Ascertaining year of birth/age at death in forensic cases: A review of conventional methods and methods allowing for absolute chronology

Lynnerup, Niels; Kjeldsen, H.; Zweihoff, R. F.; Heegaard, Steffen; Jacobsen, Christina; Heinemeier, Jan

doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2010.03.026

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Concealment, denial of pregnancy, newborn abandonment and neonaticide are probably rare, but much may depend on the autopsy findings. Often a central question will be whether the newborn baby was alive at birth, which may have very direct implications for the criminal prosecution of these cases [27]. The autopsies dealing with neonaticide should therefore be performed by forensic pathologists with experience in this area.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abandonment of newborn infants: a Danish forensic medical survey 1997–2008

Gheorghe

Banner

Hansen

et al. 2011

Forensic Sci Med Pathol

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Concealment of pregnancy and newborn infant abandonment are closely associated with neonaticide, the killing of an infant within the first 24 h of life or less than 28-30 days depending on the jurisdiction. Abandonment of newborn infants occurs throughout the world and often the outcome for the infant is death. Together with neonaticide it is felt to be one of the least preventable crimes. In this retrospective study we present all forensically known Danish cases of abandoned newborn infant corpses, covering the period from 1997 to 2008. Eleven newborn infant corpses were found; we registered characteristics of the newborn infants and the circumstances of the cases based on autopsy reports. One further newborn infant was included, dating back to 1992, as it was found to be connected with one of the later cases. The mean age of the women who abandoned their newborn infants was 22 years, and five of the autopsied newborn infants were probably alive when abandoned. In two cases the newborn infants were half siblings and abandoned by the same mother. The time span from abandonment to when the newborn infant was found ranged from hours to 7 years. Two-thirds of the newborn infants were girls (66.6%). The most common means of disposal was in a plastic bag (~60%); only one newborn infant was wearing clothes when found. Causes of death were usually given as asphyxia, brain injury or simply undetermined. Two-thirds of the newborn infants showed signs of violence. None of the newborn infants had congenital malformations.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abandonment of newborn infants: a Danish forensic medical survey 1997–2008

Gheorghe

Banner

Hansen

et al. 2011

Forensic Sci Med Pathol

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“…Other dating issues in forensic science relate to the determination of the age of dead or living people. This may be useful for identification purposes (i.e., knowledge about the age of a unidentified body may be helpful in the identification process [12]) or for legal reasons (i.e., the penal responsibility of a minor is not the same as an adult [13]). …”

Section: Dating Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A few practical examples of these influencing factors on aging kinetics of traces have been reported in the literature for ballpoint inks and bloodstains (e.g., effect of ink brand [32] and blood donor [33]), for fingerprints (e.g., effect of porosity of substrate [27]), gunshot residue and time of death (e.g., effect of temperature [34,12]). It is very rare that all influencing factors are comprehensively studied for a given trace type and this remains a major drawback for dating using this approach.…”

Section: Agingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Situating forensic traces in time

Weyermann

Ribaux

2012

Science & Justice

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Situating events and traces in time is an essential problem in investigations. To date, among the typical questions issued in forensic science, time has generally been unexplored. The reason for this can be traced to the complexity of the overall problem, addressed by several scientists in very limited projects usually stimulated by a specific case. Considering that such issues are recurrent and transcend the treatment of each trace separately, the formalisation of a framework to address dating issues in criminal investigation is undeniably needed. Through an iterative process consisting of extracting recurrent aspects discovered from the study of problems encountered by practitioners and reported in the literature, common mechanisms were extracted and provide understanding of underlying factors encountered in forensic practice. Three complementary approaches are thus highlighted and described to formalise a preliminary framework that can be applied for the dating of traces, objects, persons and indirectly events.

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“…Medical examiners have been able to determine the age of an individual by examining dental records and various features and measurements of the skeleton (Lynnerup et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Telomere Length Measurement by Quantitative Real-time PCR: A Molecular Marker for Human Age Prediction

Alhusseini¹,

Madboly²

2016

American Journal of Biochemistry and Biotechnology

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The fact that telomere shortening occurs with aging leads to the hypothesis that a correlation could be made between Telomere Length (TL) and suspect age. This study aimed to assess if TL can be used as an investigational tool to predict human age through developing a formula based on this correlation with accuracy suitable to be applied in forensic practice. A quantitative real-time PCR study was carried out on 80 Egyptians, ranging in age from 1-79 years. The results confirmed that the relative TL significantly shortened with aging; "r" = -0.903 (p<0.001). The human age could be determined by the following formula: (Y = 66.9-28X), (Y: Age in years; X: Relative TL), with a regression analysis between relative TL and age had an R 2 = 0.815. The standard error of age estimate was ±10.14 years. The present study concluded that estimation of human age based on the relative TL measured by quantitative real-time PCR may be a useful method for age prediction, especially when there is no morphologic information in the biological samples, but the estimated standard error of age prediction in this study was quite high (±10 years) to be used with certainty in forensic investigations. Inter-individual variations in TL and variability among the gender must be also considered when applying this method. So, this method could only give a rough estimation of age and it may be a complementary method for age estimation from soft tissues.

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Ascertaining year of birth/age at death in forensic cases: A review of conventional methods and methods allowing for absolute chronology

Cited by 22 publications

References 44 publications

Abandonment of newborn infants: a Danish forensic medical survey 1997–2008

Abandonment of newborn infants: a Danish forensic medical survey 1997–2008

Situating forensic traces in time

Telomere Length Measurement by Quantitative Real-time PCR: A Molecular Marker for Human Age Prediction

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