Sex determination of adolescent skeletons using the distal humerus

Abstract

Accurate determination of the sex of immature skeletal remains is difficult in the absence of DNA, due to the fact that most sexually dimorphic features of the human skeleton develop as secondary sex characteristics during adolescence. Methods of assessment of adult skeletons cannot reliably be applied to adolescent skeletons because of the transitional nature of the skeleton at puberty and the variability of the adolescent growth spurt. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the accuracy of Rogers's method of morphological sex determination using the distal humerus (Rogers: J Forensic Sci 44 (1999) 55-59) to assess the sex of adolescent skeletons. The sample consists of 7 documented adolescent skeletons from the Christ Church Spitalfields collection at the British Museum of Natural History and 35 from the Luis Lopes skeletal collection housed in the National History Museum (Museu Bocage) of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Ages range from 11 to 20 years. The technique achieved an accuracy of 81% on the combined sample of 42. This method can be applied to adolescent skeletons once the trochlea begins fusing to the humeral diaphysis, which occurred by age 11 years in the test samples.

Reliability of the lateral angle of the internal auditory canal for sex determination of subadult skeletal remains

“…4 Possibly, the only exceptions are the studies carried out by Cardoso 5 and Rogers . 13 The latter achieved an accuracy of 81% on a combined sample of adolescent skeletons, between the ages of 11 and 20 years, when testing the method of morphological sex determination using the distal humerus described for adult individuals. 14 Cardoso 5 shows that the crown dimensions of the permanent canine are reliable for sex determination of subadult individuals of about 6 years of age and older.…”

Brief communication: A proposed method for the assessment of pubertal stage in human skeletal remains using cervical vertebrae maturation

“…An assessment of sex was therefore carried out for all individuals in this study, taking into account the noted problems with sex assessment for adolescents who are only in the process of developing secondary sexual characteristics (Sutter, 2003). Sex was assessed wherever male or female features were clearly present in the pelvis (Weaver, 1980;Schutkowski, 1993;Buikstra and Ubelaker, 1994), distal humerus (Rogers, 1999(Rogers, , 2009) and in individuals aged at over 16 years at death, the cranium (Bass, 2005), with priority always given to the pelvic criteria. Where no clear sex could be confidently assigned using these methods, sex was noted as indeterminate.…”

Nonmetric Sex Determination from the Distal and Posterior Humerus in Black and White South Africans

“…When using a combination of characteristics, accuracies of up to 94% were obtained. In addition, Rogers (20) assigned sex to juvenile and adolescent humeri with 80% accuracy in males and 82% accuracy in females. These results indicate that the carrying angle of the arm and its distinct features related to the distal humerus develop early and may be independent of activity level or occupational stressors, which could, in adulthood, modify the morphology of this portion of the humerus.…”