FINGERPRINTS OF A GROUP OF WESTERN AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES

Abstract

Introduction O EVERAL studies have been made on the fingerprints of Australian Aborigines. ^ Regions studied (see Singh, 1968, for summary to date) include Western Australia (police file, Perth and Kalumburu Mission), various localities in Arnhem Land, Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and Central Australia. The results of all these studies show that Australian Aborigines have generally a higher pattern intensity index than most if not all other ethnic groups studied so far. The same conclusion arises from more limited studies on the mean ridge-count summed over all 10 digits for Central Australia (Robson and Parsons, 1967) and for Mornington Island (Singh, 1968). This is reasonable since where studied the pattern intensity index and ridge-count are highly correlated (Parsons, 1964 ; Pons, 1958). In this paper the pattern intensity indices and ridge-counts of a group of fullblood Aborigines from Wiluna in Western Australia will be presented.