THE MEASURE AND MISMEASURE OF THE TIBIA - IMPLICATIONS FOR STATURE ESTIMATION

Trotter and Gleser's stature estimation formulae, based on skeletons. of the Terry collection and on WWII casualties, have been widely used in forensic work. Our work with the Terry and WWII data yielded tibia lengths too short compared to other data sets. Using Trotter's origina l measurements, we discovered that she consistently mismeasured the ti bia. Contrary to standard practice and her own definitions, she omitte d the malleolus from the measurement. Trotter's measurements of the ti bia are 10 to 12 mm shorter than they should have been, resulting in s tature estimations averaging 2.5 to 3.0 cm too great when the formulae are used with properly measured tibia. We also examined tibia lengths of Korean War casualties, which were measured by technicians rather t han by Trotter. Korean tibia measurements are also too short, but by a smaller amount than Terry and WWII. Since the Korean tibia are unavai lable for restudy, it is unclear how they were measured. Estimation of stature from Trotter and Gleser's tibia formulae is to be avoided if possible. If necessary, the 1952 formulae could be used with tibia mea sured in the same manner that Trotter measured, excluding the malleolu s.