"Male."
“Hm?”
Phinya, who was focused on the laptop screen, mumbled the question. She turned to look at Bua, who was standing next to her. In the researcher’s hands were a tablet and a white pen.
“Who?”
Upon hearing the question, Bua held out the tablet to Phinya. On the screen was a two-dimensional facial reconstruction of an anonymous male skull. He had a rounded face, small but relatively deep-set eyes, thick lips, and a wide nose.
“That skull,” Bua begin to speak.
“It is a male, adolescent to middle-aged. The age was estimated from the X-ray, observing the already closed cranial sutures and calculating the average of the points in each area. The age range is between thirty-five and sixty-five years."
Age assessment based on cranial sutures usually covers a relatively wide range. From adolescence to middle age, the sutures tend to close completely. However, in adolescents and young adults, assessment by cranial suture is less accurate, since the bones are almost fully developed.
In newborns, the bones of the skull are not yet fully fused together. This explains the old saying that babies have a "soft spot," because the bones of the head are still cartilage and have not fused into a rigid structure, as they do in adults. The bone cells are still developing, and when x-rayed, the sutures (the lines of connection between the bones) can be clearly seen separated. As a person ages, these sutures begin to close, indicating bone maturity.
In adults and the elderly, the bones of the skull are already completely fused and begin to show signs of bone degeneration, visible as porosity in the bones after the age of sixty-five. Forensic anthropologists use this knowledge to estimate the approximate age of anonymous bones found. In addition to the skull, bone development in other parts, such as the femur, humerus, and bones of the hands and feet, can also provide clues.
"Rounded face, oval nasal cavity, eye sockets slightly deeper than average."
Bua continued.
"The x-ray showed that the lower jaw is fractured, which has deformed the jaw by about one centimeter to the right, compared to the midsagittal plane.
She paused to think before continuing,
"Based on all this information, we can conclude that..."
"Asian." Phiny interrupted her.
"I already suspected it."
"I adjusted the angle of the deformed jaw millimeter by millimeter." Bua explained.
"From working so hard, my pen got completely worn out. Can I ask to buy another one?"
“Besides being lazy, you still complain,” replied Phinya, who was responsible for authorizing the institute’s budget.
“How did you manage to do this in five days?”
“It wasn’t me,” Bua said with a dry smile.
"The program does the calculations. The license for this software costs the equivalent of five months of my salary. So, it needs to be more efficient and faster than I could do it manually.”
She sighed before continuing.
“But it took so long that my shoulders started to hurt. And drawing the muscle fibers was a challenge, in addition to having to adjust the depth of the key points on the face. I didn’t want to let the program generate it automatically, afraid that it wouldn’t be accurate.”
“Still, I would love to see a hand-made reconstruction,” Phinya commented.
“I believe you have a talent for delicate work.”
