Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
BOX 6.1
EQUATIONS FOR THE FEMUR/STATURE RATIO
Equation 1. Stature Estimation Using Femur/Stature Ratio
x
i
¼
x
y
y
i
ratio of mean stature to mean femur length multiplied by measured femur length
Equation 2. General Femur/Stature Ratio/Index
(femur length (cm)/stature)
100 / 26.7
board. Paul Topinard, successor to Broca as head of the Soci
´
t
´
, recognized the need to accumu-
late larger samples andmore skeletal data. In 1881, Topinardmeasured 141 skeletons and devel-
oped a constant ratio of the maximum length of the humerus, radius, femur, and tibia. Living
stature was then achieved by adding a standardized 35 mm to account for soft tissues (
Stewart,
1979
). According to
Stewart (1979)
, this was the first standardized formula to estimate stature.
Not long after, Etienne
Rollet (1888)
was directed by his advisor to measure stature and long
bones from cadavers for his doctoral thesis. He produced the first formal stature tables based
on 50 males and 50 females, relating bone length to stature.
Manouvrier (1892)
modified Rollet's tables (using the same data) by improving the
table organization and taking additional measurements from fleshed bones. Manouvrier
reduced Rollet's data by more than half, eliminating 26 males and 25 females because
they were older than 60 years. One important improvement that Manouvrier made was
to recommend that 2 mm be added to long bone length for dry bones and the addition
of another 2 cm to the corresponding stature in the tables (
Stewart, 1979
). From 1898 to
1902, Hrdli
cka produced the first (nonregression) formulae for African Americans and
European Americans; these consisted of long bone to stature ratios based on cadavers
from dissecting rooms (
Stewart, 1979
).
Nearly a century later, Feldesman and colleagues (1988, 1990) rediscovered the femur/
stature ratio when they were trying to determine if the
Australopithecus afarensis
specimen
Lucy's (AL 288-1) femur was disproportionately short compared to that of modern humans.
They compiled a sample of published data on modern humans from 13 different populations.
The general femur/stature ratio yielded an average proportion for modern humans of 26.7%
(i.e., the femur is on average 26.74% of stature), with a very low standard deviation of less
than 1% (SD
0.55%) for all 13 populations. More surprising was the finding that Lucy
had nearly the same femur/stature ratio (
Feldesman and Lundy, 1988
). See
Box 6.1
.
Feldesman and colleagues (1990, 1996) continued to collect data from a total of 51 pop-
ulations around the world to determine whether the femur/stature ratio was suitable and
efficacious in modern and prehistoric human populations. The problem with the earlier
study from 1990 (
Feldesman et al., 1990
) is that the samples were not all analyzed in the
same way. For the latter study (
Feldesman and Fountain, 1996
), the authors used only
samples in which the average population femur length and the average population stature
¼
