The estimation of age and sex of preadolescent children from bones and teeth

In a previous paper (Gleiser and Hunt, '55), the authors presented data on the calcification and eruption of the permanent mandibular first molar. Dental calcification has the great advantage of being conveniently ascertainable from radiographs of a child's jaws at any age. Although tests of the equivalence of radiographic stages with extracted teeth have not yet been carried out, potentially the teeth themselves could be used for these assessments, especially those from skeletal material. One of the problems which sometimes arises in the identification of a living child is the diagnosis of his chronological age from the calcification of his bones or teeth. On the basis of the dentition, three related estimates of dental age are now available. One estimate can be made from the numbers of teeth visible in the oral cavity (Cattell, '28; Robinow, Richards and Anderson, '42; Nanda, '54). A second, more limited estimate, can be based on our schedule of calcification of the permanent mandibular first molar (Gleiser and Hunt, '55) . A third kind of estimate is based on the schedule of calcification of the dentition as a whole, as depicted in the table of