Investigación de rasgos dentales No métricos en poblaciones sudamericanas actuales: Estado de situación y contextualización forense

Abstract

In recent human populations there is a pattern of geographic variation associated to the tooth morphology. In the last decades there has been a remarkable scientific production around the study of non-metric dental traits in order to define the geographic patterns of groups, their history, origin or structure, among others. Between the proposed scopes is the possibility of using the frequency of different traits of expression in a forensic context. We present a review of the literature in MEDLINE, SciELO, and LILACS and REDALYC databases. Full articles in Spanish, Portuguese and English conducting analyzes of dental morphological traits in present South American populations (XX and XXI centuries) were included. Two researchers evaluated the selected articles independently. The search strategies allowed identified 36 studies with a significant participation of Colombia (both authors and samples), followed by Chile and Brazil. While these results demonstrate a robust activity in the field of dental anthropology studying South-American present populations, a reevaluation of the methodologies is suggested if it is to assign a forensic value to dental morphological traits.