Determination of Height Using Femur Length in Adult Population of Oguta Local Government Area of Imo State Nigeria

The use of body parts in the estimation of stature is a vital tool in forensic anthropology. This research was carried out to determine the height of adult population of Oguta inhabitants using the femur length. The femur length of 200 adults (male 123, female 77) aged 22 and 70 was taken using a non stretchable tape to measure the distance between the greater trochanter as palpated and lateral condyle of the femur. Height was taken from the subject by a calibrated meter rule. The mean of femur length and height was 41.18cm ± 0.03 and 164.47cm ± 0.65 respectively for the sample population in the male, the female length and height was 41.79cm ± 0.16 and 167.50cm ± 0.78 respectively, while in the female population the femur length was 40.82cm ± 0.26 and the height in 161.90cm ± 0.95. The pair of variables was found to be significant in each case at the level of p> 0.05. The value of the correlation factor is 0.9866. In this study the femur/length ratio for the sample population is 25. The mean femur/height ratio for male is 25.11 and that of female is 25.25. These values vary from reports from other parts of the world. This variation could be from the nutritional difference, occupation and the geographical location. The regression coefficient for the sample population is 0.9867. In the male population the value of r is 0.9927 while in the female population it is 0.9126. The values of r in this study showed that there is high correlation between the femur length and height of an individual. This study revealed that the height of an individual is four times the femur length of the individual, since the femur length is proportional to the height, therefore the taller the individual the longer femur length, while the shorter the individual the shorter the femur length.