Julieta G García-Donas

• MSc Forensic Anthropology, PhD Forensic Anthropology
• Lecturer at University of Dundee

30 left clavicle segments from a Scottish cadaveric sample (ages 67-97, 15 male, 15 female) were cleaned, prepared, and analysed using micro-CT scans, macroscopic measurements, and traditional histology. Three macroscopic features related to degenerative changes at the sternoclavicular joint were assessed using Falys & Prangle (2015) method. The bi...

Geometric morphometrics (GMM) have been applied to understand morphological variation in biological structures. However, research studying cortical bone through geometric histomorphometrics (GHMM) is scarce. This research aims to develop a landmark‐based GHMM protocol to depict osteonal shape variation in the femoral diaphysis, exploring the role o...

These results confirmed the expected age-related trends due to declining bone quality and quantity in the elderly. Although no correlation to age was found for the macroscopic parameters, the relationships between the macroscopic and microscopic parameters reveal an interesting pathway for future work. Further research is necessary on this subject,...

DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24928

Sex and stature estimation represent two pillars in the creation of the biological profile, providing crucial demographic information that forensic anthropologists use for the identification of unknown skeletonized remains. This pilot study evaluates population data proposing a virtual sex and stature estimation method for a Hispanic population usi...

DOI: 10.20933/100001288

Cortical bone microstructure assessment in biological and forensic anthropology can assist with the estimation of age-at-death and animal-human differentiation, for example. Osteonal structures within cortical bone are the key feature under analysis, with osteon frequency and metric parameters providing crucial information for the assessment. Curre...

Histomorphometry constitutes a valuable tool for age estimation. Histological interpopulation variability has been shown to affect the accuracy of age estimation techniques and therefore validation studies are required to test the accuracy of the pre-existing methodologies. The present research constitutes a validation study of widely known histolo...

Population affinity estimation is an important step in the identification of unknown individuals. To ensure accurate results, validation studies of newly developed methods must be performed using different target populations and skeletal elements. This research aims to determine the accuracy and reliability of population affinity estimation on a mo...

acial approximation is performed on unidentified skull remains when other methods of identification have failed. The generated facial image is presented to police departments and media to promote public awareness and in turn facilitate recognition. The reliability of a facial approximation is dependent on the skull preservation. When the mandible i...

Numerous intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence bone remodelling rates and have shown to affect the accuracy of histological aging methods. The present study investigates the rib cortex from two Mediterranean skeletal collections exploring the development of population-specific standards for histomorphometric age-at-death estimation. Eighty-eigh...

Metric osteonal data collection protocols: testing methods consistency for age estimation

Sex estimation from skeletal remains is crucial for the estimation of the biological profile of an individual. Although the most commonly used bones for means of sex estimation are the pelvis and the skull, research has shown that acceptable accuracy rates might be achieved by using other skeletal elements such as vertebrae. This study aims to cont...

Sex estimation is considered one of the first steps in the forensic identification process. Morphological and morphometrical differences between males and females have been used as means for morphoscopic and metric methods on both cranial and postcranial skeletal elements. When dry skeletal elements are not available, virtual data can be used as a...

Fragmented human remains present a challenge for forensic experts as they attempt to identify individuals using standard forensic methods. Several histological age estimation techniques have been developed during the last fifty years to aid in this process. However, very few validation studies have been conducted in order to test their accuracy and...

This project is an innovative mixture of medical imaging and forensics with holography, animation, art and virtual reality. This alliance of art and science explores, presents and communicates the history of violence and the violence of history to diverse audiences. Anatomical detail provides the substrate for forensic analysis and interpretation w...

Forensic assessment of skeletal material includes age estimation of unknown individuals. When dealing with extremely fragmented human remains that lack macro-features used in age estimation, histological assessment of the skeletal elements can be employed. Historically, microscopic methods for age assessment used by forensic anthropologists have be...

Objectives: This study evaluated chronological changes in physiological stress and levels of habitual loading of Ibizan populations from the Late Roman-Early Byzantine (LREB) to the Islamic period (300-1,235 AD) using measures of body size and bone cross-sectional properties to compare Urban LREB, Urban Medieval Islamic, and Rural Medieval Islamic...

The aim of this paper is to provide a methodological guide on how to select, test, and use statistical procedures for sex estimation using morphological traits of the cranium expressed on an ordinal scale. R functions were developed to implement binary logistic regression (BLR) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and step-by-step instructions w...

Forensic anthropologists are requested to give authorities estimates on the biological characteristics of unidentified decomposed remains in an effort to create a physical description that can be compared with a missing person’s profile, eventually leading to positive identification. To answer these questions, scientists traditionally follow a vari...

