Is Adulthood Required? Examining the Accuracy of Pelvic Sex Estimation Throughout Pubertal Growth
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reliable morphological sex estimation in non-adult skeletons continues to be problematic in juvenile osteology. Methodological exploration has focused on infants and children (0–12 years of age), but less attention has been given to adolescents (12–19 years of age). A critical challenge to non-adult sex estimation is that the full expression of sexual dimorphism in areas of the skeleton that have garnered the most attention due to their use in adult sex estimation (i.e., pelvis) does not occur until adulthood. Little research has been conducted to determine if a threshold along the pubertal growth curve that may yield high sex estimation accuracy exists. This study examined the relationship between pelvic sexual dimorphism and stages of pubertal growth from four skeletal traits. Eighteen pelvic traits outlined by Schutkowski (1993) and Rogers and Saunders (1994) were examined on 128 non-adults (4 months–20 years of age) from the Hamann-Todd and Terry Collections. Pubertal stage was examined on 98 individuals between 8 and 20 years of age. Sex estimation accuracies for each trait and combined traits were assessed for each stage. Statistical significance of correct sex estimates was tested using chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests. This study demonstrated that reaching the post-pubertal period was not required for the full expression of sexual dimorphism of all 18 traits. Surpassing peak height velocity, the period of fastest growth, was more critical given that high accuracy (i.e., > 80%) was observed for sex estimates using five individual pelvic traits and the combination of all 18 traits by the deceleration stage
 
 La estimación del sexo morfológico en esqueletos de subadultos fiable sigue siendo problemáticas en la osteología juvenil. La exploración metodológicas se han concentrado en los infantes y niños (0–12 años de edad), pero los adolescentes (12–19 años de edad) han recibido menos atención. Un reto crítico para la estimación del sexo de los subadultos es la idea que la expresión completa del dimorfismo sexual en áreas del esqueleto que han atraído mas atención debido a su uso en la estimación del sexo en adultos (como el pelvis) no ocurre hasta la edad adulta. Pocas investigaciones se han realizado para determinar si existe un límite durante la curva de crecimiento puberal que pueda producir una precisión alta en la estimación del sexo. Este estudio examinó la relación entre el dimorfismo sexual de la pelvis y las etapas del crecimiento puberal usando cuatro rasgos esqueléticos. Dieciocho rasgos pélvicos delineados por Schutkowski (1993) y Rogers and Saunders (1994) fueron examinados en 128 subadultos (4 meses–20 años) del las colecciones Hamann-Todd y Terry. Etapas puberal fueron examinados en 98 individuos entre 8 y 20 años de edad. Se evaluaron las precisiones de la estimación del sexo de cada rasgo y los rasgos combinados para cada etapa. La significación estadística de las estimaciones correctas del sexo se probó utilizando las pruebas de chi-square y Fisher’s exact test. Este estudio demostró que alcanzar el periodo pos-puberal no era necesario para la expresión completa del dimorfismo sexual de los 18 rasgos. En cambio, superar la velocidad de altura máxima, el periodo de crecimiento más rápido, fue más critico dado que se observó una alta precisión (es decir, > 80%) para las estimaciones de sexo utilizando cinco rasgos pélvicos individuales y la combinación de los 18 rasgos empezando en la etapa de desaceleración.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.030 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".