The following excerpt is from the September 28, 2015 edition of Newsweek.com.
Each individual’s fingerprints are unique—the tiny loops, ridges and whorls on the epidermis are even more distinctive than a person’s DNA and are one of the best ways we have of identifying a person today. New research has found these tiny etchings, known as dermatoglyphics, can also serve as way to trace an individual’s ancestry.
For some time, anthropologists and forensic scientists have used fingerprints to learn more about identity, but the two disciplines tend to focus their analyses on different details. Anthropologists examine what’s known as Level 1 details, a close look at the pattern types and ridge counts. Forensic scientists focus on Level 2 details, fingerprint “minutiae,” or the specific variants of fingerprints like the shape and direction of ridges and where they split, known as bifurcation.