Death and Decomposition Practice Test 2026 – The All-in-One Resource for Mastering Your Exam!

In stature estimation, long bones are used because their lengths track overall body size. For the forearm, the length of the radius is typically the best predictor of height because it tends to have a strong, consistent relationship with stature across individuals, and its endpoints are easy to identify on skeletal remains. This makes the radius a reliable measure for estimating how tall someone was from the lower arm. The humerus is in the upper arm and the tibia is in the leg, so they aren’t the forearm measurements used here. The ulna is the other forearm bone, but standard forearm-based height estimates often favor the radius because of its reliable correlation with height.