Toward the adoption of cementochronology in forensic context

Abstract

Because acellular dental cementum is considered to be formed continually throughout life and to not undergo remodeling processes, cementochronology is considered to be a method with the potential for directly assessing chronological age. Considering that most previous studies on humans have assumed the superior performance of this method, it is surprising that this technique is not more widely adopted in anthropology. To understand this controversy, we highlight that there is no standardized procedure for sample preparation. The numerous technical approaches that exist impact the reliability of the method, and the recent creation of an international work group (Cementochronology Research Program) demonstrates the need for researchers to share their experience to overcome these obstacles. This paper aims to address this paradox by debating the aspects that contribute to the limited use of this method and by illustrating its potential through an application on forensic cases. A protocol, which was recently certified according to the ISO-9001, was applied to nine anthropological cases from the Forensic Medicine Institute of Lille (northern France) and compared with routine osteological and dental methods. The results show that traditional methods matched the known age due to the wide extent of their range, while the accuracy and precision of cementochronological estimates was also notable. This paper establishes that cementochronology may serve as a particularly important tool for age estimation for forensic anthropologists and should, at least, be used in addition to other methods.

Age at death estimation by cementochronology: Too precise to be true or too precise to be accurate?

“…To establish procedures to ensure reproducibility of the estimates, we adopted an ISO‐9001 certified protocol to reduce the instinctive approach (Bertrand, ; Colard, Bertrand, Naji, Delannoy, & Bécart, ). This standardized protocol enables to get rid of errors inherent in tooth preparation and, if a bias exists, to make it constant to minimize it.…”

New Insights on the Composition and the Structure of the Acellular Extrinsic Fiber Cementum by Raman Analysis

“…The crown and upper third of the root were removed. Two sequential, 100-μm, non-decalcified cross-sections from the cervical third of the root were prepared according the ISO-9001 certified protocol for cementochronology [32], and two additional sequential longitudinal 100-μm sections were prepared. Cross-sections were made perpendicular to the exterior of the root to improve the distinction between incremental lines according to Maat et al [46].…”

“…Some studies have investigated whether the cementum layering pattern is produced by collagen fibers that change their orientations [11–17] or crystallite direction [18], have different mineralization patterns [16, 19–22], contain collagen packing as in bone [23,24] or exhibit variations in their organic or inorganic matrices [20,25]. The absence of remodeling and the assumption of continuous and slow growth materialized by the specific alternating pattern have attracted interest from zoologists [26], human biologists [27,28], bioarchaeologists [29–31] and forensic anthropologists [32]. Indeed, counting the cementum incremental lines is widely considered a good method of estimating the calendar age of an individual.…”

An interdisciplinary study around the reliquary of the late cardinal Jacques de Vitry

“…For this reason, we applied a sex determination method using cranium characteristics [12] and discriminant functions based on tibia measurements [13, p. 240-242]. In order to estimate the age at death, we used the dental wear [14], the closure of the cranial sutures [13, p. 120-121] and cementum analysis [15]. The stature was estimated using equations of Olivier et al, and computed from the length of long bones originating from a French sample [16].…”