Forensic Osteology

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Forensic anthropology is the application of the science of physical anthropology to the legal process (1). Forensic anthropology has several fields such as forensic osteology, forensic odontology and archaeology. Forensic osteology is very important for identification unknown human skeletal remains in different situation such as natural death, disaster, murder and suicide (2). The important four characteristics of forensic anthropology to identify unknown skeletons are sex, age, stature and race, respectively (1). When forensic anthropologist found each bone in several places, the first problem that forensic anthropologist usually question is bones are human or animal (2). Bones would identify about sex, age, stature and race if the skeletal …show more content…

Document of age at death from unknown skeletons is very important because this data determines information about reason of death regardless of passed time after death (7). The investigation of estimation of chronologic age in cadaver, living human and skeletal remains has several methods (8-11) such as visual morphological method (12-16), histomorphometric method (17-19), CT-scan (20-23), radiography (24-26), MRI (23, 27, 28) and racemization of aspartic acid (29-33). Radiology and visual morphological methods of dental and development of skeleton do not appropriate for adults (34)because these methods have wide range of age (8, 34, 35), large standard error of estimation (35) and more closer biological age than chronological age (8, 34, 36). The study of age estimation had various bones such as pubic symphysis (16, 37, 38), auricular surface (15, 39), skull (40-43), vertebral column (13, 14), vertebral body and facet joints (12), sternal end of clavicle (44) and other …show more content…

The histomorphometric method is a quantitative determination by measurable morphology of osteon. Microscopic examination of cross-section of bone is used to measure the histomorphometric features of osteon and apply to confirm the relationship between bone and age at death. The histomorphometric method reduces subjective determination, decrease the level of experience for estimation of age (35), useful in constructing paleodemographic models and for forensic identifications and adult fragmentary skeletal remains are encountered (17). The osteon remodeling process contributes to bone variation differs among population groups and type of bone (49, 50). Furthermore, age-estimating research based on various population groups, especially Korean population, with different bones has been extended. The sternal end of the fourth rib and anterior cortex of the femur were tested for use to as samples (51, 52). However, previous research has not examined the extent and range for applying additional bone materials that can be assessed in several forensic situations. Moreover, very few studies focused on the clavicle, except in Caucasian populations (17) and a Thai population did not study in histomorphometric method from clavicle. Hence, we decided to study the

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