Sex assessment from contemporary Mexican postcranial long bones.

Abstract

The estimation of sex is crucial in forensic anthropology for human identification. Particularly in Mexico, there is a need for methods suitable for complex forensic contexts where skeletal elements are incomplete and/or fragmented. Based on this premise, research using bones from the postcranial skeleton have shown promising results, especially with long bone measurements of the extremities, which have proven to be reliable sex indicators.The aim of this study was to develop discriminant functions and cut-off points for variables evaluated in sex estimation for human identification in a forensic context. A total of 30 measurements were taken from the long bones of the extremities of 122 individuals (31% female and 69% male) from the skeletal collection housed at the Physical Anthropology Laboratory in the Anatomy department of the School of Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Results indicate significant differences between females and males in all measurements. Cut-off points were established for each skeletal element and 10 discriminant functions were generated. The results showed correct classification percentages ranging from 63.5 to 91.9% with the cut-off points and from 73.1 to 91.4% with the discriminant functions. Therefore, we recommend these methods be used for sex estimation in diverse forensic contexts for human identification.