Your Ancestry Can be Determined by Your Fingerprints, New Study Reveals

First Posted: Sep 28, 2015 07:08 PM EDT

A person's ancestral background could be determined by their fingerprints. Scientists have found that the characteristics of people's fingerprints may tell them a bit more about a person's biological history.

"This is the first study to look at this issue at this level of detail, and the findings are extremely promising," said Ann Ross, one of the researchers, in a news release. "But more work needs to be done. We need to look at a much larger sample size and evaluate individuals from more diverse ancestral backgrounds."

In this latest study, the researchers looked at Level 1 and Level 2 details of fingerprints. Level 1 details include pattern types and ridge counts while Level 2 details include more specific variations, such as where a fingerprint ridge splits.

In all, the researchers looked at fingerprints of 243 individuals of different decent. The scientists also analyzed the fingerprints to determine whether there were patterns that were specific to either sex or ancestral background.

While the researchers found no differences between men and women, they did find significant differences in the Level 2 details of fingerprints between people of European American and African American ancestry.

"A lot of additional work needs to be done, but this holds promise for helping law enforcement," said Ross. "And it's particularly important given that, in 2009, the National Academy of Sciences called for more scientific rigor in forensic science-singling out fingerprints in particular as an area that merited additional study. This finding also tells us that there's a level of variation in fingerprints that is of interest to anthropologists, particularly in the area of global population structures-we just need to start looking at the Level 2 fingerprint details."

The findings are published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

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TagsFingerprick, Hands, Ancestors, Ancestry, Genetics, Genetic, DNA, Forensic Science, Forensic