Reliability of base of orbit in sex determination: A study in 60 adult human skulls

The cranium ranks amongst the foremost as the classical, most studied and informative subject of examination in physical anthropology. Sex determination is one of the essential prerequisites for identification of an individual. The skull is probably the second best area of the skeleton for determining sex following pelvis. Diverse techniques for sexing crania are based either on visually determinable descriptive features of the cranium or on exact measurements of various parts of cranium and their ratios. Metric analysis allows less error even in the hands of less experienced with skeletal morphology. In the present study, skulls of 60 individuals of known sex (30 of either) were studied. A series of five metric variants were studied (orbit height, orbit breadth, orbital index, interorbital breadth, biorbital breadth). Population specific craniometric standards were established for sex assessment from the skulls of Indian population. Upon statistical analysis, orbital index and biorbital breadth were found to be the best sex discriminants and these were able to classify 61.7% of the skulls correctly.