Many of the forensic studies analysing nail material focus on
identifying perpetrators of crimes from fingernail scrapings of the
victims (see [2–6]). There are few studies to date that describe the
extraction of DNA from nail material from decomposed remains for
identification purposes (some examples are displayed by [7–9]).
Toenails were selected for this study as they are less exposed to
exogenous DNA sources due to feet often being protected by shoes
or socks. This idea that toenails may display lower numbers of
mixed profiles when compared to fingernails has been suggested
previously