Facial anthropometry correlates with admixture proportions in African Americans

If you doubt that facial measurements can be used to determine racial makeup, feel free to use my old black-or-white calculator, which determines the chance that a given individual is Caucasoid or Negroid - rather than admixture proportions as in this study. I would be interested to hear of biracial individuals' results though, so send me an e-mail. Quite often, people don't take accurate measurements, though, so if you get an unexpected result, the odds are that you're measuring something wrong.

Mixed Population Provides Insights Into Human Genetic Makeup

The researchers looked at a combined sample of African Americans with West African and European ancestry whose genetic makeup was known through DNA testing. To make it simpler, anyone with Native American ancestry was eliminated so that only two genetic pools were represented -- West African and European. The researchers reported on a sample of 254 individuals using three-dimensional imaging and measured the distances between specific portions of the face. Each individual had provided a DNA sample.

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From their DNA profiles, Shriver could determine the admixture percentages of each individual, how much of their genetic make up came from each group. He could then compare the genetically determined admixture to the facial feature differences and determine the relative differences from the parental populations.

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Shriver found that there was a very strong statistical correlation between the amounts of admixture and the facial traits.