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Sex differences are present in all parts of the body, including the skeletal system. Several methods are used to analyze the sex differences of skeleton, while more recently, a new method called geometric morphometry has been used. The aim of this study was to examine the sexual dimorphism of occipital condyles on human skulls originating from the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina using the geometric morphometric method.
Material and methods
The study was conducted on 214 human skulls of known gender from Bosnian population. For analysis of sexual dimorphism of occipital condyles, we used geometric morphometry, where all the skulls were scanned to obtain three-dimensional skull models. On the obtained models, we marked anthropometric points on occipital condyles in a Landmark Editor program from which we exported data in the form NTSYS file and analyzed it in MorphoJ program.
Results
First principal component PC1 describes 26.917% of total variability, the second principal component PC2 describes 20.992% of total variability, while the first eight principal components together describe 100% of total variability. The greatest variability between the male skulls and female skulls was present in the anterior-posterior diameter (length of occipital condyles). Discriminant functional analysis of the shape and size of the occipital condyles was possible with 69.50% accuracy for male skulls and with 60.27% accuracy for female skulls. The size of the occipital condyles showed a statistically significant effect on sexual determination. Discriminant functional analysis of the shape of the occipital condyles without affecting size enabled the determination of gender with with 65.96% accuracy for male skulls and with 63.01% accuracy for female skulls.
Conclusion
Analysis of sexual dimorphism of occipital condyles using geometric morphometry showed statistically significant differences in the shape and size of occipital condyles between the sexes. The accuracy of sex determination based on occipital condyles was higher for male gender.
Background. Understanding the anatomy and morphological variability of the orbital region is of great importance in clinical practice, forensic medicine, and biological anthropology. Several methods are used to estimate sex based on the skeleton or parts of the skeleton: classic methods and the geometric morphometric method. The objective of this research was to analyse sex estimation of the orbital region on a sample of skulls from a Bosnian population using the geometric morphometric method. Materials and Methods. The research was conducted on three-dimensional models of 211 human adult skulls (139 males and 72 females) from the Osteological Collection at the Faculty of Medicine in Sarajevo. The skulls were recorded using a laser scanner to obtain skull 3D models. We marked 12 landmarks on each model to analyse sexual dimorphism. Landmarks were marked using the program Landmark Editor. After marking the landmarks, we used the MorphoJ program to analyse the morphological variability between male and female orbital regions. Results. After Procrustes superimposition, generating a covariant matrix, and introducing sex as a variable for classification, a discriminant functional analysis (DFA) was applied which determined the estimation for males with 86.33% accuracy and for females with 88.89% based on the form of the orbital region. The results of regression analysis showed that the size of the orbital region has a statistically significant effect on its shape’s sexual dimorphism. After excluding the influence of size and providing DFA, we concluded that sex estimation was possible with 82.01% accuracy for males and 80.55% accuracy for females based on the shape of the orbital region in the examined sample. Conclusion. Sex estimation based on the orbital region was possible with more than 80% accuracy for both sexes, which is a high percentage of correct estimation. Therefore, we recommend using the orbital region of the skull for sex estimation.
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