New Method for Diagnosis of the Sex and Age-at-death of an Adult Human Skeleton from the Patella

The diagnosis of sex and age-at-death from the adult human skeleton is very important in the field of physical and forensic anthropology for the identification of a human body. Three studies of the diagnosis of the patella reporting an accuracy of approximately 85% have been published; however there is no study about diagnosis of the age-at-death on the basis of morphology of the patella. The purpose of this study is to calculate the discriminant function for sex in recent Japanese skeletons and develop a new method for age estimation by analysis of the patella. In this study, 283 recent Japanese skeletal materials (183 males and 100 females) were used. The correctly classified percentages of the discriminant functions with all the variables reached at 85%. However, the age estimation by analysis of the patella was not as reliable as that by the analysis of pubic symphysis or cranial sutures. It can be said that the age estimation by analysis of the patella is rather vague; therefore its usage should be limited for a vague estimation of age, and age-atdeath evaluated by this method may be expressed as young (score 0), middle-aged (score 1), and old (sores 2 and 3).