Tympanic bone development as an estimator of age

GARCÍA MANCUSO, R.; SBATELLA, A.; DESÁNTOLO, B.; PLISCHUK M.; PRAT, G.; INDA, A.

La Plata

Congreso; XII Congreso de Ciencias Morfológicas y 9º Jornadas de Educación; 2010

Sociedad de Ciencias Morfológicas La Plata

This study aimed to evaluate the temporal bone development as an estimator of age in the perinatal period. The temporal bone is a complex of intramembranous and endochondral ossification that is part of the braincase and in early stages it is found separated in three different parts: squamous part, petrous part and tympanic ring. The development of the tympanic bone has been proposed as an estimator of age because it presents a number of characteristic changes. This process was evaluated by Weaver (1979), who defined six stages of development that would serve as estimators of age from conception to six years of age. We selected the temporal bones from 75 individuals between 25 and 55 weeks of gestational age belonging to the osteological collection ?Prof. Dr. Rómulo Lambre? (School of Medical Sciences, University of La Plata, Argentina), and scored the developmental stage of the tympanic bone. Only stages 1, 2 and 3 were found represented. We performed an analysis of variance and found significant differences in mean age for different stages (p