Osteological Profile Essay

Osteological profile is a traditional method based on the assessment of bones, which can aid in determining certain characteristics of a victim such as age, sex, stature, and ancestry. Moreover, this method can identify pathological/medical conditions they might have suffer from, trauma (any injuries they might have had pre-mortem), other unique characteristics of the individual, or even the circumstances surrounding their death/discovery of the body. It is important to point out that osteological profile is just an analysis and cannot provide the identity of a victim.
This profiling method can aid on the identification of the individual whenever another source of information such as ante-mortem records are available. This is made possible through comparison of ante-molten records such as radiographies, photographs, medical records, witness statements detailing unique characteristics, and forensic
Anthroposcopy is based on the visual inspection of the human body for the purpose of identifying traits of a qualitative nature, whilst osteometry consists on a series of measurements of the skeletal components to confirm the findings/traits identified during the anthroposcopy.
Before determining the stature of a victim, it is important to determine the ancestry and the biological sex of the individual, as their ancestry and the biological sex is going to determine which calculations need to be used. There are generally three main ancestry groups, caucasian, mongoloid, and negroid. The differences on the bone structure are very subtle (shape of orbital sockets, palette shape, and nasal width are key characteristics). To estimate the sex of the individual, we can analyse certain skull characteristics as follows:
• The brow ridge of the skull: in females it tends to be more smooth, whereas in the male individual it tends to be more pronounced and