EAPSI: Discernment of Japanese and Native American Ancestry Using Nonmetric and Metric Dental Traits

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Forensic anthropologists work alongside law enforcement to expedite the identification process of unknown individuals that are a financial and physical burden to medical examiners and coroners across the United States. Observing skeletal collections and identifying unique variation among different populations is a key method when attempting to identify unknown persons from their skeletal remains alone. Through the development of new methods that are used by forensic anthropologists to determine the sex, age, ancestry, and trauma analysis for skeletonized remains, more individuals can be identified. This study focuses on the determination Native American or Asian ancestry of individuals through the observation of dental variation in shape and size. Cooperation with international institutions and researchers, such as Dr. Yoshikatsu Negishi at Jikei University in Tokyo, is essential not only to access skeletal collection with which new methods will be established, but also so form professional relationships to better ensure the standardization of new methods. This research study endeavors to dispel the grouping of Native Americans and Asians into one umbrella ancestry category which is based on the two groups' ancient genetic relationship. Since the two populations have been separate from each other, both geographically and genetically, for thousands of years, they have experienced different population histories that may have influenced the expression of dental morphological traits and the dimensions of their tooth crowns. By using a Japanese skeletal collection and dental casts of a population of the Seminole Native Americans, this study serves as an exploration of the variation between Native Americans and Asian populations. This study will be a contribution to the anthropological discussion of ancestry and to the identification methods of law enforcement. This award, under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.