Role of External Ear in Establishing Personal Identity - A Short Review

Since centuries external ear and its peculiarities had been attracting the attention of Scientists from diverse fields of Science. The possibility of using the external ear as a tool for establishing the unique identity of individuals was first recognized by Bertillon who included the same in the system he developed in 1893. Since then several studies on its range of peculiarities in morphology have emerged especially to correlate it with the field of personal identification. With the emergence of ‘Information age' even the field of criminology has broadened its horizon by including more and more morphological features (face, hand, finger, iris etc.) for establishing identity. This paper traces this historical journey of the maturation study from the first step taken by Bertillon, to a foolproof personal identification trait that it is today.