EVALUATION OF MORPHOLOGICAL AND HISTOLOGICAL ADULT SKELETAL AGE-AT-DEATH ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES USING RIBS

Adult age-at-death estimation standards were applied to an independent sample (N = 50, 55) of documented ages 17.5 to 95 years. Estimates de rived from the sternal rib end morphological and from the cortical rib histological techniques were compared with each other and to the docu mented ages. Comparisons to the documented ages reveal no statisticall y significant differences between the techniques. However, the compari son of each individual's estimates show a poor correlation (r = 0.54) despite the equal performance of the age estimations on the entire sam ple. Averaging of the two rib age estimates results in an estimate wit h a stronger Pearson's r (0.86) and a lower standard error of the esti mate (7.5 years).