Fingerprints mark us out as individuals and leave telltale signs of our presence on every object that we touch, but what are fingerprints really for? According to Roland Ennos, from the University of Manchester, other primates and tree-climbing koalas have fingerprints and some South American monkeys have ridged pads on their tree-gripping tails, so everyone presumed that fingerprints are there to help us hang onto objects that we grasp.

University of Michigan researchers have developed a new tool that uses natural "fingerprints" in coal to track down sources of mercury polluting the environment.

University of Leicester experts have held discussions with military personnel in Afghanistan following the discovery of new technology to identify fingerprints on metal.

Fingerprints can reveal critical evidence, as well as an identity, with the use of a new technology developed at Purdue University that detects trace amounts of explosives, drugs or other materials left behind in the prints.

The New South Wales Government is under fire over reports a Sydney high school scanned its students' fingerprints without parental consent.

Real-life crime scene analysis of bloodstains, fingerprints, and other evidence does not match the speed and certainty on television shows such as CSI. But thanks to advances in chemistry, fact is catching up with fiction as researchers develop faster, more sensitive forensics tools, according to an article scheduled for the March 24 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly newsmagazine.

An enterprising graduate has used her expertise in forensic archaeology to launch a Cardiff-based management consultancy for the legal profession.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have devised a means of identifying partial, distorted, scratched, smudged, or otherwise warped fingerprints in just a few seconds.