Study association among the morphological landmark of Ear print to personal identification in forensics in the Iraqi population

The external ear is a distinctive side of facial characteristics. Ear has attracted significant and elevating interest in biometrics due to its inherent characteristics compared to other traits. This study explores the external ear’s physical traits and its suitability as a tool for human identification. Through the use of photographs, evaluation and classification were done on six major human external ear landmarks: shape of ear, helix, tragus, shape of earlobe, earlobe attachment, and thickness of ear lobe. Findings of this study showed that there was variation in morphological features. We found that earlobes with medium thickness had a higher prevalence rate of 54.5% compared to thick and thin earlobes. There is a strong, statistically significant relationship at a p-value 0.01 between ear shape and earlobe shape. The present study shows that the individualistic characteristics of the ear can provide very useful information for personal identification in forensics.