Cementum aging as legal evidence

Matson's routinely processes specimens for legal cases for state and provincial wildlife management or law enforcement agencies. Primarily, these have involved teeth of bears thought to be younger than the legal harvest age. For all legal cases, we prepare an extra slide of the tooth sections and store it in our permanent file. All specimen sealing, marking, and chain of evidence documentation is kept in order, recorded, and returned with the evidence (completed slide preparation) along with the age report.

Because of the extra time required, the standard processing charge for legal evidence is higher (refer to "Price List"). Implicit in evidence processing is the need for "rush", and the report will normally be completed within 30 days after specimens are received.

We will be glad to prepare photographic and written documentation of the age of the animal(s) in a legal case. In the only 3 cases in which Gary Matson has been called upon to testify, the pleas of the defendants were changed and the trials were cancelled after our documentation was provided. This experience suggests that obtaining our documentation may be a cost effective way to limit the expense of cases that may involve trial by examining documentation early in the trial preparation process. Our fee for providing documentation depends upon the time and materials required for preparation.

Gary Matson is available to serve as an expert witness for cementum age analyses conducted by Matson's Lab. Fees will depend upon circumstances and requirements of each case.

This service is available only for state and provincial wildlife management or law enforcement agencies.