Ear witness

A description is given of some aspects of the normal human auricle. The phy siognomy of the auricle is different for every individual which leads to th e possibility of identifying people based on their auricles. Indeed this ha s even led to the reading of earprints similar to fingerprints, a fact not generally known amongst ENT-specialists. This highly specialized knowledge has been developed within a special branch of forensic medicine and crimino logy, called 'earology' or 'otomorphology'. Two illustrative case histories are presented.