Jellinghaus Katharina, Hoeland Katharina, Hachmann Carolin, Prescher Andreas, Bohnert Michael, Jantz Richard
Institute of Forensic Medicine, Julius-Maximilians-University, Versbacher Str. 3, 97078, Würzburg, Germany.
Department of Chemistry, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA.
Int J Legal Med. 2018 Sep;132(5):1477-1484. doi: 10.1007/s00414-018-1809-5. Epub 2018 Mar 22.
Studying secular changes on human skulls is a central issue in anthropological research, which is however insufficiently investigated for modern German populations. With our study, we focus on morphological cranial variations within Germans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To study this, we recorded different facial landmarks from a cohort study of about 540 German individuals of different age and sex by calculating their cranial size, shape dimensions, and cranial module and cranial capacity to get information about variations occurring during the decades. According to this, measured variables for Germans and Americans, to which we compared our results, were maximum cranial length (glabello-occipital length), basion-bregma height (BBH), basion-nasion length (BNL), maximum cranial breadth (XCB), and cranial base breadth (AUB). Cranial size was calculated as the geometric mean of GOL, BBH, and XCB. Samples were organized into quarter century birth cohorts, with birth years ranging from 1800 to 1950. One-way ANOVA was used to test for variation among cohorts. Over the past 150 years, Americans and Germans showed significant parallel changes, but the American cranium remained relatively higher, with a longer cranial base, as well as narrower than the German cranium. Our results should also lead to the extension of the range of populations listed and investigated for Fordisc®, a forensic software to identify unknown individuals as from their skeletal remains or just parts of them. Fordisc cannot provide a satisfying identification of European individuals yet because the database is missing enough European reference samples.
研究人类头骨的长期变化是人类学研究的核心问题，然而对于现代德国人群体的相关研究却不够充分。通过我们的研究，我们聚焦于19世纪和20世纪德国人颅骨的形态变化。为了进行此项研究，我们从一项针对约540名不同年龄和性别的德国人的队列研究中记录了不同的面部标志点，通过计算他们的颅骨大小、形状尺寸、颅骨模块和颅容量，以获取有关这几十年间发生的变化的信息。据此，我们将德国人和美国人的测量变量（我们将研究结果与之进行比较）设定为最大颅长（眉间 - 枕骨长度）、颅底点 - 前囟高度（BBH）、颅底点 - 鼻根长度（BNL）、最大颅宽（XCB）和颅底宽度（AUB）。颅骨大小通过GOL、BBH和XCB的几何平均值来计算。样本按四分之一世纪的出生队列进行组织，出生年份从1800年到1950年。采用单因素方差分析来检验队列之间的差异。在过去的150年里，美国人和德国人呈现出显著的平行变化，但美国颅骨相对更高，颅底更长，且比德国颅骨更窄。我们的研究结果还应促使扩大列入并使用Fordisc®进行调查的人群范围，Fordisc®是一款用于根据未知个体的骨骼遗骸或仅其部分来识别身份的法医软件。由于数据库中缺少足够的欧洲参考样本，Fordisc目前还无法对欧洲个体提供令人满意的身份识别。
