Osteometry
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Osteometry is the study and measurement of human or animal skeleton, especially in an anthropological or archaeological context. In Archaeology it have been used to various ends in the subdisciplines of Zooarcaheology and Bioarchaeology.
In zooarchaeology the main goal of osteometry is taxonomic determination and, to lesser extent, determination of sex. Usually it is very difficult to discriminate between different species of the same genus or family (eg. South American camelids), and the statistical analysis of osteometric parameters is quite useful.
In bioarchaeology, osteometry is very useful to solve many antrhopolical problems about past human populations, for example, it may be used to determine kinship, sex, the degree of sex dimorphism (which may be used to answer questions related to lack of nutrition) and even ethnicity. There is many problems around the interpretation of osteometric data: loose replicability of the measurements, problems relative to the phenotipic variations between subpopulations of one species, etcetera.
(Request: Osteometric Indices- ratio of measurements of bone, particularly the cranium, to tell the shape of the skeleton.)
(Request: Osteometric Indices- ratio of measurements of bone, particularly the cranium, to tell the shape of the skeleton.)
Purpose
Comparison of various aspects of ancient skeletons can be used to determine which species a skeleton belongs to, or if the differences are vast enough, create a new species. In later skeletons, osteometry has historically been used to attempt to identify the ethnicity or race of skeletons.
Aspects commonly studied in determining the species of very early skeletons include the length of the femur and other long bones, the capacity of the skull, the shape of the facial features and skull, the shape of the jaw and teeth, the curve of the spine, the situation and shape of the pelvis, and the location of the foramen magnum.
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Some of the initial content on this page may be incorporated in part from copyleft sources in the public domain including wikis such as Wikipedia and AskDrWiki. Drug information for patients came from the The National Library of Medicine. Infectious disease information may have come from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Differential Diagnoses are drawn from clinicians as well as an amalgamation of 3 sources: 1.The Disease Database; 2. Kahan, Scott, Smith, Ellen G. In A Page: Signs and Symptoms. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004:3; 3. Sailer, Christian, Wasner, Susanne. Differential Diagnosis Pocket. Hermosa Beach, CA: Borm Bruckmeir Publishing LLC, 2002:7 .
