Steve - it's older than you think. The image below is from "The Bertillon System of Identification: Signeletic Instructions: The Theory and Practice of Anthropometrical Identification, by A. Bertillon, 1896.
The reproduction here is not good so you can't really see the necessary detail, but the idea is not new. The caption reads, "Identity revealed despite beard by the spiral lobe of the ear and the facial angle....same man at ten years interval." Of course there has been a mountain of research and practice since then.
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