Forensic Anthropology Complete Practice Exam 2026

In Hefner's morphoscopic population affinity methods, the focus is on qualitative skull and face features that vary among populations and can be scored to inform ancestry. The anterior nasal spine is a midline cranial feature at the base of the nasal aperture whose prominence varies across groups, and these differences are informative enough to be included in the morphoscopic trait set. Because of this population-level variation in ANS morphology, it’s part of Hefner’s method.

The other features aren’t part of this morphoscopic approach: the mandibular angle is a jaw trait and isn’t a standard morphoscopic skull feature in Hefner’s list; the pelvic notch is a pelvic trait, not used in this cranial morphoscopic framework; and femur curvature is a long-bone trait, outside the cranial morphoscopic trait set Hefner used for population affinity.