Sexual dimorphism in the robusticity of long bones of infants and young children

Abstract

It is difficult to determine the sex of subadult skeletal remains because there is a little sexual dimorphism present pre-pubertally. In a historic sample of 24 children aged 0-4 years from St. Mary's Anglican Church,Marion, South Australia, the robustness of femora and of humeri was correlated with sexually dimorphic mandibular morphology. Ratios of midshaft circumference to diaphyseal length of humeri and femora and the ratio of minimum circumference to diaphyseal length of the humerus showed correlation with sex determined by mandibular morphology, male indices being greater than the female ones. The humerus midshaft circumference index showed the greatest difference between sexes (P value=0.0002). The results need confirmation on known-sex skeletal remains, but for the moment this robusticity dimorphism seems to be a new discovery for osteological practice.