A Study of morphological features of footprints in Egyptian and Malaysian population

Abstract

Determination of sex and ethnicity is one of the main tasks in building the biological profile of individuals. Keen examination of footprints that may be found at the crime scene can give valuable clues in forensic identification. The current work aimed to study the footprint morphological features and their relation to sex and population difference. The study was conducted on 200 adult volunteers. They were divided into two equal racial groups: Malaysians and Egyptians. The collected footprints were classified into four types based on relative morphological toes lengths. Toes inter-distance, phalangeal marks position and number, humps count and Chippaux-Smirak index (CSI) were examined. The frequency of these characteristics was analyzed statistically using regression analysis. Among the studied morphological features, it was found that t3-t4 inter-distance, phalangeal marks number, humps count and CSI differed significantly between males and females. As regards ethnicity, all footprints characteristics differed significantly between Egyptians and Malaysians except CSI.

Keywords

• forensic science
• identification
• footprints
• morphological characteristics
• ethnicity