[Sexual dimorphism of deciduous teeth in medico-legal identification]

Sexual identification of immature skeletal remains is still a difficult problem to solve in Forensic Anthropology. For this reason we have attempted to use sexual dimorphism of deciduous teeth. Mesial-distal and vestibular-palatal crown diameters of maxillary deciduous molars were obtained from 80 (40 male, 40 female) Apulian (southern Italian) children with age included from 3 to 11. In addition, for each tooth, three dental indexes were calculated from crown measurements. Data, so obtained, were separately analyzed using discriminant functions. The results revealed that the combinations of crown diameters were not able to give significant functions for "sexing" immature skeletal remains. Only specific combinations of dental indexes gave significant results. The best function, obtained by the association of crown index of 54, 55, 65 and crown module of 64, allow correct sex determination of prepuberal human skeleton with a misclassification of 20%.