| Author/Editor | Štamfelj, Iztok; Hitij, Tomaž; Leben-Seljak, Petra | |
| Title | Dental ancestry estimation in a 1500 years old human skeleton from Slovenia using a new web-based application rASUDAS | |
| Type | članek | |
| Vol. and No. | Letnik 37, št. 2 | |
| Publication year | 2019 | |
| Volume | str. 2-8 | |
| ISSN | 2219-6749 - The Journal of forensic odonto-stomatology | |
| Language | eng | |
| Abstract | The present study was performed on a skeleton excavated from the Late Roman Period necropolis in Ptuj, Eastern Slovenia. According to grave-goods it belongs to a Hun warrior from the 5th century AD. Osteological analysis revealed that he died in his early twenties. The skull displays artificial cranial deformation of circular fronto-occipital type and shows some Asiatic anthroposcopic features. However, the inter-orbital projection method of Gill and Hughes places him into the Western Eurasian group. The aim of the present investigation was to estimate whether this individual belonged to Western Eurasian or Eastern Asian ancestry group by analysing his dental morphology. Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) was used to visualise morphology of the roots. The analysis revealed a complex tooth crown morphology (moderate maxillary incisor shoveling, 5-cusped maxillary first and second molars, 6-cusped mandibular first molars, 5-cusped mandibular second molars, multiple molar enamel extensions) and a simplified external root morphology (27 single-rooted teeth out of 32). Both mandibular second molars and the right mandibular third molar possess a C-shaped root canal. In addition, the mandible bilaterally exhibits accessory mental foramina. Twenty-one key dental traits for ancestry assessment were scored following the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS). These scores were input into a web application rASUDAS (beta version) which uses a naive Bayes classifier algorithm to assign an individual to a preselected number (from two to seven) of ancestry groups. In a two-group analysis, the application calculated that the probability of assigning the individual from Ptuj to Eastern Asian ancestry group was close to 1.0. This study demonstrates a modern approach to estimating ancestry from dental morphology in bioarcheological and forensic contexts. | |
| Keywords | dental morphology dental anthropology computed tomography zobna morfologija zobna antropologija računalniška tomografija |