Originally posted by Anita Cholaine
Some interesting things I found on the Internet... I'm just bored...



Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
This one is not true, found this with a quick Google search:

Newborns do have kneecaps. Kneecaps form about the fourth month of fetal life. However, they don’t show up on x-ray very well because they’re not ossified, or bony. At this point in life, the kneecaps are made of a cartilaginous material. The growth centers surrounding the kneecap form late in developmental life in utero and may not appear until just before or just after the infant is born.

Remember, infants are a work in progress. The potential for linear bone growth may continue until the late teens or early twenties. Although all the precursor tissues for the major bones are present at or immediately after birth, centers of ossification (where bone is laid down) continue to develop throughout childhood and beyond. For instance, the head of the femur appears at four months, the patella, or kneecap, starts showing signs of ossification at about 3 years in females and 4-5 years of age in males. Parts of the pelvic girdle (hips) don’t appear ossified until adolescence with the tubercle of the pubis not appearing until 18-20 years of age.