A comparison of different non‐destructive methods of age estimation in skeletal material

Abstract

The skeletal remains of unidentifiable persons, recovered in recent years from the churchyard adjoining the House of Correction in Oslo, included 91 instances in which the maxillae andlor mandibles had been preserved, and these were examined. The length of the apical translucent zone in unsectioned teeth and the amount of secondary dentine deposit have been regarded as two of the most reliable factors in odontological age estimation. This study has used two methods, each using one of these factors, on single-rooted teeth from, respectively, 78 and 76 individuals.The distribution of age at death, as estimated from the two dental methods and from anthropological criteria, was then compared with the distribution of age at death of 380 individuals recorded in the church register for the House of Correction. Age calculations from secondary dentine, measured indirectly on dental radiographs of premolars, and estimates based on anthropological criteria both seemed to approximate to the chronological age distribution better than age estimates based on the length of the apical translucent zone. Statistical analyses indicated that all three methods of age estimation were significantly different (p<0.05). When compared with the church register, each method assigned a lower percentage of individuals to the younger and older age-groups and a higher percentage to those in the middle. No statistical difference could be found between the age distribution from the church register and estimates from either anthropological criteria or dental radiographs; but when age estimates based on these two latter methods were compared, 39.5 per cent differed by more than 10 years.

Evaluation of uniradicular teeth for age-at-death estimations in a sample from a Pampean hunter-gatherer cemetery (Argentina)

“…Only two previous applications of similar techniques have been identified in archaeological contexts [37,56]. This line of analysis offers an alternative approach when the conditions of preservation and contextual association of the teeth are not adequate to use the traditional methods.…”

“…The chosen variables are adequate to analyze archaeological samples because they do not take into account the crown dimensions, allowing the inclusion of teeth with low/medium wear. Other similar proposals cannot be used in the majority of the archaeological samples because crown must be intact, with no wear or damage [15,16,18,36,37,40,67]. Previous papers compared teeth with and without wear from the same dentition, and concluded that the rate of secondary dentine deposition is not much influenced by wear [18,56,67].…”

Predictive values derived from lower wisdom teeth developmental stages on orthopantomograms to calculate the chronological age in adolescence and young adults as a prerequisite to obtain age-adjusted informed patient consent prior to elective surgical procedures in young patients with incomplete or mismatched personal data

“…2)). The known association of certain phases of human dentition to chronological age was already used for different purposes, predominantly in dental treatment planning and in forensic sciences [1], [2], [4], [5], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [39], [40], [41], [42], [46], [47], [48], [49], [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], [55], [56], [57], [58], [61], [62], [63], [65], [67], [68], [69], [70], [71], [72], [73], [74], [75], [76], [77], [78], [79], [80], [81], [82], [83], [85], [87], [88], [89], [90], [91], [94], [97], [99], [103], [104], [105], [106], [107], [108], [109], [110], [111], [112], [113]. The most promi...…”

“…Identification and age assessment by means of tooth investigation is widely applied in the dental and forensic sciences in order to identify corpses and to estimate their likely age [53], [87]. With respect to forensic applications, dental, physical and radiographic findings are estimated relative to other findings of the skeleton [11], [12], [19], [27], [30], [44], [45], [52], [64], [86], [90], [91], [92], [93], [95], [101], [102], [108], [112], [113]. The application of age estimation based on dental findings in living individuals is a quite new development in the fields of forensic dentistry [61], anthropometry [104], and legal science [55].…”

“…3)). Other studies attempted to define the attainment of a chronological age of 18 years by analyzing other time-dependent biological or radiological findings of wisdom teeth with different methods [13], [14], [16], [17], [20], [21], [23], [34], [35], [56] and compared the quality of different age assessment methods [36], [52], [55], [72], [82], [83], [107]. The present study was designed to investigate several radiological findings measurable on wisdom teeth in order to more precisely determine a chronological age of 18 years or more in a given young individual.…”