Root dentin translucency and age at death estimation in adults using single rooted teeth: Update of the Forensic International Dental Database

Abstract

Since the publication of Lamendin’s age estimation technique, the root dentin translucency has received increasingattention as an important indicator of age. Recently, Parra and colleagues presented the Forensic InternationalDental Database (FIDB), a proposal to estimate age at death in adults based on Bayes theorem by applyingthe criteria of Lamendin’s technique. The present study aims to update the procedure and to evaluate a new versionof the method (named FIDBv2) using two control samples from Colombia and Greece. The performance ofthis new version was acceptable and suggests that the method is suitable for age at death estimation in adult individualsfrom different forensic contexts. The best approximations to chronological age were obtained for individualsbetween 30 and 60 years old, with errors less than 10 years. The age estimations calculated on control samplessuggest the adequate performance of FIDBv2 on individuals from varied populations. It can be stated thatthe FIDBv2 constitutes a solid alternative to be used in contexts where no additional data are available. Here wereinforce the initial idea that this model for estimating age at death in adults may be generalizable to any forensiccontext in the world.