This is body's home. But when we die? The first thing that happens is basically ecosystem

collapse where you have a tremendous loss of diversity. Nathan Lentz,

molecular biologist at John Jay College in New York.

And then it bottoms out and then starts to get rich again.

That microbial phoenix, rising up from our extinguished mortal coils, it's called the

Necrobiome. And Lentz and his team tracked distinguished mortal coils, it's called the necro biome.

And Lentz and his team tracked the necro biome by swabbing the ears and noses of 21 cadavers

at a body farm in Tennessee.

Body farm's sort of an outdoor lab for forensic scientists, where bodies are left to the elements to decompose.

They track the genetic signatures of that

microbial community as it waned and waxed after death.

And they use that data to build an algorithm that could

pinpoint a corpse's time of death to an accuracy of just

two summertime days.

And that held up to six, seven weeks,

and that's way better than entomology can give you.

Entomology being the study of insects.

In this case, insects that colonize a corpse.

Entomology is okay for giving you upper and lower limits,

you know, within five to seven days, but beyond that,

entomology is not helpful.

The studies in the journal, Pla's Plus One. Now the method isn't quite

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