Comparative Osteology

Jim Russell has been involved in the Virginia Search and Rescue program since 2014 and is the founder of IS IT HUMAN, LLC (www.isithuman.us).
He is the Director of the Search and Rescue Tracking Institute (SARTI), former Group Commander of Tidewater Search and Rescue (TSAR), and a current member of the Virginia Search and Rescue Council Tracking Standards Committee.
Jim currently holds certifications as a Search Team Leader (STL), Management Team Member (MTM), and Tracking Technician (TT) from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM). Jim is also a Tracking Evaluator for the VDEM tracking program.
In 2019, Jim was hired by VDEM as an Adjunct Instructor for the Virginia SAR Program. Jim has been part of the instructor cadre for the Tracking Team Operations (formerly called Foundations for Awareness, Signcutting and Tracking) class, Search Team Operations class, and the Search Team Leadership class. Jim has also been an instructor for the Natural Awareness Tracking School (NATS) operated by Melissa Weeks (formerly by Rob Speiden until 2024).
Since attending comparative osteology and forensic anthropology workshops at Radford University, Western Carolina University, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and Durham University (UK), Jim has been researching and developing his own workshop for comparative osteology, comparing and identifying human and non-human bones that are found during searches. He launched The Russell Bone Atlas (www.RussellBoneAtlas.com) in 2019, a comparative osteology website that searchers can use while in the field to help identify bones. Jim is also on the research team helping to introduce new technologies involving the use of Alternative Light Sources (ALS), specifically in the ultraviolet spectrum, to the Virginia SAR Program human remains detection (HRD) and cold case missions.