Prediction of Bone Length from Bone Fragments

Forensic anthropology, as a sub-discipline of applied physical anthropology, since its inception has contributed immensely in crime scene investigations especially in identification of unknown skeletal material. It is established through numerous studies that long limbs bones have a definite relationship with stature of an individual and thus the length of a long bone could be used to predict the stature. Keeping this in view it is hypothesized that the linear, transverse, sagittal and circumferential dimensions of a long bone should also have a positive relationship with bone length almost in the same manner as a long bone length has it with stature. The present study, conducted on dry and fully ossified long bones; namely humerus, radius, ulna, femur, tibia and fibula aims at assessing the bilateral variations if any in the fragmentary measures of different long bones, correlation pattern between different fragmentary measurements and bone length, to formulate linear regression equations for estimation of bone length from fragmentary measurements and to identify certain new measurements for estimation of bone length, which have not been used by other researchers.