Utilizing foot bones for estimation of sex: a case study from modern Chilean adults

Abstract

The estimation of sex is an important part of building the biological profile for unknown human remains. Many of the bones traditionally used for the estimation of sex are often found fragmented or incomplete in forensic and archaeological cases. The goal of this research is to derive population-specific discriminant functions from the talus, a preservationally favoured bone, for estimation of sex from a contemporary adult Chilean population. Nine parameters were measured from 220 individuals (113 males and 107 females) with age ranges from 15 to 78 years old. All nine tali variables were sexually dimorphic. Population-specific discriminant function equations were generated for use in sex estimation. Overall, the accuracy of sex classification ranged from 64.1% to 79.7% for the univariate analysis, 79.1% to 84.7% for the direct method, and 82.8% for the stepwise method. Comparisons to other populations were made and the results demonstrated the need for population-specific discriminant functions. Overall, the cross-validated accuracies ranged from 50% to 78%. The talus was shown to be useful for sex estimation in the modern Chilean population.