at SLUSOM before moving to Texas.
Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant received her bachelor’s degrees in Microbiology and Anthropology from Michigan State University. She attended graduate school at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she received her Master of Arts Degree in Physical Anthropology. She continued to pursue her doctorate at The University of Tennessee, with a dissertation entitled Serial Long Bone Histology: Inter and Intra Bone Age Estimation. Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant received her Doctorate. She was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in 2005 working at the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command on Hickam AFB, Hawaii. During this fellowship, she was instrumental in establishing standard operating procedures for the histological analysis of human remains for the purpose of identifying missing armed-service members.
Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant’s research interests include bone biology; human and non-human histology; child and elder abuse: patterned fractures and timing of healing; bone pathology; and developmental anatomy. Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant is passionate about education and has experience in curricular development as well as classroom and lab-based education. She has taught a number of anthropology courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as developed the anatomy/embryology/histology curriculum at various medical schools and professional schools.
