Craniometric variation in disarticulated crania from the shipwreck of April 18th, 2015

On April 18th, 2015, a fishing boat carrying migrants from Africa sank with approximately 1,000 victims. This resulted in the most tragic mass disaster of the current humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean Sea. One year later, the victims were recovered for identification purposes. This study presents the craniometric analyses on the disarticulated crania of the shipwreck to estimate sex and population affinity of the victims, and it investigates possible differences in these parameters according to the location on the boat (i.e., deck, hold and engine room). Metric data were collected on 314 crania with a microscribe digitizer, and the 3Skull software that obtains the coordinates x, y, and z of each landmark and calculates the inter-landmark. Principal coordinates scores were derived from inter-skull distances; moreover, One-Way ANOVA and pairwise Bonferroni test (α=0.05) were run to investigate statistical differences in the craniometric distances between the compartments of the boat. Deck skulls are characterized by wider vaults, narrower (including nasal breadth) more gracile faces and have more upper facial forwardness, in contrast to hold/engine crania. Variation among groups is highly significant, but pairwise tests show that deck is significantly different from hold and engine, hold is significantly different from deck, but engine is not significantly different from hold. This study provided novel and detailed data that may enhance the biological profile of the victims. Furthermore, it extended the research line on craniometric variation in unknown populations which represents a compelling issue for the discipline of humanitarian forensic anthropology.