Race and sex identification: a morphometric study of the Egyptian calcanei

ABSTRACT

This study was done on 271 Egyptian calcanei devided as 134 dry adult bones of unknown sex, 105 wet adult cartilage covered bones of known sex and 32 foetal calcanei of both sex. According to calcaneal bone classification regarding the number of the talar facets, calcanei were classified into three types [A, B and C]. Type C was present only in 2 bones out of the 271 calcanei. In both adult and foetal Egyptian calcanei, the incidence of type B, was significantly higher than type A with marked predominance in females. This pattern showed a particular racial distribution as that of Africans and Indians but differs from Europeans. The presence of a significant sex difference in the calcaneal types was also found in the foetal series, indicating that, the variations were genetically determined. This study proved that morphometric examination of the calcaneal bones could help in identification of both sex and race