Table 1.
The five decompositional stages defined in this study and their descriptions.
Figure 1.
Temperature recordings in the forest biotope on the lateral cage of the pig carcass.
Figure 2.
Typical decay stages followed by the pig carcass in a forest biotope.
Figure 3.
GCxGC-TOFMS apex plot of a sample (1st of May) of the advanced decay stage.
All tR are in seconds. (A) 633 hits were identified after raw data processing. (B) 218 peaks were identified after removal of column bleed (rectangle region), solvent signals (circled region), and analytes present in the reference blank samples. (C) chromatographic distribution of the 42 specific VOC compounds present in that particular sample and in at least three other samples (♦Alcohols; + Aldehydes; ○ Amides; • Amines; △ Aromatic compounds; Υ Carboxylic acids; × Ester; – Ketones; ▴ Sulfur compounds; − Others compounds).
Table 2.
List of occurrences for the detected postmortem chemical compounds by GCxGC-TOFMS.
Figure 4.
Number of released compounds according to the decay stages and postmortem time.
Figure 5.
Spatial distribution of Y-variables in a score-plot based on relative area of VOCs.
Figure 6.
Distribution of chemical classes according to postmortem time (days).
Table 3.
Volatile chemicals released in the headspace of decaying pig carcass according to the decay stages, ordered by chemical families.