[Determination of body height from fragments of the femur].

Presenting a major problem in connection with reconstructing the height of body from the dimensions of long or pipe bones are the circumstances under which damage is caused thereto in mass accidents such as, for example, plane crashes. Such accidents often result in long bones being fractured completely, so that it is not possible for them to be directly used for reconstructing the height of body. In such cases, use can be made of the methods described by Steel (1970) who determined segments for such long bones as the femur, tibia, and humerus and also set up formulas by use of linear regression analyses, which enable the lengths of single fragments of bones to be used for estimating the overall length of bones which can then be substituted into equations for reconstructing the height of body. The procedure has been verified statistically, and suitable formulas have been established for the femur, which is the bone that lends itself particularly well to estimations of the height of body. When using these formulas, the residual variance is generally as great as 10 cm. Accordingly, it appears inappropriate for public medicolegal officers to calculate a height of body which is beset by a range of variation that is as great as this. Therefore, the 2nd part of this paper presents a possible way of determining the stature of a human body from individual segments of the femur. The limits of these size groups have been determined for data to be recorded in identity cards and other personal documents. The method is based upon the calculation of conditional probability distributions for given lengths of segments.