Nonmetric sex determination from the distal and posterior humerus in black and white South Africans

摘要

The successful identification of human skeletal remains relies on proven diagnostictechniques for sex determination. This research utilized 608 individuals from South Africa (420males, 188 females) to conduct a blind non-metric determination of sex from three features of thedistal humerus; olecranon fossa shape, angle of the medial epicondyle, and trochlear extention.A scoring system between males and females was implemented, and the aggregate score of thethree features determined the estimated sex of the skeletal element in question. With all featurescombined, black and white South Africans were categorized successfully as either male orfemale 75.5% (77% accuracy rate for females, 74% accuracy rate for males). This classificationrate is lower than what was found in previous studies, but suggests that characteristics of thedistal humerus are still quite valuable when estimating skeletal sex. More research is needed toassess reasons for the differential expression of these traits in different populations, and todetermine if the method is non-population-specific.