Hair is where I get off

[drc]

Collecting, or at least keeping, hair is an age old thing. A Civil War soldier might carry a locket of his wife's hair into battle. You can find Daguerreotype jewelry with hair of the pictured person inside.

I talked with a science professor about celebrity hair, and, for a celebrity long dead, he didn't know how you would scientifically identify the hair as being his or hers, without already having known genuine hair for comparison. Even if you can identify it as being from the family, as the granddaughter is still living and you can examine her hair, that doesn't by itself match the questioned hair to the individual. After all, if the black hair in auction came from Ted Williams' hairbrush, that doesn't automatically mean Ted was the only one in the Williams family using the brush. He said maybe there were times where the circumstantial evidence, including provenance, is very compelling, and where the hair may have supporting general qualities (black, blonde, thick, etc), but he didn't see how anyone was doing scientific matching of F. Scott Fitzgerald's or John Pershing's hair.

[Vintagedegu]

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[drc]

That might be correct about the Woolly Mammoth hair card being more reliable. For positive verification, the scientist only has to narrow it down to the species. I would assume there are many qualified experts out there who can verify the species of animal, especially considering there aren't many hairy elephants walking around anymore.

[scooter729]

Sounds like it might be easier to authenticate a witch's prayer blanket than 150-year old hair...