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

法医人类学家与执法部门合作，加快身份不明人员的识别过程，这对美国各地的法医和验尸官来说是一个经济和身体负担。当试图仅从骨骼遗骸识别未知人员时，观察骨骼收集和识别不同人群之间的独特差异是一种关键方法。通过法医人类学家用来确定性别、年龄、血统和创伤分析的新方法的发展，可以识别更多的个体。这项研究的重点是确定美洲土著或亚洲血统的个人通过观察牙齿的形状和大小的变化。与国际机构和研究人员的合作，如东京Jikei大学的Yoshikatsu Negishi博士，不仅对获得将建立新方法的骨骼收集至关重要，而且还可以形成专业关系，以更好地确保新方法的标准化。这项研究试图消除美洲原住民和亚洲人的分组到一个伞祖先类别，这是基于两个群体的古老的遗传关系。由于这两个种群在地理上和遗传上都彼此分离，数千年来，它们经历了不同的种群历史，这可能影响了牙齿形态特征的表达和牙冠的尺寸。通过使用日本的骨骼收集和人口的塞米诺尔美洲土著人的牙齿模型，这项研究作为一个探索美洲土著人和亚洲人口之间的变化。这项研究将有助于人类学对祖先的讨论和执法的识别方法。 该奖项是东亚和太平洋夏季研究所计划的一部分，支持美国研究生的夏季研究，由美国国家科学基金会和日本科学促进会共同资助。

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.