A Rare Morphological Study Concerning the Longest Bone of the Human Anatomy in the Population of the Northern Greece

Abstract

Background: The femur is one of the most researched bones in the human anatomy and forensic medicine. As the longest bone in the human body, it is well preserved in skeletal remains. The sex estimation of human remains is one of the most important research steps for physical and forensic anthropologists. However, osteometric standards built on unburned human remains and contemporary cremated series are often inadequate for the analysis, frequently resulting in a significant number of misclassifications.

Methods: In our study, we present the anthropometric data from 500 skeletons in Northern Greece, including 232 males and 198 females, as well as 430 of known age. The diameters of the femur were measured as well as the indices of robustness. For the statistical interpretation of the results, we have used the discriminant analysis.

Results: From the interpretation of the data, we concluded that all the mean values, diameters and indices of the males were greater compared with those of the females. Also, we concluded that the probability of error is quite high in all cases except the vertical diameter of femurs head, which has an acceptable percentage of error of 14.39% and can be used as a safe criterion for sex identification.

Conclusion: With the aid of statistics, we came to the conclusion that the vertical diameter of the femurs head is a safe variable for sex estimation in skeletal remains.

J Clin Med Res. 2019;11(11):740-744
doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jocmr3986