RESOURCES The Human Bone Collection of the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Hong Kong: History and description of cranial and postcranial skeletal remains Fabio Savoldi 1,2 | Carla Montalvao 3 | Liuling Hui 3 | Carl K.K. Leung 4 | Nina G. Jablonski 5 | James K.H. Tsoi 6 | Michael M. Bornstein 3,7 1 Orthodontics, Dental School, Department of Medical and Surgical Specialties, Radiological Sciences and Public Health, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy 2 Orthodontics, Division of Paediatric Dentistry & Orthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong 3 Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Division of Applied Oral Sciences and Community Dental Care, Faculty of Dentistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong 4 Forensic Science, School of Medical and Health Sciences, Tung Wah College, Ho Man Tin, Hong Kong 5 Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, USA 6 Dental Materials Science, Division of Applied Oral Sciences and Community Dental Care, Faculty of Dentistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong 7 Department of Oral Health & Medicine, University Center for Dental Medicine Basel UZB, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland Correspondence James K.H. Tsoi, 1/F, Prince Philip Dental Hospital, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong. Email: jkhtsoi@hku.hk Funding information University of Hong Kong, Grant/Award Number: 17/639 Abstract Objectives: The present work describes the status and contents of The Human Bone Collection of the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Hong Kong. Materials and methods: The Collection originates from the 1980s and became offi- cially established in 2017 for teaching and research purposes. Most of the Collection consists of unclaimed human remains of southern Chinese individuals exhumed from local cemeteries and donated to the Faculty in the last few decades. The demo- graphic information was provided largely from burial records and forensic estima- tions. Since 2016, the Collection has undergone a process of reorganization into cranial and postcranial remains, followed by preservation procedures that included cleaning and classification. Results: The Collection currently consists of remains belonging to about 368 individ- uals (243 males, 54 females, 71 unknown), with ages ranging from 0.8 to 90 years (mean 57.4 years). It comprises cranial remains belonging to 260 individuals (169 males, 39 females, 52 unknown), and postcranial remains belonging to 248 indi- viduals (180 males, 42 females, 26 unknown). The preservation status ranges from poor to good, with the cranial remains better preserved than the postcranial ele- ments. For a large number of individuals, ear ossicles, soil samples, and other mate- rials are also available. Discussion: The Collection is accessible to local and international institutions for teaching and research. KEYWORDS anthropology, Chinese, cranial, human, skeletal 1 | BACKGROUND Human skeletal remains can contribute to research (Schmidt-Schultz & Schultz, 2004) and education (Savoldi, Yeung, et al., 2021). For the interest of anthropologists and paleoanthropologists, human remains can help to identify distinctive traits of a population (Brace et al., 1993), and study morphological affinities between people of dif- ferent areas for exploring possible biological or historical connections between human groups (Pietrusewsky, 2010). Furthermore, they can provide demographic information about age (Meindl & Lovejoy, 1985), stature (Cardoso, 2009), and sexual dimorphism (Garvin et al., 2014). Hence, human remains can contribute to scien- tific advances in pathology by telling the history of diseases (Mays et al., 2002) and contributing to modern forensic diagnosis (Cappella et al., 2014). More recently, skeletal collections have also found appli- cation in developing three-dimensional virtual databases for Received: 16 October 2020 Revised: 26 February 2021 Accepted: 5 March 2021 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24273 Am J Phys Anthropol. 2021;1–13. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ajpa © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 1