Two physical features, among others, make humans unique: our way of walking and running upright on two legs, and our newborn babies’ very large heads.
Those two traits of humanity meet at the pelvis, a set of bones that includes the ilium, ischium, pubis, and sacrum.
For more than 50 years, anthropologists thought that the human pelvis was shaped by an evolutionary tug-of-war between the competing demands of bipedalism and childbirth.
Now, a team of scientists that includes Kristi Lewton, an assistant professor in the department of anatomy and neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine, has shown that this so-called “obstetric dilemma” might not be a dilemma at all.
Kristi Lewton. Credit: Jackie Ricciardi/Boston University
