ANTH 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Secondary Sex Characteristic, Scapula, Internal Auditory Meatus
9 Jun 2020
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Document Summary
Many sexually dimorphic traits are secondary sexual characteristics that develop during puberty, largely due to the release of hormones that result in changes in the rate of bone growth and development. Various methods that generally fall into one of two categories have been developed for estimating sex from skeletal remains: non-metric (macroscopic, or visual) analysis and metric analysis. Each utilizes certain bones or over- all patterns depending on the degree and quality of sexual dimorphism in that bone or anatomical region. As discussed in chapter 3, metric methods are generally considered to be more objective, but in the case of sex estimation, visual assessment of the pelvis is the most accurate method. Methods involving dimensions of various long bones of the postcranial skeleton are typically the next most accurate, followed by methods involving the skull. There is, in fact, a direct relationship between a species" neonatal brain size relative to the birth canal and pelvic sexual dimorphism.
