DIGIT LENGTH DISPLAYS A SIGNIFICANT FRACTION IN STATURE ESTIMATION: A STUDY FROM COASTAL REGION OF SOUTH INDIA

Relationship that exists between different part of the body and height had been of great interest to anthropologists, forensic and medical scientists for many years. This is because of the increase in the number of catastrophic events causing mass deaths from natural or manmade errors. Such disasters like flooding, tsunamis, earthquakes, plane crashes, train crashes , terrorist attacks usually requires the identification of victims from fragmentary and dismembered human remains. In present paper, study on stature estimation from digit length has been reported. In the present study, 200individuals (96 males and 104 females) belonging to age group of 18 to 25years having no disease or deformity were examined anthropometrically in respect to their height and digit lengths (2D, 3D, 4D, 5D) have been measured. The regression equations have been drawn from the data collected. It has been observed that stature can be estimated from the digit lengths