With hand lenses and magnifying domes, a classroom full of coroners poured over pages of fingerprints Wednesday, Dec. 11.

The coroners from all over Colorado squinted at the fingerprints’ friction ridges and furrows, attempting to match the loops, whorls and arches that are unique to each individual human being.

The Summit County Coroner’s Office this week hosted a two-day class on “fingerprint comparison for death investigators.” Coroners and deputy coroners from offices in Lake, Clear Creek, Mesa and Garfield counties were among those in attendance.

“There’s so much to learn in forensics,” Summit County Coroner Amber Flenniken said. “It’s endless, and the more we learn of course the better we’re going to get.”

Coroners in the state of Colorado are medical death investigators who have an obligation under state law to identify the deceased individual and notify the family, Flenniken said. The Coroner’s Office in Summit County investigates every death that happens in the county, from accidents like fatal car crashes or avalanche deaths to homicides, she said.

Most of the time, the Coroner’s Office has enough scientific evidence to identify the deceased — but there are times that identifying an individual could require a fingerprint analysis, Flenniken said. Now, the Summit County Coroner’s Office will be able to complete fingerprint analyses itself, she said.

Forensics expert Doug Young, the instructor for the class, noted that every individual has a unique fingerprint that forms while in utero. Fingerprint analysis has been used in death investigations for over 100 years and remains a relevant practice for modern day death investigations, Young said.

“At the coroner’s offices, they’re comparing a decedent’s print against a known print, then making a determination — ‘Is this the same print?'” Young said. “It’s based on ‘What is the quality of the print and the quality of the information in the print? How clear is it? What features are in the print? Bifurcation. Dots. That sort of thing.”