Anthropological Studies on the Korean Auricle

The present author have measured the auricles of the 1,494 Korean males and ;1,032 Korean females, ranging from 6 to 29 years of age, and the following conclusions have been drawn. 1) The longitudinal diameters of the auricle including physiognomical ear length, morphological ear breadth, distance between incisura intertragica and upper auricular end, upper ear length, lower ear length, and distance between auricular tubercle and lower insertion of ear increase as the age incrases and cease to grow at about 20 years of age in male and 18 years of age in female. 2) The increase in the transverse diameters of the aurlcle.Te., physiognomical ear breadth, morphological ear length, and distance between auricular tubercle and upper ~insertion of ear, does not parallel to the increase of age. The transverse diameters complete their growth during the earlier half of the growing period. 3) Both length of concha and depth of incisura intertragica increase more or less proportionally as the age increases and complete their growth at about 17 years of age in both sexes. Both breadth of concha and breadth of incisura intertragica do not increase according to the increase of age and complete their growth during the earlier half of the growing period. 4) Of the longitudinal diameters, distance between incisura intertragica and upper auricular end in male is greater than that in female in all ages, physiognomical ear length, upper ear length and lower ear length reveal no sexual differences during the earlier half of the growing period, but those in male are greater than those in female during the later half of the growing period and during the adult period. No sexual differences are detectable in morphological ear breadth, length of ear lobule, upper ear length, distance between auricular tubercle and lower insertion of ear, and depth of incisura intertragica in all age groups. 5) Of the transverse diameters, physiognomical ear breadth, distance between auricular tubercle and upper insertion of ear, and breadth of concha reveal no sexual differences in the earlier half of the growing period, but those in male are greater than those in female during the later half of the growing period and adult period. The morphological ear length and breadth of incisura intertragica reval no sexual differences in all age groups. 6) The present result on Korean auricles is similar to that on northwest Korean by Nosaka, and is deviated gradually from that of Masukawa on Japanese, that of Taketani on Manchurian males, that of Miyajima on Kyushu-Japanese, that of Kawamura on Hokuriku-Iapanese, that of Maruyama on the Takasago tribe in Formosa and that of Uchida on Chinese, in sequence