Infracranial Epigenetic Variation and the Identification of Unknown Human Skeletal Remains
Bibliographic record
Abstract
After a potential match pool has been narrowed using the biological profile, forensic anthropologists often rely on the presence of qualitative skeletal traits for distinguishing between individuals via antemortem–postmortem comparison. This study establishes the epigenetic etiology of several such traits and examines the contribution of the following traits to forensic identification: suprascapular notch, suprascapular foramen, manubrial cleft, manubrial aperture, sternal cleft, sternal aperture, xiphoidal aperture, double-ended xiphoid process, triple-ended xiphoid process, bifid rib, butterfly vertebra, spina bifida occulta, missing transverse process of the first lumbar vertebra (L1), spondylolysis, and sacralization of the fifth lumbar vertebra (L5). Trait frequencies were calculated in totality and according to sex, age, and side occurrence. A sample of 429 (n = 429) individuals were examined from the Bass Donated Skeletal Collection, University of Athens Human Reference Collection, Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Zurich, and the New Mexico Decedent Image Database. All traits were determined to be rare (i.e., <10% frequency), except for the suprascapular notch, double-ended xiphoid, and xiphoidal foramen; these traits should not be used for identification purposes. Manubrial aperture, sternal cleft, butterfly vertebrae, and missing transverse processes have the highest utility for identification. Only spondylolysis demonstrated a statistically significant difference between the sexes. Butterfly vertebrae and sacralization of L5 demonstrated a moderate relationship with age. No side or intertrait associations were observed. Consideration of these parameters will allow one to refine the biological profile and provide more accurate conclusions to be drawn regarding trait frequencies in a given population.
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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 | 0.089 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".