Root Translucency for Age-at-Death Estimation in Adults: A Systematic Review

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Abstract
Background/Objectives: The estimation of age in skeletal remains is particularly challenging in adults due to the reduction in reliable morphological indicators with age. One valuable marker for this purpose is root translucency, either alone or in combination with other parameters. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the accuracy of root translucency as a marker for estimating age-at-death in adults while assessing its reliability, limitations, and practical utility in forensic scenarios. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted by synthesizing the scientific evidence available in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, SciELO, and Google Scholar. Results: Thirteen articles published between 2015 and 2025 in indexed journals were selected. The evaluated methods were more accurate in middle-aged groups (mean errors lower than 10 years), with a tendency to overestimate age in young adults and underestimate it in older individuals. The impact of the trajectory effect (i.e., that estimation errors increase with age) could be reduced by employing Bayesian statistics in the analyses. Similarly, logarithmic regression offered better results in adults over 65 years of age. International databases appeared to be a promising alternative when population-specific information is unavailable, even when root translucency was the only age marker used. Conclusions: These new approaches, which increase the accuracy of the methods, need to be validated on larger and more diverse samples to determine their applicability to various forensic contexts and their ability to achieve acceptable results.

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