Authors
Shweta Jaiswal
Abstract
Identification means determination or establishment of the individuality of a person, living or dead on the basis of some physical findings or data. It required in cases of fire, explosions, in railway, ship and air-craft accidents (Mass-disaster), and mutilated dead-bodies, skeleton remains etc. The goal of identifying skeleton remains is to establish the identity of particular bones that have characteristic features belongs to a particular diseased person. Forensic anthropologists will develop linked between a victim and their bones through the determination of age, sex, race, stature, and also the biological profile of the remains. Generally the identity of victim estimated by comparing or matching the antemortem and post-mortem data. But in disaster cases there is less chance to recover expected clues about the victim, so no possibility to found current data because the victim’s body not recovered as a proper way or sometimes found only a part of the body. In this review paper, the establishment of identity of a victim disaster has been done on the basis of age, sex, height of the bone. Key Words: Skeleton Remains, Victim Disaster, Identification, Bones.
Introduction
It is a very challenging task for forensic anthropologists to identify disaster victims. They play an important role during the identification process while applying anthropological techniques in a consistent performance, objective, efficiency, analysis, and develop the biological profile of the remains. When there any bone like, whole, large piece, or any fragment of bone founded in burnt, bleached, or damaged condition, the microscopy used for confirmation of the material is bone which detects the presence of haversian canals in the bone. The determination of species of bone is also reliable and can be observed through macroscopically or microscopically both. A Plexiform bone in which the haversian canals arranged in geometric manner and bind with each other with no bone present between them which is present only in animals but in humans, the haversian canals present in a continuous manner and there is bone between them (Siegel and Mirakovits, 58-61). After that all in this study the process of identification of disaster victims through age and height of the deceased. Forensic Odontology is one of the most identifiers for identification of a victim of mass disaster and it is considered to be a specialized and reliable method.
Age of Deceased
The determination of age of the deceased, the following data should be collected:
Height and Weight: These are not of much importance in the case of adults but important in the case of a fetus. This can be done through the measurement of length from crown to heel in centimeters. During the first five months of gestation, the square root of length gives the approximate age of the fetus in months, and during the last five months of gestation, the length is divided by five. It is difficult to established age till dentition in the absence of documentary evidence but with the help of X-ray by showing different ossification areas of bone.
Number of Teeth Present: This is one of the most reliable methods through the eruption and formation of teeth at different ages. There are charts available showing significant differences of teeth mature.
References
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| APA Style | Jaiswal, S. (2020). Skeleton Examination Used in Victim Disaster Identification. Academic Journal of Anthropological Studies, 3(1), 06–10. |
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