Ossification patterns of costal cartilages as an indicator of sex.

The importance of developing a simple, reproducible, and inexpensive method for determining age and sex from completely or partially skeletonized and unidentified human material is obvious. Roentgenographic examination of chest plates from 651 autopsy cases in which age, race, and sex were known and ages ranged from 20 years of age and older were used in this study. Marginal and central subperichondrial ossification patterns, when present, afforded a relatively simple, rapid, inexpensive, and accurate means of identifying sex in 302 cases. In the present series, the predictive ability of this technique lies in a range of 80% to 90%. Sex-adjusted values, though of limited statistical value, suggest that marginal subperichondrial ossification pattern is of somewhat less accurate (75% to 80%) predictive ability for the male sex than is a central subperichondrial ossification pattern for the female sex (greater than 90%). Predictive abilities of these ossification patterns in the different races are quite similar.