Morphometric Analysis of Foramen Magnum for Sex Determination in Karnataka

Abstract

In most of the day today forensic practice the skeleton will be incomplete and makes gender identification difficult. Many of craniofacial skeletal structures are damaged in mass disasters; natural or manmade, making it difficult to determine the gender. In such cases the skull base and the occipital bone protected by virtue of its anatomical position and packed with large amount of soft tissue, which makes an access for sex assessment. The most conspicuous feature of the cranial base is the large foramen magnum (FM). Length and breadth of the FM was measured using Vernier calipers and the area of FM was calculated. The length, breadth, and area of FM were found to be larger in males than females and were statistically significant. Using discriminant function accuracy of sexing using FM parameters analyzed and found that Morphometric analysis of FM for sex determination should be used only as a supportive finding in estimation of sex of skeletal remains of skull.