Human Face In Forensic Analysis

INTRODUCTION

One of the major challenging tasks in forensics is the identification and individualization of the living as well as the dead. The existence of uniqueness in the living species forms the basis of recognition process in forensic science.

The very first thing that is observed in the overall looks of an individual is the human face. It is the major sensing organ and is a hub of expressing emotions. Human face is the vital source of human identification. It is the best character for individualization. Perknopf (1957) described the face as “all the structures of the head that can be seen en face belong to the human face.” No attempt has been made to give a generalized definition of human face. Face could be defined as the area of the

Tsao and Margaret S. Livingstone

The face is an extremely variable and individualistic attribute that has a pertinent character in the human life which includes social bonding (Boehringer, 2006), interacting society, medical diagnosis, and holds a prospective forensic (kayser 2009) significance ( Boehringer et al 2011).

The widespread variability which is prevalent in facial morphology serves as the basis for individual recognition. Even the higher level of variations exist in genetically homogenous population (Sheehan 2014)

The distinctiveness present in the shape of the face and variations in the face morphology holds prime significance in the different fields like society, forensics, biometrics and authentication, psychology, genetics, orthodontics, cosmetic surgery. Recent studies on mice established the significance of the distant acting enhancers in the development of face and skull by exploring the enhancers responsible in craniofacial development. The variety of facial features like size of the nose, size and shape of the philtrum, shape of the skull, and shape of the jaw are all coded by the genes (Catia Attanasio et

Sheehan1 & Michael W. Nachman

Facial anthropology deals with the evaluation and examination of the face and/or skull whether living or dead. The expert will utilize a variety of methods for the analysis of the facial characters. In case of the living individuals methods such as anthropometric, morphological, statistical and metric methods are utilized for the assessment of faces among different populations observing and analyzing the variations in the morphology in the human face. http://www.craniofacial-id.com/facial-anthropology.html Previous studies have signified the presence of strong genetic component responsible for the variation in human facial morphology. The heritability of the facial characters could be explained by the existence of more similarity in monozygotic twins as compared to diazygotic twins. The GWAS have demonstrated the involvement of PAX3 gene in facial morphology. In genetic epidemiology, the Genome Wide Association Studies analyzes the association of the common DNA variants with specific feature in different individuals.

A Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Five Loci Influencing Facial Morphology in Europeans Fan Liu et