Morphological Analysis of the Pterion in Korean / 체질인류학회지

ABSTRACT

The morphology and location of the pterion was investigated in total of 149 Korean skulls (298 pteria). The most common form of the pterion was a sphenoparietal articulation in the incidence of 76.5%. The most common location of the pterion was in an area which covers 5 mm from the supraorbital horizontal line parallel to Frankfurt line and the incidence was 81.8%. The metric location of the pterion was on 36.9 +/-3.8 mm above the upper margin of the zygomatic arch and 26.8 +/-4.5 mm behind the posterior margin of the frontozygomatic suture. The average length of the pterion was 12.2 +/-4.4 mm. The most common form of the epipteric bone was a single bone which articulated with the frontal, parietal, temporal and sphenoid bone, and the incidence was 40.3%. The most common location of the epipteric bone was in an area which covers 5 mm from the supraorbital horizontal line parallel to Frankfurt line and the incidence was 45.2%. Morphological analysis of the pterion, when combined with some other non -metric and metric variants, may become useful physical anthropologic tools for the identification of the Korean skull.