Sexual dimorphism in the crania and mandibles of South African whites

Numerous studies have clearly demonstrated that skeletal characteristics va ry by population. To date, there are no metric cranial criteria for South A frican whites. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to establish populat ion specific standards for sex determination from the skull. A total of 12 standard cranial and five mandibular measurements were taken from 44 male a nd 47 female skeletons of known sex and race from the Pretoria and Dart col lections. These were subjected to SPSS discriminant function analysis. Bizy gomatic breadth was the most dimorphic dimension. Five functions were devel oped from the complete cranium, vault, face, mandible and bizygomatic bread th. Dimensions from the complete cranium provided the best accuracy. In the mandible, bigonial breadth was the most dimorphic of the measurements take n. Average accuracies ranged from 80% (bizygomatic breadth alone) to 86% (c ranium). These accuracies are similar to those obtained by researchers on o ther groups (e.g., 84% in Japanese crania and about 86% in American whites and blacks). Diagnostic accuracy, however, is lower than that obtained from the South African femur and tibia. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.