New approach to skeletal age-estimation can help identify juvenile remains

SFU archaeology MA student Deanna Smith measuring a bone in the lab. Credit: Kobie Huang - New research by SFU archaeologists could help forensic teams in their work to estimate the age of the remains of children discovered during archaeological work or in criminal investigative cases. Their study is published in the journal Forensic Science International . While age is typically determined by dental records or other methods, such as measuring the long bones in the upper or lower limbs, those methods may not always be possible, especially in the case of young children. The researchers turned their attention to another approach-measuring the crania and mandibular bones, located in the skull. For their study, researchers measured those bones in the child skeletal remains of known sex and age from natural history museum collections in Lisbon, Portugal and London, U.K. The bones were from 185 children from birth to 12.9 years who lived during the 1700s to 1900s. The measurements were found to provide a valid and comprehensive approach to juvenile age estimation.