User:Amiee08

Fingerprints! A fingerprint is a 'friction ridge skin' arrangement. This covers the palm surface of the hands, fingers and the corresponding areas on the soles of the feet, and it consists of tiny ridges and furrows. On the tips of your fingers the ridges are arranged into different patterns and this is your fingerprint. As the arrangement of these ridges and furrows is unique to the individual and does not alter throughout life, it can be used for identification purposes. How do we get the marks on our fingers? The friction ridge skin develops between 6 and 24 weeks of foetal development. Skin cells grow on the surface of the skin and fuse to form the ridges. As these ridges form, some fuse, some branch and others break to form individual ridge features and ridge patterns. The arrangement of the ridges is fully formed by the 24th week. Why are fingerprints unique? Factors that affect the rate of ridge development include environmental e.g. temperature and genetic. These random factors combine to ensure that the ridges and ridge features form at different rates. As the same pregnancy can never be recreated, the same ridge development can't. Therefore, even identical twins have different fingerprints.