Abstract
The objective was to develop an odontometric technique for sex estimation based on dental measurements from adult individuals, and to evaluate its applicability and reliability for diagnosis of sex of nonadult skeletal remains. This study was conducted on the permanent dentition of 132 individuals (70 males, 62 females) from the identified human skeletal collection of the Certosa Cemetery (Bologna, Italy) of the University of Bologna. Binary logistic regression equations were developed based on dental measurements of the permanent teeth of the adult individuals, and these equations were subsequently applied to the permanent dentition of nonadult individuals to estimate their sex. These data show that the canine teeth of both the maxilla and mandible are the most sexually dimorphic teeth in adults, followed by the mandibular second molar, maxillary and mandibular second and first premolars, and mandibular first molar. These data provided correct assignment of sex in 80.4-94.9% of cases, which depended on the measurements used. Of the 26 nonadult individuals of the experimental sample, sex diagnosis was possible for 22, which represented an applicability rate of 84.6% of the individuals. Comparing the sex of these 22 nonadult individuals estimated by odontometrics with the known biological sex, correct assignment was obtained in 90.9% of cases. As a method of sex estimation, odontometric analysis of permanent dentition can be used successfully for nonadult human skeletal remains in both forensic and archeological contexts.
Highlights
Sex estimation of nonadult human skeletal remains with satisfactory accuracy is a recognized problem in physical anthropology
Dental measurements that showed the greatest percentages of sexual dimorphism clearly tended to show statistically significant differences between the two sexes
The present study shows that the canines in both the maxilla and mandible (i.e., C0, C,) were the teeth with the greatest sexual dimorphism, with larger values that were statistically significant in males compared to females
Summary
Sex estimation of nonadult human skeletal remains with satisfactory accuracy is a recognized problem in physical anthropology. These metric methods have been reported to be more repeatable than descriptive morphological methods (Bartlett & Frost, 2008; Ulijaszek & Kerr, 1999), they have proven to be of limited use for accurate sex estimation Such metric methods depend on the integrity of the skeletal remains under the usual circumstances of the fragmented state of preservation of fragile remains of nonadult individuals recovered in forensic and archeological contexts. The biological sex of the adult and/or nonadult individuals was unknown, and the sex was previously estimated by descriptive methods using pelvic and/or cranial features In these studies there remains uncertainty of the reliability of the skeletal sex estimation, as it first depends on the integrity and state of preservation of the bone remains. The present study aimed to evaluate the complete permanent dentition of an identified osteological collection to develop an odontometric technique for sex estimation, and evaluate its applicability and reliability for sex estimation of nonadult individuals
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