[Image of corpse] "When you see such a kind of body with adipocere, it is absolutely clear it is not a fresh body," said Michael Thali, then a young resident doctor in Bern and now a professor of ...

At first, Thali estimated this corpse to be about 6 months to 5 years old. Then he noticed the adipocere, which is naturally white, had unusual patches of intense blue. He suspected the blue had ...

It was then that the substance was named ‘Adipocere’ (now commonly known as ‘corpse wax’), derived from the word ‘adipo’ meaning fat and ‘cere’ meaning wax. The startling substance ...

It’s called adipocere, or corpse wax. What is Corpse Wax? Bury a body in most soil, and bacteria will get to it. They’ll be able to thrive, because there’s plenty of oxygen around the body.

will go to town on a corpse’s body fat, and help set off a bunch of chemical reactions that turn that fat into a soapy, waxy substance called adipocere – aka, corpse wax. It starts off all ...

and access to scavengers — all things that impact how slow or fast a corpse breaks down. In the blog post, for example, the process of creating adipocere — an organic material that's a ...

If the corpse has been buried so that anaerobic ... will go through a chemical reaction called saponification that creates adipocere, also known as grave wax. (The reaction is the basis for ...

What he found was very surprising... Bereuter had found that the layers of fat under the skin of the corpse had transformed into adipocere, also known as grave wax. Although it's derived from fat ...

Fat is one problem. It turns to soap—specifically, a substance called adipocere, also known as “corpse wax” or “grave wax” when it’s found in human bodies left in cool, wet conditions.

Adipocere is familiar to investigators — it can make identifying a body and pegging its time of death tricky — but it is foreign to those of us who don't come into regular contact with decomposing ...