A person’s age can be told by looking into lens of eyes

A way to decipher a person’s age by looking into the lens of the eye could help forensic scientists identify bodies, Danish researchers say.

Their technique uses radiocarbon dating to measure special proteins known as lens crystallines that develop around birth and remain unchanged for most of the rest of our lives.

They are the only part of the body apart from teeth that do so.

The researchers correctly identified the ages of 13 people within one-and-a-half years by analysing the carbon isotope carbon-14 trapped inside the crystallines, they report in the journal PLoS ONE.

“In forensics we are always looking for ways to identify deceased persons,” says Associate Professor Niels Lynnerup, a forensic scientist at the University of Copenhagen, who led the study.

“We found with this method you can determine almost to the year, the year of birth.”

Scientists have long used radiocarbon to date archaeological finds. More recently, researchers have applied the technique to tooth enamel to tell the age of people who have recently died, Ass Prof Lynnerup says.