Determination of sex from an autopsy sample of adult hyoid bones

Abstract

Determination of sex is the first and crucial step in the process of identifying human remains in forensic casework. Sex determination from skeletal remains is well studied and an extensively documented subject. The hyoid bone, however, has drawn less attention in studies of this nature. The present study was designed to derive a model for the determination of sex from the adult hyoid in a sample of the Indian Bengali population using discriminant function analysis on 50 adult bones (38 men and 12 women). The following discriminant function was obtained: DF = 0.103W + 0.118AP + 0.130CR + 0.483AW + 0.117DR − 20.64. Overall, 90% of the cases could be correctly classified into the two sexes by means of five predictors (overall width, length of the greater cornu, anteroposterior length, width of the body of hyoid and the distance between the lesser cornua) in the model. Cross-validated results showed correct classification in 90% of the cases. The results of this preliminary study show that these variables contribute to discrimination between the two sexes in the study population. Sexing of the adult human hyoid bone is thus possible with reasonable accuracy using the discriminant function on a sample obtained from the same population.