The Obstetrical Conundrum: Fontanelles & Human Birth Canals

[Nick tringali]

I want to do a project for my class on the obstetrical conundrum. Which is basically the antagonism of selective pressures on pelvic morphology. I need help to find literature. I want to know if over the course of history, if Human baby's fontanelles increased in size in order to compensate for the narrow birth canal. Does anyone know any good articles that talk about the change in size or efficacy of the fontanelles over time? Let me know.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

I don't have any particular expertise on this topic, but a good source to search the scientific literature in the biological sciences is pubmed.gov

For example, the searching for human evolution fontanelles gives three papers that might be a good starting point (all three papers appear to be freely available in case you don't have access to a university library system):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=human+evolution+fontanelles+&sort=date

 

[Nick tringali]

I don't have any particular expertise on this topic, but a good source to search the scientific literature in the biological sciences is pubmed.gov

For example, the searching for human evolution fontanelles gives three papers that might be a good starting point (all three papers appear to be freely available in case you don't have access to a university library system):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=human+evolution+fontanelles+&sort=date

Thank you!

 

[BillTre]

Its not only involves an "antagonism of selective pressures on pelvic morphology" involving pelvic morphology and baby head flexibility, but also the extended post natal development (extended childhood) and investment in parental care which result of these kind of limitations.

These are big expensive evolutionarally significant investments by the parents.