Hand prints can reveal a person's height and size (Getty Images)
Prints left by the hand, or even parts of it, can be used to estimate the height of an unknown intruder and possibly tell whether they were male or female, say researchers.
A team led by forensic anthropologist Associate Professor Daniel Franklin, from the University of Western Australia, report their findings in a series of recent scientific papers.
"That might be useful if you've got someone who has broken into a house or someone has been seen messing around with a window of a house," says Franklin.
When trying to identify a suspected perpetrator of crime experts try to narrow down the list of potential suspects.
... The researchers took measurements of 91 male and 100 female adults from Western Australia. They measured the height of each individual and took seven measurements of each hand and its corresponding print.
Franklin and colleagues measured hand breadth and length, palm length, as well as the length of the first, second, third and fourth digits.
They then carried out a statistical analysis and found that hand prints involving these parts of the hand could be used to estimate height.
"If you're taller you tend to have longer limbs and you tend to have bigger hands as well. It's a scaling effect," says Franklin.
"We can show that there is a strong correlation between the size of your hand and your ... height and the same thing applies to a print from a hand."
Franklin says a forensic investigator could use these statistics to get a quantifiable estimate of an offender's height and this would help narrow down suspect profiles given out to the public or could be used to narrow down a given list of suspects.
Franklin says the study showed hand prints can predict height with a relatively high degree of accuracy, close to that of height predictions from hand bones.
A team led by forensic anthropologist Associate Professor Daniel Franklin, from the University of Western Australia, report their findings in a series of recent scientific papers.
"That might be useful if you've got someone who has broken into a house or someone has been seen messing around with a window of a house," says Franklin.
When trying to identify a suspected perpetrator of crime experts try to narrow down the list of potential suspects.
... The researchers took measurements of 91 male and 100 female adults from Western Australia. They measured the height of each individual and took seven measurements of each hand and its corresponding print.
Franklin and colleagues measured hand breadth and length, palm length, as well as the length of the first, second, third and fourth digits.
They then carried out a statistical analysis and found that hand prints involving these parts of the hand could be used to estimate height.
"If you're taller you tend to have longer limbs and you tend to have bigger hands as well. It's a scaling effect," says Franklin.
"We can show that there is a strong correlation between the size of your hand and your ... height and the same thing applies to a print from a hand."
Franklin says a forensic investigator could use these statistics to get a quantifiable estimate of an offender's height and this would help narrow down suspect profiles given out to the public or could be used to narrow down a given list of suspects.
Franklin says the study showed hand prints can predict height with a relatively high degree of accuracy, close to that of height predictions from hand bones.
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