Morphological Pattern of Lip Print among Adults of Ijesha Ethnic Group, Osun State, Nigeria

Cheiloscopy is an investigational technique under forensic science that deals with study of uniqueness of lip prints among individuals. The aim of this work is to study the lip print patterns of Ijesa people in Osun state, Nigeria. The study group comprises of 205 males and 205 females within the age group of 18-65 years. The subjects were asked to clean their lips with the baby wipe and little quantity of lip gloss applied evenly on the sulci laborium of the upper and lower lips. The subjects were then made to stand/sit in a relaxed position and asked to keep the lip muscles relaxed and the jaw kept closed while the prints were being taken. A clear new microscopic glass slide was placed on the relaxed lips of the subject in a single motion tilting it slightly to the right and left. The lips were divided into six compartments and classified according to Suzuki and Tsuchuchashi's classification. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 software package. Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detective (CHAID) was used to analyze and compare the lip print pattern and the analyses were presented in tables and variables in categorical forms, thus it was presented as frequency, p-value was set at ? 0.05 to be significant. The result of this study with respect to sex shows that type I was dominant in male while type III was dominant in female. The predominant lip print pattern among Ijesa ethnic group was type III. In conclusion, there is a sexual dimorphism in the lip print pattern in Ijesha ethnic group and this can be used in personality identification in forensic anthropology.

Key Words: Cheiloscopy, lip print, Ijesha ethnic group, forensic anthropology