what bone are babies born without

Babies are born without kneecaps, or the patella bone. However, they do have a structure made of cartilage that resembles a kneecap, which will eventually harden into bone as the baby grows. This is because cartilage is more pliable than bone, which makes it easier for babies to come into this world and learn to navigate around it. Babies have far more cartilage in their skeletons than adults do, and most childrens kneecaps begin to ossify, or turn from cartilage into bone, between the ages of 2 and 6. This is a slow process that takes many years, and the kneecap is fully developed into a bone by the age of 10 or 12.