Age determination in domestic dogs using cementum annuli: Validity and methodology

Age determination is an important part of forensic investigations and is used for assessment of population dynamics for animals and humans, understanding environmental conditions and so on. Age determinations using cementum annuli have been utilized for wild animals but have never been used for domestic dogs. The aim of this study was to test the accuracy of the method for domestic dogs and demonstrate the presence of cementum annuli. Ten domestic dogs were used for this experiment. The teeth were extracted from skulls via boiling and both mandibular and maxillary teeth were utilized. All teeth were decalcified using 10 % formic acid and 10 % formaldehyde solution. The decalcified teeth were embedded in paraffin and cut in 15 mu m thickness. After staining with hematoxylin, the annuli were counted manually. The results obtained from this study suggest that domestic dogs indeed have cementum annuli and the annuli are countable, the number of annuli in teeth is compatible with the ages of animals, and canines of the same dogs show the same results meaning all canine teeth can be used for the age determination.