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Updated: May 15, 2026

Scanning Skeletal Remains for Bone Mineral Density in Forensic Contexts
Published on: January 29, 2018
A comparison of skeletal maturity and growth
Luciano Molinari1, Theo Gasser, Remo Largo
1Kinderspital Zurich, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland. luciano.molinari@kispi.uzh.ch
Background:
Somatic and bone development have each been studied in detail, but rarely in conjunction.
Aim:
The aim of this study was to determine what somatic and bone development have in common and how they differ. A second aim was to check for a pubertal spurt in bone age (BA) and to quantify it in a similar way as has been done for height. The Preece-Baines model is used to fit longitudinal data for BA.
Subjects And Methods:
The data analysed are from the 1st Zurich Longitudinal Growth Study comprising 120 boys and 112 girls with almost complete data from birth to adulthood.
Results:
Variability of somatic milestones was reduced in terms of BA and there was an aftergrowth after reaching adult RUS score 1000. A strong increase in the RUS score was seen at a late stage of the pubertal spurt (PS). Somatic milestones correlated with the RUS score attained at these ages and more so at an early stage of the PS. A PS for BA was clearly identified with a location at 14.2 years for boys and 12.2 years for girls. Age of peak bone development correlated highly with age of peak velocity of somatic variables.
Conclusions:
BA can be successfully modelled as a semi-quantitative entity. Bone development shows marked associations with somatic development, despite the fact that the latter reflects changes in size, while the former is essentially a maturity index and reflects changes in biochemical composition of tissues.
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