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Palatine Sutures as Age Indicator: A Controlled Study in the Elderly |
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| Authors: | Jean-Pol Beauthier, M.D., Philippe Lefevre,M.Sc., Maurice Meunier,M.Sc., Rosine Orban,Ph.D., Caroline Polet,Ph.D., Jean-Pierre Werquin,M.D., Gé rald Quatrehomme,M.D.,Ph.D. |
| Affiliation: | Medico-Legal Laboratory and Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine, UniversitéLibre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.), Campus Erasme CP 629, Lennik Street 808, Brussels B 1070, Belgium; Laboratory of Anatomy, Biomechanics and Organogenesis, Faculty of Medicine, UniversitéLibre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.), Belgium.; Biostatistics, Department of Kinesiology, H.E. Charleroi-Europe, Belgium.; Department of Paleontology, Laboratory of Anthropology, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium.; Department of Paleontology, Laboratory of Anthropology, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium.; Forensic Stomatology, Belgium.; Laboratoire de Médecine Légale et Anthropologie médico-légale, and CNRS (UMR 6235, GEPITOS), Forensic Pathology and Forensic Anthropology Department, Facultéde Médecine, Universitéde Nice Sophia Antipolis, Avenue de Valombrose, 06107 Nice Cedex, France. |
| Abstract: | Abstract: Vault sutures have proven their low reliability for estimating age at death in individual forensic science cases. We broke down the palatine sutures of 134 skulls (with known sex and age at time of death) into 15 subparts and 5 stages of fusion to obtain a mean coefficient of obliteration ( C p) which was then linked to five age classes. We completed this study with multiple regression equations of total palatine suture scores. We compared our results with those obtained using the Mann method on the one hand and classically segmented and scored ectocranial suture age determination methods on the other. Palatine sutures generally do not estimate age at death any better than cranial vault sutures. Despite the partly subjective aspect of suture study, palatine suture observation contributes additional information to age-range estimation, especially in old and very old subjects where other methods lose their effectiveness. |
| Keywords: | forensic science forensic anthropology cranial sutures age at death palatine sutures |