Initiated in late 2014, The University of Queensland’s, School of Biomedical Sciences (SBMS) Skeletal Collection represents Australia’s first osteological library of contemporary Australians. It is also one of few locations around the globe where Dermestes Maculatus are used for ‘whole’ body human skeleton processing. This presentation will describe the tightly controlled indoor skeletisation process employed at SBMS, the advantages of the accelerated but natural Dermestes Maculatus process, and the quality of results produced. While initiated as a legal and ethical solution under the Queensland Transplantation and Anatomy Act to replace UQ’s established (but deteriorating) bone collection used for teaching, the new SBMS collection will also provide new research opportunities. Some of the relevant domains include characteristics of bone aging, forensic anthropology methods for determining bio-profile in the elderly and radiographic identification. The potential research utility of this resource will be discussed in association with the pre- and post- skeletisation radiographs taken for radiographic anatomy teaching.

* Portions of this work have previously been presented at the 29^th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society of Human Biology Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 2015 and the 12^th Annual Meeting of the Australian & New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists, Adelaide, Australia, 2015.