NCJ Number
207699
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 49 Issue: 6 Dated: November 2004 Pages: 1165-1170
Date Published
November 2004
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This study examined the potential for determining sex from measurements of the talus (bone in the ankle) for South African Blacks, tested the validity of the derived equations on independent samples, and tested the validity of equations derived from a previous study of the current data.
Abstract
The skeletal remains used in the study were from the Raymond A. Dart Collection of Human Skeletons; only tali with no obvious gross pathologies were used in the study. A total of 120 (60 male and 60 female) tali of South African Blacks were used in developing discriminant function equations. The validity of these functions was tested with two independent samples. Sample 1 consisted of 10 tali (6 males, 4 females) of South African Blacks that were not used in the derivation of the functions. Sample 2 consisted of 10 tali (5 males, 5 females) of South African Whites. The age at death of the individuals ranged from 18 to 70 years. The left talus was measured in each case from a selection of randomly selected individuals. Nine measurements were made on each talus. Seven of the measurements produced acceptably high average accuracies (80-86 percent) in correctly identifying sex. When all nine variables were not measurable, the study found that most individual variables yielded the correct sex determination at acceptable rates. The study supported previous observations that discriminant function equations are population specific for determining sex from talus measurements, further confirming that there are bone differences between population groups. 4 figures, 7 tables, and 38 references