Evaluation of Facial Proportions and Their Association with Thumbprint Patterns among Hausa Ethnic Group

Background. Evolutionary forces such as founder effect resulted in reproductive isolation and reduced genetic diversity may have led to ethnic variation in the facial appearance and other features like fingerprints pattern. Aim. To determine the pattern of facial proportion based on neoclassical facial canon. The associations between facial proportions and thumbprint patterns were also investigated. Subject and Methods. A total of 534 subjects of 18–25 years of age participated. Direct sensing and photographs methods were used to determine fingerprint and facial features, respectively. Fisher’s Exact test was used to test for association between variables. Results. It was observed that in both males and females there was no (0%) occurrence of classical canon of facial proportion. There was also no association between sex and facial proportions. A significant association was found in between thumbprint patterns and vertical class III neoclassical facial proportion only when the frequency of both left and right thumbprint patterns was considered a single entity. There is no significant association between the thumbprint patterns of the right and left thumbs with vertical horizontal facial proportions in male and female participants. It was observed that right and left thumbs have more tendency of significance with facial proportion in males and females, respectively. Conclusion. Fingerprint pattern and its associated features may be controlled by a different mechanism such that the two may correlate differently with other features as the case may be with facial features