- Project title
- Solving the evolutionary puzzle of human childbirth
- Description of the project
- This project will test the hypothesis that the size of the human birth canal is constrained by the need to support abdominal organs in an orthograde (i.e. vertical) posture, therefore limiting how spacious the birth canal can be. In order to do so, I will collect scans of pelvic bones for male and female primates from 35 different species that differ in posture, locomotion, body size and obstetric requirements. 3D models of the pelvis for each specimen will be built from the scans, and the position of key anatomical landmarks will be used to compare the size and 3D shape of the birth canal across primate species. The shape data will be used to estimate how habitual posture, locomotion and obstetric requirements have affected birth canal variation among primate species, including humans, and to evaluate whether the tightness of the human (and other primates’) birth canal can be explained by the need to provide organ support in an orthograde posture.
Works done by the platform AST-RX