Estimation of age-at-death in adults and validation of a forensic international methodology using single-rooted teeth: A preliminary Latin-American approach.

GARIZOAIN, GONZALO; ARANDA, CLAUDIA; CALCINA-MENDOZA, O.; ESCALANTE-FLÓREZ, KAREN; CONDORI, L.; PARRA, ROBERTO; LUNA, LEANDRO; IBARRA-APAZA, S.

Workshop; Poster Session 2021 of the Humanitarian and Human Rights Resource Center (American Academy of Forensic Science).; 2021

The Humanitarian and Human Rights Resource Center, an organization within the American Academy of Forensic Science supported by NIJ's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence

In forensic sciences, age estimation during theidentification process of deceased individuals is a type ofinformation that contributes, but is not limited to, theclassification of possible candidate bodies for theindividualization of corpses against a lists of missingpersons, as well as to the corroboration of geneticinformation in case of presumed false positives, or theconstruction of demographic profiles after the discovery ofhuman remains in a massive manner. In adults, biologicalage can be estimated from the degenerative changes thatoccur in the skeletal system over the years. Root DentinTranslucency (RDT) is a dentinal degenerative processthat appears since the young adulthood as a result of theaccumulation of hydroxyapatite crystals in the dentinaltubules. Lamendin?s technique (Lamendin et al., 1992) isa procedure that quantifies RDT and periodontalregression in order to develop an age estimation methodin adults.Lamendin technique was introduced in the Latin Americancontext at the beginning of the 2000's in countries suchas Argentina, Colombia and Guatemala; since then, thistechnique became popular in several other LatinAmerican countries such as Peru, Honduras, Mexico andBrazil. Recently, Parra et al. (2020) developed a Bayesianregression model using Lamendin technique from adatabase of 693 individuals from different populationsaround the world. In their proposal, the authors focus on amethodology that is applicable in different contexts andsituations.