Babies are born without kneecaps, which are made of cartilage and ossify later.
Why it is true
At birth, babies have cartilage in the knee area instead of true bone. This cartilage begins to ossify and turn into true kneecaps between two and six years of age, allowing for greater flexibility during birth and motor development.
Source: Mayo Clinic
Would you rather be asked first?
This is the reading side of the site, so the answer is in the sentence above — that is the whole point of it. Test yourself works the other way round: the question comes on its own, and the fact and the explanation only appear once you have answered.
Related facts
Babies are born with about 300 bones, but adults have only 206.
A mutation in the LRP5 gene can make bones extremely dense and difficult to break.
The smallest bone in the human body is the stapes, located in the middle ear.
The human skull is made up of twenty-two distinct bones.
