Is the duration of human pregnancy decreasing? A vision of Darwinian medicine.
Philippe CharlierYves CoppensJacques HassinPublished in: The journal of maternal-fetal & neonatal medicine : the official journal of the European Association of Perinatal Medicine, the Federation of Asia and Oceania Perinatal Societies, the International Society of Perinatal Obstetricians (2020)
Why do actual females have a 9-months-pregnancy? Here, we hypothesize that the pregnancies of prehuman species were longer than currently (10 or 11 months), and that anatomical and metabolic changes, by increasing the in-utero size of the fetal brain, selected groups with premature delivery, low-calcified and/or not welded cranial vault bones (permitting deformation during the expulsion), until reaching a current pregnancy duration of 9 months.