Authors
Niharika Mishra
Abstract
Neck, a part of human body consists so many bones in which hyoid bone is one of them. The hyoid bone has unique structure and also support the different functions of the speech and swallowing. At the time of birth, the hyoid bone consists of the central body and pairs of right and left greater and lesser cornua. The fusion of greater cornua occurs with normal body at certain age, but not occur in all individuals. The hyoid bone plays a crucial role in the identification of cause of death as it is fractured in cases of throttling, hanging and strangulation that is come under the department of Forensic Medicine for the purpose of examination of post-mortem. During the post mortem, the forensic pathologist try to find out the cause and manner of death, if hyoid bone is found to be fractured, the suspicion arouse and that leads to the investigation to solve the mystery. In this paper, we discussed about the role of hyoid bone in solving the case. Keywords: Hyoid Bone, Greater and Lesser Cornua, Hanging, Strangulation, Throttling
Introduction
Biological profile is developed for the identification of the unknown skeletal remains in which using the least likely bone, that is hyoid bone (Kindschuh, 1). Hyoid bone is visualize in “U”, “V”, “horseshoe” and asymmetrical shape which is present in the neck’s anterior part, tucked between the larynx and mandible and not joint with any other bones. It is contain many functions include support to the tongue and attached with various muscles which is helpful in speech, swallowing, maintenance of airway and prevention of regurgitation. (Nikita, 22; Fakhry, et.al, 2013). The hyoid bone is useful for anthropologist to estimate the age, sex and ancestry. In several studies, the morphology (shape and size) is useful for the purpose to differentiate the sexes using statistical methods, analysis of discriminant function and standard method through recovered hyoid bone. Ancestry is one of the most important and difficult part of the biological profile which can be identified by new methods like metric methods for their precision. Physical anthropologist uses the equation of discriminant function analysis (DFA) to estimate ancestry and sex (Kindschuh, 1). This type of bone contain greater importance in the examination of forensic pathologic includes decomposed, skeletonized and fresh bodies where occur the possibility of strangulation because of greater force was applied onto the neck due to which hyoid bone was fractured (Matshes, et.al,136).
References
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| APA Style | Mishra, N. (2019). The Importance of Hyoid Bone in Personal Identification. Academic Journal of Anthropological Studies, 2(1), 16-20. |
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