Determination of sex from the tibia in a contemporary Sri Lankan population

Abstract

Determination of sex from the tibial dimensions has been attempted before in different populations. The formulae developed to determine sex of one population are not appropriate to be applied to another. Seven standard variables including the maximum length of tibia, proximal epiphyseal breadth, distal epiphyseal breadth, minimum circumference of shaft, anteroposterior diameter at nutrient foramen, transverse diameter at the nutrient foramen (TDNF), and circumference at the nutrient foramen obtained from 81 adult tibiae (56 male and 25 female) were analyzed to investigate the sexual dimorphism in the tibial dimensions to establish sex estimating formulae from the tibia in a contemporary Sri Lankan population. Results confirmed the existence of sexual dimorphism of the tibia. Discriminant functions obtained resulted in the classification accuracies ranging from 61.9% to 80.2%. The most dimorphic single parameter in males was the TDNF providing an accuracy of 92.9%, while in females, the minimum circumference of shaft provided an accuracy of 70.4%. The best multivariate equation utilizing two tibial dimensions resulted in an accuracy of 80.2% after cross-validation. We envisage that sex estimating formulae established in this study for a contemporary Sri Lankan population will contribute toward the biological profiling and identification of unknown skeletal remains.