Franklin Daniel
Centre for Forensic Science, The University of Western Australia, M420, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, WA, Australia.
Leg Med (Tokyo). 2010 Jan;12(1):1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.legalmed.2009.09.001. Epub 2009 Oct 22.
Skeletal identification has a long tradition in both physical and forensic anthropology. The process generally begins with formulation of a biological profile (osteobiography); specifically, estimation of sex, age, ethnicity and stature. The present paper briefly reviews a selection of the principal methods used for one aspect of the identification process; the estimation of personal age. It is well-documented that variability in the morphological features used to assess age in the human skeleton progressively increases from birth to old age. Thus choice of method is inherently related to whether unidentified remains are those of a juvenile or an adult. This review, therefore, considers methods appropriate for age estimation in both juvenile and adult remains; the former being primarily based on developmental, and the latter degenerative, morphological features. Such a review is timely as new methods are constantly being developed, concurrent with refinements to those already well established in mainstream anthropology.
骨骼鉴定在体质人类学和法医人类学领域都有着悠久的传统。这一过程通常始于构建生物特征档案（骨骼传记）；具体而言，是对性别、年龄、种族和身高的估计。本文简要回顾了用于鉴定过程一个方面的一些主要方法；即个人年龄的估计。有充分的文献记载，用于评估人类骨骼年龄的形态特征的变异性从出生到老年会逐渐增加。因此，方法的选择本质上与不明遗骸是青少年还是成年人的遗骸有关。因此，本综述考虑了适用于青少年和成年人遗骸年龄估计的方法；前者主要基于发育形态特征，后者基于退行性形态特征。随着新方法不断涌现，同时主流人类学中已成熟的方法也在不断完善，这样的综述是很及时的。
