Study of the variation of the craniofacial skeleton by using geometric morphometrics in the collection of the Anatomy Department in comparison with European collections and UNIFESP-SP

• Grant number: 11/20764-0
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: January 20, 2012
• End date: February 20, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Morphology - Anatomy
• Principal Investigator: Maria Inês Nogueira
• Grantee: Maria Inês Nogueira
• Visiting researcher: Petra Urbanova
• Visiting researcher institution: Masaryk University, Czech Republic
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Variation of the Craniofacial Skeleton by using Geometric Morphometrics Petra Urbanová. 1. Theoretical background. The morphology of the craniofacial skeleton is one of the most essential components of entire human skeleton. Possessing a number of individually and group-specific features the human skull is valuable source of information on individual's physical appearance and identity, which have been over years incorporated into various anthropological and osteological techniques usable while examining skeletal remains and most importantly reliable enough to be applied in the course of forensic investigation. Cranial traits, such as shapes of cranial vault, orbital aperture, and nasal aperture, size of chin or teeth point out to individual's gender, ancestry, age etc. enabling to reconstruct individual's biological profile. The project proposed follows applicant's previous investigations in the field executed on numerous European osteological collections focused on improving reliability and precision of available anthropological methods for sex and ancestry determination in human skull. In the framework of forensic anthropology improving methodology is frequently linked to a degree of automatization in which new methods are applied. For that matter, large datasets describing identified well-preserved skeletons derived from a geographically and chronologically consistent population, preferably dated to mid- or late 1900s are of fundamental prerequisites and in demands. 2. Goals. The purpose of the project is to gather 3D data describing external cranial morphology of identified specimens housed in the Department of Anatomy, University of São Paulo for the purpose of extending a sample of up-to-now collected datasets from various European osteological collections (Athens-Greece, Lisbon, Coimbra-Portugal, Prague, Brno-Czech Republic etc.). As a practical outcome the project proposes to incorporate the acquired dataset into a computer application aimed at assessing individual's population affinity (ancestry) in the human skull and into COLIPR software application created by the applicant for the sex determination in the human skull (available at http://anthrop.sci.muni.cz/UserFiles/File/COLIPR/COLIPR%201.5.2.zip). Also 2 workshops will be offered, to graduated students and to high school students. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

URBANOVA, PETRA; ROSS, ANN H.; JURDA, MIKOLAS; NOGUEIRA, MARIA-INES. Testing the reliability of software tools in sex and ancestry estimation in a multi-ancestral Brazilian sample. LEGAL MEDICINE, v. 16, n. 5, p. 264-273, SEP 2014. (11/20764-0)