Measurement of hand bone length has been used for sex determination in humans and nonhuman primates (McFadden and Bracht: Early Hum Dev 85 (2009) 117-124; El-Morsi and Al-Hawary: J Forensic Leg Med 20 (2013) 6-13). The aim of this study was to determine the sex of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) on the basis of the lengths of corresponding rows of metacarpals and phalanges in a macaque population by means of developing discriminant functions. Measurements on direct dry bones only included lengths for 19 bones of the left hand in 39 macaques (consisting of 13 adult males and 26 adult females). The results revealed that the mean values of males were significantly greater than those of females for all of the metacarpals and phalanges. The results were obtained in 84.4% of accuracy from distal phalanges, 93.8% from middle phalanges, and 96.9% from both metacarpals and proximal phalanges, respectively. There was a remarkable difference in the magnitude of sex dimorphism in lengths of each section of the hand bones between the population of macaques and humans. This difference may be attributable to the interaction between genetic factors and various environmental factors. As sex differences of hand bones are population-specific (Lazenby: Am J phys Anthropol 118 (2002) 378-384; Lu, Huo, Shi, Peng, Dang, Jiao, Zhu, Zhong, and Chen: Acta Aantomica Sinica 39 (2008) 267-271; Eshak, Ahmed, and Gawad: J Forensic Leg Med 18 (2011) 246-252), the discriminant equations for all of the metacarpals and phalanges are applicable to the population of Macaca mulatta from the Taihang Mountain. Anat Rec, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Anat Rec, 300:1741-1746, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Keywords: Macaca mulatta; metacarpals; multiple discriminant analysis; phalanges; sex determination.
© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.