Biological evidence for the identification of a possible suspect plays a vital role in forensic investigations. Fingerprints left as impressions at a crime scene are considered valuable pieces of information due to the unique characteristics of the epidermal ridges. Over the last two decades, the relationship between ridge density and sex has been...

Footprints recovered at the crime scene are often used in a forensic investigation for positive identification of the suspects. Forensic podiatry studies have shown that biological sex can be identified through footprint analysis, however, most studies have focused on the analysis of sexual dimorphic features from footprints from a single ethnicity...

Ancestry estimation from skeletal remains is a challenging task, but essential for the creation of a complete biological profile. As such, the study of human variation between populations is important for the fields of biological and forensic anthropology, as well as medicine. Cranial and dental morphological variation have traditionally been linke...

One of the crucial steps for the creation of the biological profile of an individual is the estimation of age at death. The choice of the method depends on the nature of the remains, the equipment available and the expertise of the forensic anthropologist, among others. In cases of very fragmented remains, microscopic methods remain one of the only...

Introduction Sex assessment is an essential step for completing the biological profile of unknown skeletal remains. Accurate sex estimation remains one of the main challenges in forensic anthropology and the need for replicable and reliable techniques led to development of a large number of methods, catered to different possible scenarios. This stu...

The estimation of ancestry is an essential benchmark for positive identification of heavily decomposed bodies that are recovered in a variety of death and crime scenes. This is especially true when reconstructing the biological profile of the deceased as most methods for sex, age and stature estimation are population-specific. Ancestry estimation m...

Introduction Age estimation methods using MRI are dependent on staging systems used in T1, T2 and fast spin-echo proton density-weighted sequences. The staging system created by Dedouit [1] from images obtained by fast spin-echo proton density-weighted MRI sequences depends on the assessment of horizontal cartilage hyperintensity. Images obtained b...

Histology of dry bone tissue has many scientific applications. The histological analysis of bone requires the production of good quality thin sections. Many researchers have developed new histological techniques and/or they have refined existing ones. In this paper, we describe a revision of histological techniques for obtaining thin sections from...

This study investigates disruptions in bone metabolism using bone histomorphometry in individuals with chronic metabolic diseases (CMD) and their effect on histological age estimation methods. Thirty six samples (12 pathological and 23 controls) from the 4-6th left ribs are taken from autopsy cases from two forensic departments in Greece and Albani...

Age estimation is crucial for the identification of human remains and the microscopic approach is the only option when the remains are very fragmented. Many histological age estimation techniques have been developed in the last forty years and in order to ensure the accuracy and reliability of existing aging methods, validation studies must be carr...

Sexual dimorphic variation between populations must be taken into consideration when applying existing methods on unrelated samples. Validation studies are extremely important to avoid misclassification and ensure high quality standards. This paper presents a test of a Southern European metric method on Greek-Cypriots (N=132) and Turkish (N=203)....

The utilization of computed tomography is beneficial for the analysis of skeletal remains and it has important advantages for anthropometric studies. The present study investigated morphometry of left tibia using CT images of a contemporary Turkish population. Seven parameters were measured on 203 individuals (124 males and 79 females) within the 1...

Os parietale partitum is a variable segmentation of the parietal bone. This manifests as a parietal division in the anteroposterior or superoinferior planes that is separated by an unusual suture and can be complete or incomplete. The existence of parietal divisions was observed and documented more than 260 years ago. The main objectives of this pa...

A FEMUR IN THE SEA: a forensic case using bone histology Julieta G. GARCIA-DONAS, MSc, PhD candidate Edinburgh Unit for Forensic Anthropology, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK A 10 centimetres midshaft of a femur was found in the east coast of the island of Crete (Greece). A priori, the gross-exami...

Most age estimation methods are proven problematic when applied in highly fragmented skeletal remains. Rib histomorphometry is advantageous in such cases; yet it is vital to test and revise existing techniques particularly when used in legal settings (Crowder and Rosella, 2007). This study tested Stout & Paine (1992) and Stout et al. (1994) histolo...

The current study aims to test the value of mandibular size in sex estimation of a contemporary Greek population. The produced standards are expected to enhance identification of heavily decomposed remains in contemporary forensic settings. Data from 70 mandibles from a contemporary Greek collection have been analysed using discriminant function an...

Sex Estimation Based on Cranial Non Metric Traits in a Contemporary Greek Population: Testing multiple logistic regression models Julieta Gomez1, Colin Aitken2, David Titterington2, Elena F. Kranioti1 1 Edinburgh Unit for Forensic Anthropology, School of History Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, 4 Teviot place, EH8 9AG, Edinburgh,...